Real Life Learning: The Developing Importance of Formal and Informal Professional Communities of Practice

Abstract

The working conference has provided many examples of professional, formal and informal communities of practice that rely to a lesser or greater extent on access to and the use of ICT. The working definition we have used is based on the work of Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002) which states that a Community of Practice is a group of people who share a (great) interest in a certain object, theme or knowledge domain. They meet [face-toface or virtual] to exchange, to develop and to make knowledge explicit, which arises from questions and problems they have.