Week 9: Communities of practice

1st August 2021

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The importance of communities of practice

Communities of practice (CoPs) is defined as a group of people from various backgrounds that engage, share ideas and gain knowledge. The importance of being part of a community is to stay connected and build skills that help with your professional development.

People create local and global connections and learn from each other. The process is about “thinking together” (Pyrko et al., 2017). Wenger explains practice is a “set of frameworks” "and tools" (Wenger et al., 2002), which has three elements: Mutual engagement, joint enterprise and shared repertoire (Wenger, 1998). Mutual engagement is a community of people who come together to do something. The joint enterprises are real-life issues and topics that people care about. The shared repertoire is the creation of artefacts that are made to solve issues.

The CoP is a social process of learning by engaging with people with similar interests as you. When you are part of a community, you can find solutions to problems, share resources, socialise and network, helping you to become a better competent practitioner.

Examples of communities of practice

The Maker movement is a community of people who share similar interests and collaborate. It is based on a DIY culture creating and tinkering with digital fabrication technologies. Makers inspire each other by sharing ideas by crafting and using tools to create solutions to solve individual needs and environmental issues simultaneously (Unterfrauner et al., 2019).

The open-source community is an open and free software for everyone. It has free code, designs and anything you can use in your work or modify. The learning is not limited to open-source software like in classrooms (Ellis, 2021). To get involved, you need to find a community that interests you. Ellis discusses the best method of approaching communities and emphasises that research and reading are recommended before communicating with members.

Stack Overflow is a public platform for developers to share and learn code about software development. It is a global community that assist developers by allowing them to ask questions and answer them to help other people. It is also a great source of reference to look for solutions in your code. When I was an undergrad at University, I had a few modules that involved programming languages such as Java, Javascript and PHP. It was very new to me and I used Stack Overflow to solve code issues. It was very reliable. I remember it was a safe and supportive space for developers to come together.

My community experience

As a Senior Marketing Designer, I am part of a Marketing team of approximately 17 people. Although my colleagues and I have different skills and roles, we share similar goals of working in the Marketing team in the same company. There is a strong teamwork ethic and environment and opportunities to discuss and share ideas in a safe place.

Starting the MA User Experience design, I met a lot of other students on a similar path. We have different experiences and career goals but, we share similar interests in UX design. In this community, we connect and engage through the Falmouth forums, webinars and Discord communication channels. It is nice to listen and read other students' work and opinions. I have learnt a lot in this Masters and will continue to participate in this community to build skills in my professional development in UX design.

I have not attended UX conferences, but I look forward to experiencing them soon to gain further knowledge in the industry.

References

Pyrko, I., Dörfler, V., and Eden, C. 2017. Thinking together: What makes Communities of Practice work?. Human Relations, [online] 70(4), pp.389-409. Available at: <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0018726716661040> [Accessed 30 July 2021].

Wenger, E., McDermott R., and Snyder W.M. 2002. Cultivating Communities of Practice. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Wenger, E. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Parker, A. 2021. Communities of practice. [online] Available at: <https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/912/pages/week-9-researching-communities-of-practice?module_item_id=54138> [Accessed 30 July 2021].

Unterfrauner, E., Shao, J., Hofer, M., and Fabian, C. 2019. The environmental value and impact of the Maker movement—Insights from a cross‐case analysis of European maker initiatives. Business Strategy and the Environment, [online] 28(8), pp.1518-1533. Available at: <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bse.2328> [Accessed 30 July 2021].

Ellis, H. 2021. Open Source Communities. [online] Available at: <https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/912/pages/week-9-heidi-ellis-on-open-source-communities?module_item_id=54141> [Accessed 30 July 2021].

Images

Lopez, H. 2017. Four persons wrap hands around each other. [image] Available at: <https://unsplash.com/photos/PGnqT0rXWLs> [Accessed 30 July 2021].