Global Community Of Practice Research Articles

Supporting the Interconnection of Communities of Practice

In this paper, a general model for the Interconnection of Communities of Practice (ICP) is proposed. This model creates links between local Communities of Practice (CoPs) and global Communities of Practice on the Web. To hit the target platform specifications to support an ICP are first of all proposed, soon after the TE-Cap 2 (Tutoring Experience Capitalisation) platform for an ICP of tutors is made up to support people working on it. This platform allows the capitalisation of tutors’ contextualised knowledge by making it easily retrievable from all the tutors in their daily practice. At last a descriptive investigation over a four-month period and forty-two users registered on the platform is conducted. Results presented in this paper concern the usability of the platform and the relevance of the model with regard to tutors’ needs.

The 3rd International Cancer Control Congress: international collaboration in an era of cancer as a global concern

In 2002, there were 10.9 million new cancer cases in the world; 6.7 million deaths were due to cancer 1 . Cancer incidence (new cases) rises each year due to population growth and aging. Overall, five year survival rates vary from less than 15% to greater than 60% across nations 2 . Although improvements in mortality from cancer are tak ing place, they do not offset the increase in incidence. Hence, each year, more people will develop cancer, more will die of cancer, and more will be survivors of cancer ‐ the burden (personnel, community and socio-economic) will continue, inexorably, to in crease. If the cancer issue is to be addressed, the interventions must be directed at the process of cancer, not solely to the disease. Thus, cancer control must address inci dence through primordial and primary prevention, detection of curable, asympto matic, early stage disease, effective treatment programs for established disease, and palliative, supportive and end-of-life care to meet the needs of those cured and those whose death requires dignity, symptom control and compassion. To be effective, can cer control plans must be directed to the entire population (the healthy, high-risk, ill, cured and dying), recognizing that disparities of access, circumstances, gender, eth nicity and social well-being exist in all populations. Population-based cancer control plans require a vision of what is to be achieved, principles that will characterize the intents and expectations, and a process for adapt ing plans to align with the contextual realities of the nation/country from cultural, political and resource perspectives. Consideration must be given to the extent that cancer control plans are specific to cancer, or whether they are integrated into strate gies that address many non-communicable diseases [NCDs], given the common risk factors across NCDs and the overlap of principles underlying disease control plans. Finally, all plans must consider the content, the implementation process, the ‘stake holders’ (government, non-government organizations [NGOs], foundations, profes sionals, patients, public and the private sector) and their roles and relationships, and the timeframe over which plans will be enacted. To control the process of NCDs, in cluding cancer, requires collaboration, relationships and ‘partnerships’ ‐ it cannot be achieved solely by discrete organizations, institutions, or disciplines. Given the diver sity and disparity across populations and the rising cancer/NCD burden that will face all, common purpose, collaboration, knowledge transfer and rational action must characterize the way forward. The purpose of the 3 rd International Cancer Control Congress (ICCC-3) was to promote and foster a global community of practice through enabling extensive participation and dialogue between countries and societies with wide and varying experiences in cancer control; building on and synergizing ongoing work by governments, NGOs, international organizations and patient and public groups to make sustainable cancer control an important global priority. The ICCC-3 was held in Cernobbio, Italy in November 2009, and was built upon the achievements of the ICCC-1 (Vancouver, 2005) and ICCC-2 (Rio de Janeiro, 2007) by ensuring an agenda that focused on: international collaboration; establishment of sustainable na tional/large population cancer control strategies; promoting broad cross-sectoral participation (e.g., governments, cancer organizations, foundations, non-govern

Cross-cultural knowledge communication in online communities of practice

Concepts associated with knowledge communication add value and complexity to the traditional Western educational models, which have focused mainly on the individual as the unit of analysis. This paper extends past the individual level and builds on the concepts of communicating knowledge from the perspective of Communities of Practice (CoP) (Lave and Wenger, 1991), particularly those educational communities which are online and cross-cultural. We begin by considering the nature of knowledge and reality. In light of considering communicating knowledge from the perspective of CoP, we explore the cultural differences and disconnects in expectations regarding communication. We recommend a bridge-building model (Rogers et al., 2007) and some types of platform functionality for communicating knowledge in cross-cultural online communication. We explore how this approach facilitates the transformational process of developing intercultural competence, which in turn enhances the generation, communication and application of knowledge in global CoP.

OOPS, Turning MIT Opencourseware into Chinese: An analysis of a community of practice of global translators

An all-volunteer organization called the Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System (OOPS), headquartered in Taiwan, was initially designed to translate open source materials from MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) site into Chinese. Given the recent plethora of open educational resources (OER), such as the OCW, the growing use of such resources by the world community, and the emergence of online global education communities to localize resources such as the OOPS, a key goal of this research was to understand how the OOPS members negotiate meanings and form a collective identity in this cross-continent online community. To help with our explorations and analyses within the OOPS translation community, several core principles from Etienne Wenger’s concept of Communities of Practice (COP) guided our analyses, including mutual engagement, joint enterprise, shared repertoire, reification, and overall identity of the community. In this paper, we detail how each of these key components was uniquely manifested within the OOPS. Three issues appeared central to the emergence, success, and challenges of the community such as OOPS: 1) strong, stable, and fairly democratic leadership; 2) participation incentives; and 3) online storytelling or opportunities to share one’s translation successes, struggles, and advice within an asynchronous discussion forum. While an extremely high level of enthusiasm among the OOPS members underpinned the success of the OOPS, discussion continues on issues related to quality control, purpose and scope, and forms of legitimate participation. This study, therefore, provides an initial window into the emergence and functioning of an online global education COP in the OER movement. Future research directions related to online global educational communities are discussed.

Using Social Networking Analysis to Facilitate Knowledge Sharing in the British Council

Prior to the establishment of the Knowledge Management (KM) strategy, the British Council defined knowledge as objects. Knowledge sharing was about sharing documents and information on the intranet or via global databases. Since December 2002, Dervin’s Sense-Making Methodology has been applied to manage knowledge. Knowledge is seen not as a product that can be transferred from one colleague to another but as a communication practice. This means that shared knowledge has to be interpreted and made sense of by its recipients through genuine dialogue. During this phase of KM implementation, the focus shifted to linking up colleagues and providing space for dialogue through building global communities of practice and virtual teams. This article presents an example of how we have used the theory of Social Networking Analysis as a diagnostic tool to promote knowledge sharing among our newly formed 30-people global leadership team. The three steps we have taken to carry out the exercise and its limitations also are discussed.