Posts tagged community of practice

MirandaNet: Summary of conditions for success

July 21, 2008 · Filed under Community case studies, Community cases, Research Findings, summary · Tagged , , , ,

There are many of the conditions for successful community development seen in the MirandaNet Fellowship story. I want to reiterate a few of the key strengths, the case study research revealed, that truly make this an exemplar community.

MirandaNet’s strengths over the years of development:

  • building true partnerships between academia, in-service educators and technology companies and vendors
  • holding an unrelenting focus on professionalism, respecting the practice of teaching with ICTs
  • clearly valuing the celebratory and social aspects of building social capital within educator groups
  • offering new professional roles for in-service school teachers (researcher, leader, presenter, collaborator, mentor)
  • sustaining a self-supporting infrastructure and financial model that brings activity to the members
  • the stratified community structure that scaffolds internal support, close relationships and capacity building
  • the contagious and unflagging energy, vision and leadership of the community director and founder supported by others who have stepped into leadership roles
  • the project-based nature of the community research activity – whether individual action research or community consultation people are doing more than talking together
  • the high profile the community, and its members, have attained in the field, educationally, politically,  and with technology providers.

The next week or so of blog posts will be offered by a number of community members beginning with the community director Christine Preston.  These posts will offer the most up-to-date insights into the community priorities, activities, and future. We will close this case study with a real time field trip to the community at the close of next week. Times and dates will be confirmed soon.

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MirandaNet: Introduction

July 10, 2008 · Filed under Community capers, Research Findings · Tagged , , , ,

The MirandaNet Fellowship is a community of UK and International educators, educational researchers, technology consultants focused on the domain of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in school education and in supporting action research best practices.

MirandaNet Homepage

MirandaNet Homepage

MirandaNet’s evolution began after the 1992 closure of the Toshiba sponsored Project Miranda at the London Computing Centre. The team of academics involved wanted a way to stay working and learning together about ICTs in schools and MirandaNet was born under the vision of its founder Christina Preston.

An ongoing stream of research, assessment, and demonstration projects over the years has provided a rich learning environment in this community. Projects have for instance explored the use of laptops, electronic whiteboards, web resources and e-facilitation in K-12 contexts. The Fellowship’s work has been funded through grants, tendered and sponsored action research projects, and industry partnerships. Core group members act as part of a professional consultative organization, where professionals talk, listen and collaborate with government, industry, teacher educators and researchers.

This is a structured community where those accepted for membership enter as MirandaNet Scholars. After making a clear contribution to the community through a personal workplace research project and publication, Scholars may be promoted to become Fellows. Fellows are the experienced inner circle of the community who offer mentorship and expertise back to the community.

The community membership has been supported by web and e-mail-based technology, as well as public and private web forums and more recently the community has adopted Web2.0 technologies and online live meeting facilities. Fellows, as a group and within geographical limits, have opportunity throughout the year for face-to-face interaction through the community workshops, seminars and MirandaNet presentations at related educational conferences.

A few things really set this community apart from many educational counterparts and may be testimony to its longevity and the very low attrition in membership over its nearly 16 years in existence. The next four posts will examine MirandaNet’s development through the lens of the four community components; people, common ties, social interaction, and place. And next week we will be joined by some amazing guest bloggers from the community, beginning with the Founder and Director Christina Preston, to give us insight into the current community activities and the value they derive from community engagement.

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Case study 1: The MirandaNet Fellowship

July 7, 2008 · Filed under Community capers, Research Findings · Tagged , , , , , , ,

Through this blog we will hear about communities from a number of perspectives. I will relate my research perspective, we will meet the community managers and members, take field trip to each community and have several opportunities to listen to you the audience open up issues and reflect on each community’s strength and value to the field.

The first community in this study will be the MirandaNet Fellowship

Over the month of July the case study will offer:

  1. A community case story on the blog (July 6-16)
  2. Guest blogging about activities/projects in the community by community members introduced by the community director Christina Preston (July 17-31)
  3. A guided field trip to the community space/s through Learning Times (one day week of July 20-26)
  4. A round table event in the Community Capers site in Second Life (one day week of July 27-31)
  5. Publication of a summary case resource on a wiki – acknowledging all who contributed over the month (July 31st)

Come join us over July to be inspired and to learn and support colleagues about the globe in their community development efforts.

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The conceptual framework for community development

June 21, 2008 · Filed under Research Findings, conceptual framework · Tagged , , , ,

This research outlines my conceptual framework built out from the four definitional components to include core conditions and key attributes. The framework was developed through open and axial coding of rich text data collected from multiple sources (interviews, observations, documents, web site audits, artifacts and published and promotional materials).

The convener is the one person most likely to have high levels of continuity and contact with members in roles right across the community and understand community infrastructure, activity, development and history.  Since the research was focussed on the management role in community development the key informants for this research became the community conveners. This blog and the collaborative activities planned to surround each case study are for me an unmissable opportunity to dynamically verify, moderate and challenge the findings by soliciting opinions and perspectives from a broader community membership. It will also be an opportunity to examine if and how these conditions may vary with time as communities have continued to mature and embrace new structures and technologies since the original research data was collected.

The three levels of the conceptual framework are components, conditions and attributes.

  • Components – definitional components of community
  • Conditions – the key issues arising for each component
  • Attributes – ways the issue was realised or addressed

For example:

  • Component: People
  • Condition: has leadership (parent) as a condition
  • Attribute: a passionate core group (child) was one observed attributes of successful leadership.

The four pages linked on this blog briefly outline the key findings for the four definitional components of community and what managers and conveners can do to support them. I want to introduce these now in preparation for our first in-depth review and community case study in July. Each case study will be chosen to exemplify, elucidate or broaden understanding of one of more of these core conditions.

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Welcome to Community Capers!

April 18, 2008 · Filed under Community capers · Tagged , ,

Community Capers is a place to showcase and case study some of the most successful online communities out there. Each month we will focus on an issue of community development and a community of practice that demonstrates a highly effective way to address that issue.

Each month we will:

  1. present a community case story
  2. hear from guest bloggers from the spotlighted community
  3. take a guided field trip to the community space
  4. sit in a round table conversation in the Community Capers Second Life site
  5. produce of a summary resource as a publication.

The first community will be introduced in June of 2008 and for the coming three weeks I will unpack some of the key findings of my research into successful community building in Internet-mediated Communities of practice (IMCoPs) as a background to our first capers.

Bronwyn Stuckey

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