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An Online Community of Practice (OCoP), also known as a Virtual Community of Practice (VCoP), is a Community of Practice (CoP) that is developed on, and is maintained using the Internet. To qualify as an OCoP, the characteristics of a Community in Practice (CoP) as described by Lave and Wenger must be met. To this end, an OCoP must include active members who are practitioners, or “experts,” in the specific domain of interest. Members must participate in a process of collective learning within their domain.〔Wenger, E. (2007). Communities of practice: A brief introduction. Retrieved October 5th, 2010, from http://www.ewenger.com/theory/〕 Additionally, social structures must be created within the community to assist in knowledge creation and sharing. Knowledge must be shared and meaning negotiated within an appropriate context. Community members must learn through both instruction-based learning and group discourse. Finally, multiple dimensions must facilitate the long-term management of support as well as enable immediate synchronous interactions.〔Wenger, E. (2001). Supporting communities of practice: A survey of community-oriented technologies. Retrieved October 30, 2001 from http://www.ewenger.com/tech〕 To some a VCoP is a misnomer as the original concept of a CoP was based around situated learning in a co-located setting. However, with increasing globalization and the continued growth of the Internet many now claim that virtual CoPs do exist (e.g. Dubé, Bourhis & Jacob, 2005; Murillo, 2006; Zarb, 2006; Hara & Hew, 2007; Murillo, 2008). For example, some 〔(The Adult Literacy Education Wiki as a Virtual Community of Practice ) E. Jacobson ''in'' C. Kimble and P. Hildreth (eds). Communities of Practice: Creating Learning Environments for Educators. Charlotte NC, Information Age Publishing (2008)〕 claim that a wiki (such as wikipedia.org) is a virtual CoP (Bryant, Forte & Bruckman, 2005), others argue that the essence of a community is that it is place based - a community of place. There is also debate on the very term since the community is real though the form of communication is mostly, if not entirely, computer-mediated. Few believe that a community of practice may be formed without any face to face meetings whatsoever. In fact many leading CoP thinkers stress the importance of such meetings. However some researchers argue that a VCoP's high use of ICT, changes some of its characteristics and introduces new complexities and ambiguities, thus justifying the creation of the term and area of study (Kim, 2004; Zarb, 2006). Some of the other terms used have been (in chronological order) on-line , computer-mediated (Etzioni & Etzioni, 1999), electronic (Wasko & Faraj, 2000) and distributed (Hildreth, Kimble & Wright, 1998).〔(Computer Mediated Communications and Communities of Practice. ) Hildreth, Kimble & Wright, Proceedings of Ethicomp’98, (March 1998), Rotterdam, The Netherlands, pp. 275 - 286, (1998)〕 Wenger et al., 2002; Kimble & Hildreth, 2005.〔(Dualities, Distributed Communities of Practice and Knowledge Management ) Kimble & Hildreth, Journal of Knowledge Management, 9(4), 102 - 113. (2005)〕 As the mode of communication can involve face-to-face, telephone and letter, and the defining feature is its distributed nature. For a comparison between Virtual Learning Communities (VLCs) with Distributed Communities of Practice (DCoP), see Couros & Kesten (2003). Recent research has produced evidence that increases in the sharing of tacit knowledge, which is very much inherent within CoP theory, may take place, albeit to a lesser degree, in a VCoP scenario even though such systems make use of written word (Zarb, 2006). This is spurring interest in what is sometimes referred to as community-driven knowledge management or Community Based Knowledge Management, where CoP and VCoP theory is harnessed, nourished and supported within the broader organisational setting. == On-Line Communities of Practice == Communities of Practice like Sap’s SDN developer network, Adobe’s XMP forum, Sermo for physicians, or domain-specific corporate-internal communities such as those found at HP, revolve around people's professional or vocational needs for connections, information, identity, and sense of belonging. Communities of practice are about what people do for a living. They address the needs that people have which can not easily be satisfied with traditional resources such as broadcast media, formal publications, academia, and ''ad hoc'' associations or relationships. Online communities of practice run the gamut from forums, faqs, to email list serves. Offline communities of practice include user groups such as ASUG and eBay’s annual “Live” event. Communities of practice provide a critical resource to professionals who want and need recommendations, pointers, tips and tricks, best practices, insights and innovations. Part of what makes a community practice strong is the aggregation of relevance; that is, people and information related to a coherent set of topics which certain people will find interesting, useful, and potentially profitable. Communities of practice lift us up to support us, to help us achieve our aspirations, reach our goals, and to be of service. argue that virtual communities change the way we think of community and that technology stewardship is a key element of virtual communities of practice by making virtual communities independent of any one technology. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Virtual community of practice」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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