(Latent) Communities of Practice

As mentioned in my previous entry, the requirements for this course include reading Clay Shirky’s text on organizing without organizations as well as participating in a discussion board. The instructor started a thread regarding “communities of practice”, particularly latent communities, stating and asking in part: Shirky claims that every web page is, effectively, a latent communities. Most will not develop into a community, but some will. Those that do become communities do so because of things like common interests , communication needs, and good timing. How does this observation/claim affect our work toward developing virtual learning communities? Below is the gist of my response, with some linked examples at the end.

I’m really enjoying Shirky’s text, and I’m having fun chewing on many of his observations and comments. But his musing that “…Every webpage is a latent community….” (p.102) seems like an aside. It is mildly philosophical, kind of like observing that in the right (wrong) place at the right (wrong) time every automobile tire is a potential flat, but it really isn’t all that useful. The statement is true, but how does it guide your behavior? And of course Shirky does goes on to state that “…In almost all cases the community will remain latent...” for the reasons cited above—mismatches in interests or timing. I suspect that the real reason most web-pages do not progress to support realized rather than latent communities has to do with the idiosyncratic purposes and motivations of their creators.

But for our purposes of intentionally developing virtual learning communities, the key would seem to be making sure that we employ the proven tools in our instructional systems kit—in this case, needs assessment. In fact, Roger Kaufman’s tenacious insistence that we consider societal-level needs seems particularly appropriate when we set out to create communities. A proper needs assessment should inform our efforts regarding common interests, communication needs, as well as good timing, and should dramatically enhance the probability that our subsequent development labors are in fact filling a gap. From a design standpoint, knowing the answers to the questions, “Why are we doing this? What is the problem to which this might be the solution?” will go a long way toward supporting the success of our nascent learning community.

Beyond trying to make sure that we are addressing a “need” that is perceived by others beyond just ourselves, there are at least two other elements that Shirky hints can contribute to the successful formation of a community of practice: 1) setting up a clear mechanism to support dialog, and 2) embedding a way for participants to gain desirable recognition for their useful contributions. In the case of the latter, many communities offer ways to vote contributions “up” or “down”, or keep track of the total number of posts an individual has made. One of my favorite examples of weighting individual comments is found at “Krebs on Security”, whose host has a forum that tracks the ratio of favorable to unfavorable ratings and actually “hides” those with poor comment ratings, although they can still be read if you click on them. The wonderful effect is that the community effectively separates the virtual wheat from the chaff. See an example here http://krebsonsecurity.com/2010/07/top-apps-largely-forgo-windows-security-protections/#comments . (As a complete aside, I encourage you to check out Brian’s series on skimmer fraud—there are multiple threads but the first one is here http://krebsonsecurity.com/2010/01/would-you-have-spotted-the-fraud/ ; you will never approach an ATM without scrutiny again!)