As we start to dive into Communities of Practice, our group dissected the relationship between brick and mortar higher education and online higher education. As Ford said in “The Web Is A Customer Service Medium”, “the web is not just some kind of magic all-absorbing meta-medium. It’s its own thing.” Does this purport that online education is different from brick and mortar education? In the following two assertions, we will propose both sides of the argument. #1 will assume that both an online and brick and mortar education are the same. #2 will assume that they are different.
Argument #1: Higher education is all the same. There is minimal difference between brick and mortar and online.
- Online education is a type of boundary interaction with higher education at the core, with technology and business communities of practice as overlapping communities of practice.
- Existing as a practice within the confines of higher education’s larger community does not mean it will remain as such. As Wenger states “engineers of a supplier company and engineers of a customer company may over time create a COP that reflects deep working relations and creates an indispensable bridge between their respective practices – and between the organizations to the point of blurring allegiances (p.114).”
- Should this process occur, the online education community of practice would break away and start to exhibit the characteristics of argument #1, separate from the brick and mortar versions of higher education. Wenger cautions against this: “becoming a community of practice in its own right is a risk of boundary practices that may thwart their roles in creating connections – but this risk is also their potential.”
Argument #2: Brick and mortar higher education is NOT the same as online higher education.
- Higher education is one big community of practice that includes two smaller communities of practice within it: 1) the brick and mortar COP and 2) the online COP. In this scenario, you have brokers (students taking classes online and face-to-face or teachers teaching both types of classes) and boundary objects; the Penn State name, books used for the same classes, etc. These participants broker between the two communities to complete explicitly separate practices who rely on each other.
- The online community of practice (COP) and brick and mortar COP are two overlapping sub-communities within the higher education COP.
- Wegner discusses an “overlap” as a “practiced-based connection” (p. 115) stating this “does not require a specific boundary enterprise, but is provided by a direct and sustained overlap between two practices.” Wenger is specifically referencing two types of employees within the Alinsu community of practice, claims processors and claims technicians. Each exist in their own communities of practice with other processors and technicians respectively, but their interactions as delegations create a boundary interaction much the way that the institutional name (like Penn State for World Campus) or professors who teach both face to face (f2f) and online courses would interact with both, but separate communities of practice.
- The experience you get from each type of higher education can be quite different from one another. Where students identify themselves- as students in general or online students specifically, will help to direct in which community of practice they participate.
Brought to you by The Disruptors: Dean, Katie, and Zach
Brandon says
I like the illustrations. Here’s a thought: what if higher ed is not one big community of practice with two smaller ones within it, but rather we’re seeing two communities with overlap that is not essentially necessary, but rather coincidental? When reading Christensen, I was getting images of brick and mortar institutions truly splitting off from the prospect of producing anything other than academics, with aspiring professionals attending completely separate institutions. I don’t know if anyone has read Stephenson’s Anathem (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem) or Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game), but I can imagine a world where these two communities don’t overlap at all. Here’s another question: we mostly focus on online education’s ability to produce job-ready graduates, but is it capable of producing academics?
Isaac Jason Bretz says
I would prefer a hybrid model, where assessments and lectures are done online, but students still meet F2F for discussions and group projects. Note: this model is rarely implemented, probably because it costs more than either strategy alone.
Katie Bateman says
@Isaac- Not sure how universal it is, but the concept you describe is essentially the concept of a “flipped classroom” that is certainly buzzing in the 7-12 education realm. I had a teacher pilot it in my school last year for biology remediation classes with little success. However, it wasn’t cost (she would have 30 kids either way, but never 500) but the limited technology access and lack of motivation, and quite possibly the lack of understanding by the students about the model she was using. She was clearly creating unique communities of practice for those high school students, but they did not change the identity they assigned themselves as type of learner.
Zach Lonsinger says
@Isaac – Why would this model cost so much more? I guess I don’t understand where the extra costs would be coming from. This is the layout of how Design Studio (LDT 550 at Penn State) is laid out essentially. We would have our readings and assignment out of class and then we would meet f2f for discussion and group projects. Not much is changing other than you are putting more of the responsibility of learning onto the learner and as @Katie mentions, it is difficult to motivate students in this model.
Adam says
Following the example, I’m not sure online and F2F are really overlapping. In the example, you had two distinct communities that did two different things, technicians and processors, that happened to work in the same area and on the same claims. With higher ed, we have two distinct communities that do the same thing through different means. I’m not sure if this is Wenger style overlap or not. Thoughts?
Audrey Romano says
Like Issac, Katie, and Zach mentioned, the flipped classroom seems like a better way to take advantage of the strengths of both F2F and online methods. However, I’m with Katie in that I think it only really works with smaller groups. Much like we are broken up into teams of 4 and then come together online and in the classroom to discuss the material, it would be hard to scale (and I assume, to assess) at the MOOC level of students.
Leah Bug says
I thought it interesting that you choose to argue both sides of an issue, which was great as it made me think about what I thought. So I’m a bit curious as to which argument you believe, is it the first or the second? Does that mean one can take Wenger’s ideas of community to use in either argument as evidence which makes them both correct?
I think it’s also interesting to think of CoP at different scales: a classroom level, a cohort level, a department level, a college level, and so on. How are there similarities and differences among them and can they be made without gross generalizations?
Priscilla Taylor says
You mention the idea of identity within a community of practice; in this case, higher education. Wenger talks about identity as the way that learning changes us and how our reconceptualization of learning takes into account how an individual engages in and contributes to a community of practice. Applying this to identities in higher education could mean that a student that identifies themselves as a member of an online learning COP will consider the online learning experience one that changes who they are and the online student community as one they are willing to contribute to and actively engage in. The same can be said for those who identify as part of the brick and mortar COP. This applies if one accepts the second argument that brick and mortar programs and online programs are different.
pul121 says
In your argument, I agree that community of practice is able to be developed both in face to face classrooms and online environments. However, in order for the community of practice to be formed it is challenging to include all the elements and make it work. The overlapping of online education and classroom education is only possible if there are brokers and boundary objects have a role to play. As a result, learners both engage in classroom education and online education in different institutions can also be brokers to connect two CoPs. What do you think?
Koun says
I liked the issue you brought up: the difference between the online community of practice and brick and mortar community of practice. I’d like to tackle on one very basic, but still confusing concept for me, which is the use of terminology between the Community and the Community of Practice (CoP). In your post, I would say that the online community (instead of CoP) and brick and mortar community are sub communities within the higher education, but not necessarily overlap, and this two communities have overlapping CoP even though the two communities might not have any direct connections or interactions. I wanted to share my concern of selecting the right concept, and ask your opinion.
Dean says
Koun, that is one of the topics that we were discussing in our smaller group. How does Wenger distinguish between different CoPs in the same organization? Can there be overarching sets of CoPs, and subsets of CoPs as well? We were doing our best to grapple with that one, for sure.
Michael Sean Banales says
It’s interesting to consider whether these communities are separate or perhaps overlapping in a way. Could it perhaps be argued that we are currently developing exactly that area right now? Online education is still being largely shaped now. Some people have mentioned that some classes are indeed being developed as an overlap between the two, but I wonder if even this can truly be considered “online education” as we have understood it thus far where the online piece is merely being integrated as a piece of the traditional brick and mortar school. It feels as if this is maybe another community of practice being developed with a great amount of overlap between online and brick and mortar education. Or perhaps the overlap between the types of education on a traditional venn diagram results in this hybrid?