Currently, numerous educators and policy makers are advocating for a move away from “teacher-centered” models and towards more “learner-centered” and “community-based” models. However, at present the word community is at risk of losing its meaning. We have little appreciation and criteria for distinguishing between a community of learners and a group of students learning collaboratively (Barab & Duffy, 2000; Grossman, Wineburg, & Woolworth, 2000; Wineburg & Grossman, 1998). Given the proliferation of terms such as “communities of learners,” “discourse communities,” learning communities,” “knowledge-building communities,” “school communities,” and “communities of practice,” it is clear that,

… community has become an obligatory appendage to every educational innovation. Yet aside from linguistic kinship, it is not clear what features, if any, are shared across terms. This confusion is most pronounced in the ubiquitous ‘virtual community,’ where, by paying a fee or typing a password, anyone who visits a web site automatically becomes a “member” of the community…Groups of people become community, or so it would seem, by the flourish of a researcher’s pen. (Grossman, Wineburg, & Woolworth, 2000, p. 2, italics in original)

In addition to not having clear criteria in terms of what does and does not constitute community, we also know little about the educational value of employing a community model for supporting learning. While many of us are concerned with the loss of communal spaces and ties that broaden one’s sense of self beyond the “me” or “I” and into the “we” and “us” (Putnam, 1995), less clear are the educational advantages of a community approach in terms of learning curricular content. We know even less about whether something resembling community can be designed, and how to measure whether it has emerged. This is glaringly apparent in terms of virtual communities where designers are employing usability strategies to develop innovative designs that are usable, but have not adequately taken into account issues of sociability—that is, how does the design make links to and support people’s social interactions, focusing on issues of trust, time, value, collaboration, and gatekeeping (Preece, 2000). Regardless, there is a virtual explosion of efforts to create online learning environments to supplement or replace traditional modes and even institutions of learning—of which this book proposal is but one example.

Developing an online forum is not very difficult. Almost any “off the shelf” LISTERV or web-based conferencing system can provide an adequate underlying technology. However, attracting a group of people to the forum who will form a community is a considerable accomplishment. It is common for many people to visit and leave without posting messages, for many others to stay and only read public messages (lurking). Further, when on-line discussions are unmoderated, some debates can be transformed into hostile ‘flame wars” that all too easily spiral out of control. Nonetheless, there are many examples of sustained civil on-line groups. Some of them have important communal dimensions.

As more and more of these on-line communities are being designed we must ask in increasingly sophisticated form whether they are succeeding and what exactly they are accomplishing. Some of the central questions that I am examining include: What constitutes community? How do these electronic environments relate to more familiar place-based pedagogical ones? How well do the techniques and constructs that are used to understand the processes of learning and enculturation in traditional face-to-face community settings suffice for these new settings? What is the educational value of a community approach to learning? How do we capture and what are the relations among individual, group, and community trajectories?

Based on a review of the literature we define a CoP as a persistent, sustained social network of individuals who share and develop an overlapping knowledge base, set of beliefs, values, history and experiences focused on a common practice and/or mutual enterprise. CoPs have histories, cultural identities, interdependence among members, and mechanisms for reproduction (Lave & Wenger, 1991). More specifically, CoPs have the following four characteristics: (1) shared knowledge, values, and beliefs; (2) overlapping histories among members; (3) mutual interdependence; and (4) mechanisms for reproduction. Much like a living organism, they are self-organizing, and cannot be designed prima facae. They grow, evolve, and change dynamically, transcending any particular member and outliving any particular task.

Sasha Barab & Thomas Duffy (2000). From Practice Fields to Communities of Practice.

Sasha Barab, Jim MaKinster, Julie Moore, & The ILF Design Team. (in press). Designing and Building an Online Community: The Struggle to Support Sociability in the Inquiry Learning Forum.

Sasha Barab, Jim MaKinster, & Rebecca Scheckler. (in press). Designing System Dualities: Building Online Community.