History+of+on-line+CoPs

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﻿ "The idea of a community of practice originated in the 1980's at the Institute for Research on Learning" (Lai, Pratt, Anderson, Stigter, 2005, p.20). The actual term Communities of Practice (CoP) was coined in 1991 by Wenger and Lave "to describe an activity system that includes individuals who are united in action and in the meaning that action has for them and for the larger collective" (Ardichvili, Page, Wentling, 2003, p.65). ======

Hildreth and Kimble (2004) state that, Communities of Practice (CoPs) as a phenomenon have been around for many years but the term itself was not coined until 1991 when Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger used it in their exploration of Situated Learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991 in Hildreth & Kimble, 2004)). Situated learning is learning that takes place through working practices, for example, an apprenticeship where an employee learns skills "on the job".

"There has been a rapid growth of online communities in the last few years" (Lai, et al. 2005. p.26). Which means that more "people now participate in online communities to share their expertise, experiences and knowledge" (Lai, et al. 2005. p.26).

According to Lai, Pratt, Anderson, & Stitger on page 26 of their 2005 "Literature Review & Synthesis: Online Communities of Practice" The evolution of the Internet and Web technologies has - - impacted greatly on the way individual's communicate - greatly enhanced the development of communities online & - provided the opportunity for online communities of practice to facilitate the creation, refinement, sharing & use of knowledge effectively between individuals.

The learning that evolves from both Face-to-Face and Online Communities of Practice is collaborative, "in which the collaborative knowledge of the community is greater than any individual knowledge" (Johnson, 2001, p.46).