Neil [see note below] notified us a little while ago of this article: Evans, C, Yeung, E, Markoulakis, R and Guilcher, S (2014) An Online Community of Practice to Support Evidence-Based Physiotherapy Practice in Manual Therapy, Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, Volume 34, Issue 4, pages 215?223.

I read it and thought I’d share some ideas. The premise of the example is quite simple: to describe the design features of an online CoP as a continuing education strategy and to explore how the community promoted the creation and sharing of new knowledge in evidence-based manual therapy using Wenger’s constructs of mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire as a theoretical framework.

Mutual engagement, joint enterprise and shared repertoire are fundamental but also quite simple:

Mutual engagement refers to membership in a community in which participants, with their unique identities and diverse specializations, draw on each other and are engaged in doing things together.

Joint enterprise is the practices of the community, defined as the result of a collective process of negotiation.

Shared repertoire includes tools, routine, stories, jargon, shortcuts, or any resource that may be used over time in a shared pursuit to negotiate meaning.

They created a ten week course on using research evidence in practice and recruited Canadian physiotherapists all of whom had at least ten years experience. There were weekly activities and debates, and three assignments – carrying out an online search, critical appraisal, and writing a review for publication. The course appears to have been very successful; participants were active and gave good reports afterwards.

The authors argue that the course was in fact a community of practice, and provide evidence to show that it meets all the standard criteria as a learning CoP. It was also clear that this worked in an online format (using the Blackboard learning management system). The activity and the results of the course are convincingly analysed, using a very solid theoretical framework.

But I think the article is perhaps less value than it might sound. The authors conclude:

“Lessons for Practice

– Continuing education courses founded on community of practice principles can provide opportunities for collaborative, interactive learning.

– Participants in an online community of practice can share and create knowledge related to their practice through mutual engagement in shared endeavours.

– Design features such as guiding questions, instructor facilitation, and collaborative assignments help to create active, sustained participation in a fully online course.”

But they had ideal circumstances for the course to succeed: the best kind of participants, experienced professionals, used to consultative practices. And they note themselves that they have no idea if the connections created in this temporary CoP were continued after the course ended. (That goes under the heading of further research needed.)

I think we knew that such courses can succeed, but I am looking for a lot more than that. A CoP has to be ongoing. It might well start with a course that captures the imagination of a bunch of professionals or technicians, but there needs to be a platform for the connections made to continue afterwards. (The authors do not say whether the Blackboard platform remained available for the participants after the course finished. Knowing what universities are like these days, that seems unlikely.) The CoP structure and technology also need to be dynamic to encompass the dynamic requirements of the membership – it is a community, an organic thing – and it will ebb and flow in unpredictable ways. We need to be looking at experiments which deal with much less defined boundaries than a ten week course to find out how best to share knowledge on a continuous basis. [*see note below]

HIFA profile: Rob Parsons is a Healthcare Technology Management Consultant at Health Partners International, UK. Professional interests: Healthcare technology management, open source software, knowledge management, social media, open educational resources. robsub AT ariadne.org.uk

[*Note from HIFA moderator (Neil PW): HIFA itself is a Community of Practice on the Dgroups platform, which has more than 700 active CoPs supported by international development organisations. HIFA was evaluated in 2011 and the report identifies markers of success and recommendations for improvement (which we have only partially been able too implement, due to lack of resources). As Coordinator of HIFA and current Chair of the Dgroups Foundation, I would welcome expressions of interest from researchers who would like to undertake further research on HIFA and/or Dgroups.]