This week’s readings lead us to shape our discussion about the relationship between building communities and the role of conversations. The introduction to Cluetrain Manifesto (CM) provided a strong outlook as to how natural human conversations are shaping the markets (instead of the other way around) and shifting in business trends as consumers, employees and people are breaking down the “power structures and senseless bureaucracies”. When companies open themselves to these conversations and look at these new marketplaces, they will start to look at problem solving differently. “The World Wide Web reinforces freedom. The Internet routes around obstacles”. Yet, many companies “fear these changes, seeing in them only a devastating loss of control”. The CM provides forewarning to corporations to shift and pay heed to how they can benefit from these conversations to better serve the new markets. We look forward to further readings from the manifesto as we look at community building and the relationship to social, economic and education concerns.
Wenger’s article on communities of practices is relevant to the discussion of human interactions and world change. As people continually relate together in a shared practice, they form a community of practice. These practices include but are not limited to common language, tools, rules, implicit relations, perceptions, and world views. One purpose or result of a community of practice is to create/discover meaning. Meaning is derived from both historical roots (what a thing has traditionally meant) and new, living, in-the-moment roots (what it means right now). Wenger uses the phrase “negotiation of meaning” to connote the idea of human participation in finding meaning as well as the idea of deliberate effort and readjustment. But it is not only the human agent who contributes to creating/finding meaning. The object or situation itself contributes meaning, too.
This is why Wenger develops two sides of the meaning coin: participation and reification. Participation is what people mutually bring to a situation to ascribe it meaning. It involves all sorts of relations, bad and good. Participation transforms individual contributors, but it also transforms the community as a whole. Reification, on the other hand, is the meaning given to our situations and experiences through the formation of a single representation. Reification can simplify activities, but it can also be taken too literally. Both reification and participation exist in any situation in which communities of practice try to discover meaning, and they compensate for each others’ weaknesses.
This week, in order to enhance the conversation of our team’s postings we have included three videos that touch upon the social media revolution of the web and the impact on community building. The content of these videos also touch upon identity and language which have been relevant in shaping our discussions for the past few weeks.
Social Media Revolution
Did you know 2.0
Communities of Practice
NICOLE ROSE OLCESE says
I appreciate the videos you posted pertaining to community for this week’s reading! I think that the Did You Know videos do a nice job of conveying our reliance on and the importance of technological tools. Have you seen the Did You Know 4.0 version? It goes even further to establish the affects of social networking and digital media. I’m not sure how to embed it, so here is the link:
Wenger also addresses the impact of digital communities early in Communities of Practice. “Across a worldwide web of computers, people congregate in virtual spaces and develop shared ways of pursuing their common interests” (p. 6-7). The impact of social networking is much larger than just allowing friends to keep in touch or gamers to collaborate – it is shaping digital and nondigital communities and institutions. Its affect on the political realm becomes clear as we see the effects that Twitter had on dispersing info concerning the recent Iranian presidential election debacle or how blogging contributed to Obama’s campaign fundraising. A discussion of reification and participation seems to organically follow. What is the impact of digital tools on our communities of practice? Are communities of practice broadening with digital technology? Are the terms of participation in communities becoming broader? Is reification increasing out of necessity?
Michelle Pasterick says
There were some really interesting pieces of information in the Social Media Revolution video, but, for me, the video provided a good reminder of the need to question and think critically about things that I see/read, whether in print, on television, or online (a vital skill for us to teach our students, too!).
One thing that stood out to me in the video was the following quote: “2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students outperformed those receiving face-to-face instruction” I questioned whether this piece of data was taken out of context or not, so I did some searching to find out what the study had actually found. Based on the Department of Ed press release regarding the study (found at http://www2.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2009/06/06262009.html ) it apparently did find (through meta-analysis of studies carried out between 1996 and 2008) that online instruction was more effective than face-to-face instruction, though the ways in which it was more effective and the criteria for determining effectiveness were not entirely clear.
What actually seemed to be more beneficial for students, though, according to the study, was a combination of online and face-to-face instruction. This, of course, is what we have been talking/thinking/reading about throughout this course. So, there is some “scientific” data to back up the idea of integrating technology in the classroom. Great- not a big surprise there- but questions persist: How do we do this fruitfully/effectively? Which technologies do we use? How can we avoid simply using technology as a new way to do the same old things?, etc. Having the opportunity to think about these issues in the setting we are in now is really interesting. We, as students, are reaping the benefits of using both online resources and face-to-face instruction. This relates to our discussion of open content and whether we really need to go to a physical space to have the benefits of participating in a course. Would we be getting as much out of the course if we only did it online? Personally, I don’t think I would be, but everyone does learn differently.
It should be noted that the press release states that the results of the study cannot really be generalized to the K-12 setting because the data that was looked at was based on research done in higher ed and professional development-type settings.
If anyone is interested, the full report (which I did not read- it’s 158 pages) is available at http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html#edtech.
AARON D BILBY says
I really enjoyed the Did you know? 2.0 version and agree with Nicole the 4.0 version goes further to explain the impacts of social networking. Both videos are powerful videos and do a wonderful job at explaining where we have been and where we are going with respect to technology, social networking, employment and even the status of the world as a whole. I like the quotes “The World Wide Web reinforces freedom. The Internet routes around obstacles”. Yet, many companies “fear these changes, seeing in them only a devastating loss of control.” Part of me wants to know why companies would fear the Internet and the WWW? One would think that the WWW would further enhance the ways companies talk to the world and would have nothing but positive effects on the company. One can argue the WWW could have negative effects on the company should something negative about the company come out. The negative aspect about the company could be spread fairly rapidly amongst the WWW community, but I believe that if companies can remain loyal to everyone there should be no fear of something like this happening.
Brad Kozlek says
You talk about the connection of conversations and community. Is it possible to have conversations when each community ascribes different meaning to various abstract concepts? For example, in this class, we are spending a great deal of time and effort to trying to come up with a common understanding of community. We are able to use the word “community” with each other and understand a rather specific meaning of the word. Do we sound inhuman (cluetrain’s sense of lacking a human voice) to those outside the community? Would someone be able to participate in our community without sharing in our meanings?
TRACY THOMPSON says
Brad brings up an interesting point about meaning. I have to wonder if we’re not so much coming up with a common understanding of community as we are negotiating meaning… what does community mean to each one of us individually and as a group. I would guess that my perspective on community is at this point different from others in the class, and may remain different after the course ends. I frame and shape my understanding of community through readings and communications in this class, but also those experiences external to class that I may not share with members of this community.
Which then leads me to wonder if a person is a “full” member of a community if they do not contribute everything they can to its goal/knowledge base. I would initially argue that one can be a member without participating fully. But if the community has more members who are consuming than producing, is it successful? What’s a good balance? Does it depend on the goal of the community? I haven’t thought that one through completely… just putting it out there for now.
YUNJEONG CHUNG says
The question Tracy raised is really interesting to me: can one be a member without participating fully. If we relate the same question to classroom settings, can we say students who are not actively participate in class is not a member of a class? It is clearly true that people construct communities by communicating and negotiating meanings among others. As Wenger says, participation is needed when negotiating meanings, but how participation looks like? Is there a specific norms about the way people participate in a community? If so, and if one wants to have his/her own way of participation, would the one be excluded from the community by others?
SCOTT P MCDONALD says
I think the question of the relationship between communication and community (Gee might refer to discourses) is important. Does all communication create community?
Extending this is the question of shared language (or definitions). Can you hold an unshared (at least with someone) definition of something. Isn’t the nature of language to be as a mode of communication to another person. Negotiating meaning is the foundation of a community as it is the foundation of the discourse.
And thus, on to “full” membership. Is this defined by a clear set of activities, in other words are all full members of a community full members in the same way? Do the contribute the same types of things or play the same types of roles? It would seem not, so what defines being a full member? How is that connected back to the idea of communication and shared meaning?
MATTHEW J HEFFRON says
I think the video did a great job of showing the effects of social networking. I also noticed the same part as Michelle about online students outperforming face to face instruction. This is an interesting claim because I always wonder if this is where we are heading. I hope not because we will lose out on valuable face to face interaction.
LI-CHUN WANG says
The facts or numbers mentioned in the videos are not striking to me since I have known that before I took this course. However, much of the information is regarded of social networking. This is still my concern that how we could integrate these social media into learning and is not doing something old with something new. This topic has been discussed several times in our class blog and I think we are still probing it.
I was also surprised as Michelle at the description that online students outperforming face-to-face instruction. I haven’t read the report Michelle provides. This remark is interesting is I seldom heard a remark saying online students outperform students with face-to-face instruction. I doubt if the finding could be generalized.
The question Tracy raised here is interesting but I am thinking how we can define “full member?” Does it have something to do with identity or membership? I cannot think of a definition of full members myself. But I think members of less active participation in term of not being involved in activities they are supposed to participation, they are members of the community. Probably they have looser connection to the community. As for determining whether a community is successful, I am hesitate to say if we can judge that. I can imagine a class blog and we can judge whether there are quite a few postings and comments and say it is successful or not, but that is only one way to evaluate. It’s really hard to tell its success for me.