R695 Building 
Online Communities 

I. General Questions

We have talked a lot about communities of practice and online community. What does the term mean, give me a definition, and why you think it might be of interest to educators.
Does one’s theoretical perspective need to be consistent or is it okay to be eclectic and pragmatic? Mark mentioned a tension between consistency and provisionality? What are some of the advantages of each?

II. Barab presentation on COT

What are the four elements of community life as mentioned in the CoT paper? Can you think of one example of a community of practice and talk about it in terms of these four elements?
Barab, Barnett, & Squire talked about the facilator & gatekeeper tension. Tell me about this tension and do you think it is inherent to communities of practice that are intentionally designed to support learning?
Barab, Barnett, & Squire talked about the theory & practice tension. Tell me about this tension and what you envision of some of the potential pitfalls of falling into either side?
Barab, Barnett & Squire differentiate between change agents and agents go be changed. What do they mean by this and why is it relevant to Communities of Practice?

III. Tyler Presentation on Lave & Wenger, Chapter 1-3

What is meant by the term legitimate peripheral participation?
Do some peripheral participants drive out oldtimers? Is this good or bad for the overall health of the community?
Can you contrast the experience of butchers to that of tailors to that of alcoholics in terms of Lave & Wenger’s notion of community of practice? What are the implications for the design of environments in the service of learning?
What did you think about the LPP book? What was it treated as a seminal piece in learning theory?

IV. Rodrigo Presentation on Barab and Duffy Presentation

Barab and Duffy refer to the term practice field. What do they mean by practice field and how does this differ from communities of practice? Can we and should we reasonably expect formal learning environments to be more than practice fields? What is missing from a practice field that is gained in a community of practice perspective?
Barab and Duffy suggest a reformulation of learning. What do they mean by this? From what to what?
One of the principles of practice fields advanced by Barab and Duffy was to support the learner rather than supporting the dilemma. From their expressed theoretical perspectives, why is this important?
Provide one example of a community of practice intentionally designed to support learning as shared by Barab & Duffy?

V. Barab Pres on Barab, MaKinster & Scheckler

Barab et al discuss the notion of duality? What do they mean by duality and give me an overview of three of the dualitys they discussed?
Why might trust be more problematic in an online community context than in a face-to-face community?
Barab discussed a change in the title of the ILF overtime? What was this change and what is the experience-distant lesson that can be derived from this change?
Barab, MaKinster, and Scheckler offered a number of lessons based on their experience in building the ILF. Mention three of these and tell me how they might relate to other virtual communities designed to support learning.

VI. Mark on Lave & Wenger, Chapters 4 & 5

What do Lave and Wenger mean by legitimate peripheral participation? Break it down for me.
Mark drew a diagram representing a community of practice. Is this diagram the minimal ontological description necessary for a community that would be considered “functional” from the perspective of Lave & Wenger? Draw a diagram of what this would look like for the butchers? For the Tailors? For students in a typical biology class?
Why is learning as a community approach a useful practice?
What is the difference between use value and exchange value. What are the most common goals for students in formal middle and high school contexts? Is this problematic?

VII. George on Scardamalia and Bereiter

Scardamalia and Bereiter state “for the most part, educational technology has accommodated itself to the conventional schizophrenia in which didactic instruction and child-centered methods compete for the control of the educational mind.” What do we mean by this? What do they see as the problem of our use of technology in schools?
Scardamalia and Bereiter argue that “educators have failed to grasp the social structures and dynamics that are required for progressive knowledge building…” Do you agree with this? What makes their technological intervention, CSILE, different from others?
What does Scardamalia and Bereiter mean by knowledge-building community? Theoretically and then empirically, how is the collective knowledge of the community managed?

VIII. Scott Pres on Riel and Polin

What is the difference of a task-based learning community as opposed to practice-based learning community? Do you see these distinctions as useful? Give me an example of each? How do the tools differ based on type of learning community?
Could a university course be a “community,” in terms of Riel & Polin’s description, in terms of Lave & Wenger, in terms of your take?
Is there a difference between a task-based community and a task-based “learning” community?
Is there a utility for separating out task-based, practice-based, and knowledge-based communities?

IX. Dan’s Pres on Schlager’s Chapter

Schlager wrote about the problems of being too general in some of these larger distributed communities so that it doesn’t apply to one’s immediate context. How does this relate to Wenger’s notion of Duality? What are problems with going to one side or to the other?
Discuss 3 of Schlager’s Guideposts? Why do you think these are useful?
What is the move that Schlager et al are making in their argument at this point in their thinking as opposed to when they started Tapped In? Do you see this as a result of being bad designers or based on the reality of designing for online communities of practice?
What are the challenges of engaging someone in a truly radical community intervention with respect to their existing community participation?
Schlager discusses how we need to ensure that technologies don’t create power differentials. Instead, they should allow for equal relations and not spur hierarchies. Do you agree with this?

X. Jay on Kling and Courtright

Kling was very concerned about getting participation in a community. As part of his work he discussed three concepts: incentive value, participation costs, exit costs. Talk about these three terms and the relations among them.
Where should one start when trying to build a community? Does one design for a community or does one create a community through design?
Define push and pull technologies and discuss the advantages of bringing each one into a designed space focused on stimulating a community?
Why are trust and reciprocity such important concepts with respect to building online communities?
Kling and Courtright contrasted two approaches to building online groups. What are they and what are the advantages and tradeoffs of each approach?
Kling contrasts claims that are aspirational with those that are empirically grounded. Why are aspirational claims problematic, especially with respect to designing for online community?

XI. Fang on Brown, Collins & Duguid

What are Brown, Collins and Duguid arguing when they say that learning and cognition are “fundamentally situated?” What is the point Brown, Collins and Duguid are trying to make when they argue for much of language being indexical?
Brown, Collins, & Duguid argue that learning is a process of enculturation. What does this mean?
Why do Brown et al argue that school culture “can be unintentionally antithetical to useful domain learning?
According to Brown et al what is the relationship among facts, situation, and generalization? What is your perspective?
Contrast indexical terms with descriptions and discuss the implications for pedagogy. Why do Brown et al claim that the latter are opaque while the former are virtually transparent?

XII. Hwan on Schwen and Hara

Do you think that the four case examples Schwen and Hara used are representative, illuminative, or idiosyncratic? What are two walkaways we can take from these examples?
Describe and discuss three of the cautionary notes that were advanced by Schwen and Hara. Also, do you think they are useful? Do you think there should be some additional cautionary notes that should be added?
Schwen and Hara advanced a design approach for developing communities of practice. Is this design approach different than those he critiques and how does it take into account his cautionary notes?
Do you resonate with the current enthusiasm that a CoP would be a compelling tool to support learning organizations? Is this enthusiasm overstepping empirical evidence?
Why is it important to differentiate “designing FOR online community” from “designing online community”? What is the designer’s role to create strong and healthy CoP?

XIII. Jackson (and Craig) on Bruckman

By moving to merit badges, is Bruckman replacing use value for exchange value? Or, said another way, substituting extrinsic motivation for intrinsic motivations?
Do we need specific operationalizations of “community,” or can we accept a broad, loose terminology? In other words, if we’re going to talk about activity, do we need to argue over value-laden, “hot” terms?
Is the participation at Moose Crossing indicative of voluntarily community participation or is something to be fixed?
In a voluntary participation environment, what counts as success? Does it make sense in these contexts to add achievement structures, especially when one reflects on this in terms of Bartle’s schema?

XIV. Tardy on Steinkhueler

Is game play and participation in the context of lineage substantive? Is playing lineage a meaningful part of individual’s development as citizens?
Is lineage an online community?
Why is it important to be studying lineage? What are some of the things are going on there?

XV. Scott on Squire and Steinkhueler

Bartle developed a taxonomy that seemed useful for understanding Starwars Galaxies. Is Bartle’s taxonomy useful to individuals involved in designing for virtual communities in the service of learning?
Using Bartle’s taxonomy, contrast two different online communities?
Does the existence of a game culture make it a community of practice?