Week Six - Topic 2: Joint enterprise

Sometimes it is difficult to think about community in different ways. For this task, I want you to think carefully about "joint enterprise". It is easy to belong to a community on the web, but for us to consider the community a community of practice there needs to be a joint enterprise - something that members are actively engaged in with progression and a goal in mind. Usually this means that the members have a vested interest in getting better at something together.



A joint enterprise is what a community of practice is about; the reason the CofP exists. A community of practice needs the shared interest between members and it is this interest which is the joint enterprise. Wenger states that a joint enterprise is “understood and continually renegotiated by its members”.
I found a community website called ‘Minti’ which is designed for parents, to provide them parenting advice and to share their advice with others. I think this site has a consideration for joint enterprise, as all users of the site have the same progression and goal in mind: to improve their parenting skills. All members want to get better at being a parent. One of the reasons this site was set up was to help parents to communicate their problems as they are happening, rather than going to a magazine which is a one way communication device published monthly. This site encourages learning by practice in the activity of actually being a parent. I would consider this community site a community of practice as although there is not a ‘meatspace’ “social setting in which learning takes place” (Wenger) there is an online social setting where members of the community can communicate and aid each others learning.