Community Values

Values of Online Learning Communities

Technology cannot replace all other community connections, but it can provide some continuity and conveniences:

• Access to Peers
• Connections to external experts
• Ongoing News
• Announcements of external events
• Links to other sites
• Library of references

The value of belonging to a community derives not only from having access to peers, but also from having access to leading-edge, broader trends and perspectives:

• What is happening
• What is hot in the field
• New developments, new tools, new technologies
• Evaluation and reviews
• External experts
• Reference material

Potential long-term community values:

• Define common methods and processes or “best practices”
• Produce and store artifacts, tools, documents
• Maintain the knowledge base to keep it up to date and usable
• Learning agenda: a community can take charge of its practice and agree on a list of areas to develop
• Practice-building projects: mature communities often generate project teams to work on specific practice-development tasks on their learning agenda, such as developing a template, a tool, or a manual

Learning Communities and Personal Development

Personal development is a key benefit of belonging to and participating in a community. Members bring their identities to the community and their participation both develops and shapes their identities including:

• Personal passions
• Competence/Areas of specialization
• Reputation/assessment/rewards
• Various roles people play in the community
• Professional connections
• Peer interactions
• Personal relationships
• Trust
• Helping, mentoring, teaching
• Mutual give and take
• Finding a voice/sharing expertise

An online community can offer multiple ways for an individual to create and share an online identity including:

• Profiles
• Community role identification
• Synchronizing profiles across communities, with multiple views
• Reputation and ranking
• Preferences
• Personal history
• Private places