“Keeping up with the literature” is a constant, often challenging activity for those of us committed to evidence-based practice—that notion that current valid evidence must support clinical decisions. This poster abstract, presented at the AABB 2009 conference, offers one solution.

For the past two years, I’ve been conducting workshops exploring how web-based tools can support research and teaching activities in transfusion science. In each session, I asked participants to contribute custom PubMed search queries, which were negotiated and refined until they captured the interests of the whole group. These queries were converted into RSS feeds, compiled into a reading list and published online. You can view all these feeds in the Transfusion Reading List, which is periodically updated with new feeds. This way, anyone outside the workshop is able to download and modify the feeds to meet their own learning needs, and resubmit them to the List if they wish.

This poster explains the learning theory behind why this works so well if you want to stay up to date. No one person can generate all the analysis, debate, context and interpretation needed to create useful evidence. The interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of transfusion medicine makes the task of finding relevant knowledge especially daunting. Engagement is the critical point where community and individual information needs intersect. A collaborative transfusion reading list offers a simple structure and process that supports members’ engagement with information and each other.

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Using Web-Based Tools to Stay Current originally appeared on Portable Learner on November 14th, 2009

Many of the ways we conceive of learning is based on the assumption that it is something that individuals do to acquire some form of knowledge. The significance of communities of practice is that it is based on a social view of learning, process of acculturation into a network of social relationships. In this view of learning, there is no distinction between learning and social participation (Wenger, 1998).

Trenton (2002) conveniently summarizes the assumptions taken by a communities of practice approach:

• Learning is fundamentally a social phenomenon.
• Knowledge is integrated in the life of communities that share values, beliefs, languages, and ways of doing things.
• The process of learning and the process of membership in a community of practice are inseparable.
• Knowledge is inseparable from practice.
• Empowerment — the ability to contribute to a community — creates the potential for learning.

Despite the common assumptions, the term, communities of practice, is used inconsistently. Wenger, who with Lave originally coined the term, defines a CoP as a special type of community where practice is a source of the coherence of a community:

a community of practice is not just a Web site, a database, or a collection of best practices. It is a group of people who interact, learn together, build relationships, and in the process develop a sense of belonging and mutual commitment. Having others who share your overall view of the domain and yet bring their individual perspectives on any given problem creates a social learning system that goes beyond the sum of its parts.

Wenger (1998) says a community of practice defines itself along three dimensions:

• What it is about?–It’s a joint enterprise, continuously negotiated by its members, which defines significance, shapes practices, and develops into community standards of practice. This process creates more than “just a stated goal, but creates among participants relations of mutual accountability that become an integral part of the practice” (Wenger, 1998, p. 78).
• How does it function?–Mutual engagement binds members together. By sharing ideas and stories as they work, have lunch, or socialize outside of work, they also share and enact knowledge. Mutual engagement describes relationships grounded in mutual interest, not just in information exchange, networking, or interaction.
• What capability has it produced?–Members develop a shared repertoire of communal resources (for example, routines, sensibilities, artefacts, vocabulary, styles) over time.

Since Wenger, other researchers have offered similar definitions communities of practice. For example:

Communities-of-practice are informal networks that support professional practitioners to develop a shared meaning and engage in knowledge building among the members.

Barab and Duffy (2000) suggest that CoPs have three main characteristics:

• a common cultural and historical heritage, including shared goals, negotiated meanings, and practices;
• individuals becoming a part of something larger; and
• the ability to reproduce as new members work alongside more competent others.

See also: cognitive apprenticeship; situated learning; anchored instruction

Reading List

• To read
• Recommended
• You have better things to do

Communities of Practice originally appeared on Portable Learner on January 12th, 2007