The forum in which you are working for New Media Cultures is arguably a Community of Practice. We have shared goals, a joint enterprise, experts, newcomers and those with power. Try to put together some thoughts and reflections on which members fit into which category from our work so far and discuss your ideas of what is our joint enterprise and who fits into which role.
Students who are undertaking the New Media Cultures unit are arguably a community of practice. Wenger suggests that “a community of practice defines itself along three dimensions… what it’s about, how it functions and what capability it has produced” (Wenger reading, page 2).
So, the new media cultures community of practice can also define itself…
What it’s about: our joint enterprise is the work involved with the unit and the need to succeed and do well. This is the shared interest and goal of the members of our community of practice.
How it functions: students meet up if necessary, have Facebook threads, comment on each others blogs and raise questions and awareness in the forums. This is how members participate within the community of practice.
What capability it has produced: the shared repertoire of knowledge of the unit has given students the capability to complete weekly tasks, hopefully improve week on week and fully understand the concepts within the unit.
The people with the power in the community of practice would probably be the tutors as they are the ones who define the content students are working on and discussing. There are no newcomers because each member started the course and will finish it at the same time. The community of practice will mostly break up once the unit is finished, but some people may continue a community of practice, with a renegotiated joint enterprise of succeeding the entire Media culture and communications degree course.
However, I also think that it could be argued that there are communities of practice within the NMC unit, rather than just one…
All students who are taking the ‘new media cultures’ unit are part of a seminar group and also a study group within that seminar group; this would be their organisational unit. Each student has been put into their seminar group depending on their timetables. These groups are relatively formal as students have to be a part of that group. However, students may have friends in the other two seminar groups who they want to share their work with (follow their blogs, comment on posts, advise etc) and this would be their community of practice.
I think that both of these community of practice theories can be applied to the students taking new media cultures.
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I disagree that our course is a community of practice because though we all have a shared interest the lecturer has a distinct role of being in charge, though we are not forced to be here people may have decided on the course last minute there might not be a passion. I personally think that to be in a CofP the passion must be almost hobby like no restrictions like a timetable, something you just take up when you feel like it.
ReplyDeleteThats a good point you make; some people are more interested in the course than others, and a cofp is probably more sucessful if the subject is a hobby or passion.
ReplyDeleteHowever, many examples that the theorists give are about work places, which i think is similar to a course so thats why i thought our course had elements of a cofp.
Very good discussion points and I like the way Becky has reinforced her point by offering a theoretical rational through which she made her point valid.
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