Preliminary Heuristics for the Design and Evaluation of Online Communities of Practice Systems
Quote: "Online communities...communities of practice...knowledge management...human capital. For some time now, companies have believed that they can be more effective-and more profitable-if they could only get their people to talk to each other and share what they know...To address this need, companies have built or bought knowledge management portals, tools for growing communities of practice, and other expensive, often complex software systems."
Comment: The article treats knowledge management and communities as being similar/same thing...which I think is the wrong view. Communities of practice are best left alone to grow on their own - give them tools (point 7 in the article: "A rich set of discussion tools, including support for dialog, negotiation, and collaborative problem-solving")...and let the users make and create connection. Communities are not knowledge management tools...the are knowledge creation...very different purposes for employees than the goals of managers. Managers would like employees to share their knowledge so it can be identified and put into a database...so that staff turnover doesn't impact the organization (there are other reasons - some positive, some negative - but this is often listed as the main one).
The management objective, however, is completely against the grain of what CoPs are...these are communities to connect with others in order to solve problems and grow. Trying to use communities as a tool to achieve purposes beyond it's natural role may kill their real value: connecting/sharing.
Update: Just reading OLDaily...Stephen is 100% on the mark with his comments: "So what should a proper - and original - article about learning communities in 2003 look like? It should shift the focus from an institutional environment to an individual's access to a set of services. It should discuss the creation of a distributed network of interacting knowledge workers (or knowledge seekers). It should talk about fostering a set of communication channels - such as email newsletters, aggregator websites, IM advice circles. It should address combining the roles of gaming, simulation, correspondance, commentary and assessment. It should emphasize the skill sets required in order to foster the creation of knowledge through a collaborative process."
Posted by gsiemens at January 20, 2003 4:34 PM