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