Tuesday, February 28, 2006
CoP - David Hung's Introduction
Dr Hung made a very spirited introduction to the session bringing in a lot of examples to support the principles of social constructivism and how different parts of the brains interact with each other to form meaning. The checker-board illusion example attracted most attention. The participations didn't believe their the mind trick at first till at the request of Joy, Dr Hung repeated the demonstration without the powerpoint animation.
Dr Hung went on to introduce his RSP model with which he explained the differences between social constructivism, cognitivism and behaviourism. He went on to argue how the formation of CoP can be explained by the RSP model.
He shared the essential components to a successful CoP, to which Dr Koh asked for my opinion whether these components are reflective of the "CoP" in the formation of the Temasek Academy. I can't remember what I have said, but really hope that I didn't rattle out rubbish.
From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_Practice):
CoP - The concept of a community of practice (often abbreviated as CoP) refers to the process of social learning that occurs when people who have a common interest in some subject or problem collaborate over an extended period to share ideas, find solutions, and build innovations.
The term was first used in 1991 by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger who used it in relation to situated learning as part of an attempt to "rethink learning" at the Institute for Research on Learning. In 1998, the theorist Etienne Wenger extended the concept and applied it to other contexts, including organizational settings. More recently Communities of Practice have become associated with knowledge management as people have begun to see them as ways of developing social capital, nurturing new knowledge, stimulating innovation or sharing existing tacit knowledge within an organization. It is now an accepted part of organizational development (OD).
Key CoP concepts are: periphery & core membership, participation, domain, practice, boundaries, reification, making meaning, legitimate peripheral participation.
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The creation and maintenance of participation in CoP that is truly beneficial to the organisation is not an easy process. Very often, when the core team (or even just 1 person) moves on, the CoP dies a natural death. Wenger himself advocates a natural "decline" of COPs. Dr Hung shared in general strategies required to maintain CoP which are quite logical and refreshing. It is interesting to see how these can be applied to ETD.
Dr Hung went on to introduce his RSP model with which he explained the differences between social constructivism, cognitivism and behaviourism. He went on to argue how the formation of CoP can be explained by the RSP model.
He shared the essential components to a successful CoP, to which Dr Koh asked for my opinion whether these components are reflective of the "CoP" in the formation of the Temasek Academy. I can't remember what I have said, but really hope that I didn't rattle out rubbish.
From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_Practice):
CoP - The concept of a community of practice (often abbreviated as CoP) refers to the process of social learning that occurs when people who have a common interest in some subject or problem collaborate over an extended period to share ideas, find solutions, and build innovations.
The term was first used in 1991 by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger who used it in relation to situated learning as part of an attempt to "rethink learning" at the Institute for Research on Learning. In 1998, the theorist Etienne Wenger extended the concept and applied it to other contexts, including organizational settings. More recently Communities of Practice have become associated with knowledge management as people have begun to see them as ways of developing social capital, nurturing new knowledge, stimulating innovation or sharing existing tacit knowledge within an organization. It is now an accepted part of organizational development (OD).
Key CoP concepts are: periphery & core membership, participation, domain, practice, boundaries, reification, making meaning, legitimate peripheral participation.
----------------------
The creation and maintenance of participation in CoP that is truly beneficial to the organisation is not an easy process. Very often, when the core team (or even just 1 person) moves on, the CoP dies a natural death. Wenger himself advocates a natural "decline" of COPs. Dr Hung shared in general strategies required to maintain CoP which are quite logical and refreshing. It is interesting to see how these can be applied to ETD.
# posted by Sherwin Cheng @ 6:17 AM 
