Creating a care-full scholarship learning community
The idea of a Community of Practice (CoP) was developed by Etienne Wenger and Jean Lave in the early 1990s. They argued that a CoP has 3 main characteristics:
- Domain: a common interest that connects and binds the community together;
- Community: a community is bound by shared activities around their common domain;
- Practice: members of a CoP are practitioners; what they do informs their participation in the community, and what they learn from the community affects what they do. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, and ways of addressing recurring problems—in short, a shared practice.
One further crucial aspect, is that the community must be driven by the willingness of the members. This means that for the community to function and thrive, it needs the active contribution of us all.
In accordance with this understanding of what is needed for a CoP to thrive and become self-sustaining, this MOOC has been designed to operate as both a safe space and as a transformative space. That is, its role is to nurture and initiate the rooting of a community of learning, but also, through a gradual shift from more structured to more self-organised (connectivist) conversations, exchange and practice orientated experimentation, to enable this community to take on a life of its own.
In direct support of this, beginning from the next page you will encounter the first of our interactive exercises (which are a regular feature of this MOOC). The exercises are an opportunity to reflect individually, to share and connect with peers, to contribute to the building of this Care-full Scholarship CoP, and to support one another in your care-full learning journey.
Please only add personal information you are entirely comfortable sharing. E.g. should you prefer to use a pseudonym (perhaps an animal avatar from the accompanying MOOC graphics, or one of your own) please do so - in the ‘my profile’ settings of your account you will be able to change your user name and image accordingly.
