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Communities of Practice and Virtual Learning Communities – An Exploratory Study

Sushil K. Sharma, Reima Suomi, Rui Chen, Jeff Zhang, Communities of Practice and Virtual Learning Communities – An Exploratory Study. In: Proceedings of the Sixth Midwest Association for Information Systems Conference, Omaha, NE May 20-21, 2011, Paper 20, AIS Midwest, 2012.

Abstract:

The use of new information and communication tools such as; Web 2.0, social networks, wikis, blogs continues to grow for learning in higher education. More and more instructors worldwide have already started incorporating these tools for their course delivery and pedagogy. The growing literature suggests that virtual communities of practice (CoPs) and virtual learning communities (VLCs) are becoming common for collaboration and sharing resources due to the emergence of Web 2.0 tools and other social networks within higher education institutions. This exploratory study examines the existence of such communities of practice or learning communities in higher education particularly among business school instructors. The data is collected through phone and e-mail interviews with academic staff. The preliminary findings suggest that business schools professors have still not become part of CoPs and VLCs.

BibTeX entry:

@INPROCEEDINGS{inpShSuChZh12a,
  title = {Communities of Practice and Virtual Learning Communities – An Exploratory Study},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Sixth Midwest Association for Information Systems Conference, Omaha, NE May 20-21, 2011},
  author = {Sharma, Sushil K. and Suomi, Reima and Chen, Rui and Zhang, Jeff},
  publisher = {AIS Midwest},
  pages = {Paper 20},
  year = {2012},
  keywords = {Communities of practice (CoP), virtual learning communities (VLCs), communities, higher education, online},
}

Belongs to TUCS Research Unit(s): Network Economics Institute

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