Creating the Space for Community Online

by Sue Gilly

KA 14 Community Depth and Applied Paper

Recently a fellow Fielding student and I were passing a graphic back and forth via email to try and understand an aspect of our dissertation work. He pointed out how he discovered a need to treat these emails differently than he does the others because of the need here for dialogue. Our student community of practice (CoP) has found that during the times we are struggling to understand one another's perspective a space (we often call this a sacred space) has to be created that allows us to be in dialogue. My colleague questioned whether this type of space could be created online. I wondered for a moment. Then I knew that this is possible because this kind of space had been created in my Knowledge Ecology University (KEU) course.

This paper will be my reflection upon my experience in an online course called Introduction to Communities of Practice (CoP 101) delivered by the KEU. The course facilitators were George Pór, Dean of KEU, founder and Sr. Consultant of Community Intelligence Labs, and Etienne Wenger, author of the book "Communities of Practice." I signed up for the course because I wanted the chance to interact with Etienne Wenger and to get references for my depth paper for this KA. My experience went way beyond my expectations. I was part of the creation of a virtual community.

I will begin with my narrative description of the creation of an online community. In this section I want to capture my thoughts, feelings and impressions without much definition or analysis. This narrative section will be the Applied portion of this assessment embedded within this Depth paper. Then in the second section I will present a high level overview of the elements of the course. In addition I will explain a few key CoP concepts. To conclude I will do some analysis and explore the elements that I think contributed to the creation of an online space for community, as I described in the above introduction. Some key factors for the creation of space seem to include: (a) George and Etienne's efforts on course design and holding a safe space during the course, (b) the structure of the web site, (c) the initial introductions, (d) the agreements, and (e) the Awareness discussion. For me the creation of space was a key aspect in the formation of this community.

I was excited to begin the course. I wasn't really nervous like I have been before on the first day of face-to-face classes. The first couple of days I would enter the course area and feel a growing sense of confusion as I realized I didn't really understand how to navigate through the space. I felt like I was in a foreign country. I didn't expect that since I am very comfortable on the computer. KEU tried to help us feel comfortable. At the beginning there was a "campus map" that took me to my course. Upon entering the course area there was a graphic depicting the course elements. I think this was supposed to serve as a course roadmap for the course but it is only with hindsight that I see that.

So in the beginning I just wandered around trying to understand or figure out what to do where. As I wandered I made connections. That helped. I put myself out there. I was accepted and appreciated. Did this come from our initial agreements, one of which was "Acknowledgement and Appreciation" (see Agreements section below), or did it come from George and Etienne modeling these ways of being for us? Maybe people who are interested in CoP just naturally acknowledge others. Many of the course members did this in their introductions when they commented on what others had previously said.

I do think my being willing to put myself out there helped me to get a lot out of the course. Putting myself out there meant telling others who I am, what is important to me and what is going on with me. This is not the same as following all of the rules, which is what I used to think was important for a class. I used to get upset when others disobeyed the rules. I knew the class suffered from that. I found myself in this situation looking for the richness of the experience in whatever happened. I tried to suspend my expectations. Taking the stance of putting myself out to the group and suspending expectations contributed to my having a memorable experience for me.

So are there a few concepts for setting up the conditions for this kind of experience? Are they things like establishing trust, openly sharing, showing appreciation, and acknowledgement? Places to struggle with our important questions concerning what we are currently working on seemed to be important. You also need to attract people who are willing to be in dialogue with others about things that are important to them. It helps to have a space in which to discuss how to be a whole person in this virtual environment. I'm certain there are additional critical elements.

Toward the end of the course several people requested more conversation on the concepts of CoP from Etienne's book. Before I registered for the course I asked if we were going to get into theories and receive additional references. I wanted to use this material for my depth paper. I was assured we would because Etienne was participating. In retrospect it seems as though the course was designed to get us to experience a CoP. I wonder in what ways the course would have been different if we had spent time on theories and concepts. Would the experience have been as memorable?

Our focus was primarily on engaging together to create a community that cares about the ideas of CoP. During the course George and Etienne's postings could be found everywhere. These postings answered our questions, guided us to necessary resources or activities. They connected people with similar ideas. I guess they were leaders, even though we never established what leadership looks like in a CoP (one of the concept discussions that did not get much time). George and Etienne also encouraged others to take on leader roles such as starting mini-projects.

Each person who started a mini-project could be seen as a leader. Was I reluctant to take a leadership role in the mini-project I started? Did I want someone else to do that? Would others have joined me if I had taken a more active leadership role? T.J. and Denham did a lot of reification (see CoP Concepts section below), is that part of leadership, articulating where the group and the project are at the current moment? Could I do reification better if I looked at it as a tool for dialogue? This is about the product, the reification, but it is also about the larger process of what that reification serves. It is a tool for further meaning making. The reifier has a problem if she/he believes that I must accept what I'm given and I'm not allowed to make it my own. To me George did this once. In the Conversation Summaries Leadership Group he made a comment that I took to be saying we weren't doing the conversation summaries right. He was not letting us make his vision our own. This was the only time during the course when I didn't feel validated, encouraged and supported.

As a result of this online experience I am still struggling to understand the duality of participation and reification (see CoP Concepts section below). Why don't I like to reify? Why do I struggle with it? How can I learn to do it? When I do it why doesn't it always feel that satisfying? Is it because of the response I get from others or because of the lack of response from others? I could look through the course materials and see who produced the most reifications. I could look at what kinds of things they did. Maybe I could figure out how they got to that reification.

What else do I need to understand here? Do men reify more than women, is there a gender thing going on? I wonder if males and females view reification differently. I know T.J. and Denham did a lot of reification. I think T.J. said Cinda did some too. Maybe I could correspond with her. I think Margaret and I wandered around participating more than reifying. The reification that Margaret and I did was a solitary activity. T.J. and Cinda worked on reification in a larger group. What are the important aspects to this concept -- group/individual, female/male, leadership activities, what else?

In looking back I realize in my mini-project on Constellation of Practices I was interested in stimulating conversation. I wanted participation first and then see what would develop. Nothing really developed though. Maybe we needed something reified to talk about. Were others just not interested in Constellation of Practices? Maybe they didn't see the potential value in the topic that I did. Maybe this topic is connected to my knowing I'm a broker (see CoP Concepts section below) and my wondering how to broker between CoP. I think brokers are a minority. Maybe that's why others didn't join me.

Does taking my approach of wanting something to emerge from the dialogue always lead to difficulties for the group to ever reify and produce something? My student CoP has a hard time reifiying also. Is it me? T.J.'s group seemed to jump to reification and had participatory conversations around the reification. I know T.J. said he found the conversations that were possible online were insufficient when it came to developing a table or graphic together. They had to talk about them over the phone because they needed a richer medium. Maybe I should examine the mini-projects more closely and see if those who began with a plan attracted more people and developed more products.

Given all that, I keep coming back to wondering what was the core of my feelings about the course experience? To me it was the sense of community. Every day I felt the desire to get online and see what people had said. I wanted more contact with these individuals. Their ideas stimulated me. Their comments on my ideas pushed me to think more deeply. I loved seeing what others were creating. I was excited to see their products. Sometimes I was envious. Sometimes they stimulated me to contribute, to see if I could add any value. The high I got from getting notes addressed to me that acknowledged and appreciated my contributions is indescribable. The notes that said they understood what I had expressed were like a big warm hug. This made it easy for me to acknowledge and appreciate others' contributions as well.

Community resided in the connections we established so quickly and so intensely that when one member announced he had to leave early because he had to go to his mother, maybe for the last time, many of us felt empathy for his pain. We offered our support online even though he wasn’t there to read them. It seemed as though by posting these condolences to the community they would reach him some how.

I also felt community in my solitary work when I created a conversation summary for my mini-project because I believed it had a link to something larger. When I was producing the summary I wondered if it might be the seed that would start something else.

I loved the emergent nature of our discussions. The ideas from one person's posting sprang into many new ones. Occasionally they would reach beyond the course. One discussion, that began in the Agreements thread when we were trying to understand the process of creating agreements, led us to speculating that there are different processes for different kinds of groups. From there we began to see a difference between CoP and project teams. For example, CoP have varying forms and levels of participation while project teams require everyone to "pull their own weight" equally. This conversation led me to share my understanding of this conversation with my student CoP. That resulted, after more conversation, in our getting clarity about the literature review areas for our dissertations. What a bonus!

Community also meant having new experiences with this group such as Mihaela's telescope exercise (see Awareness section below). It was the wrestling together to understand. A place to share our stories with others who connected, related, added to and reframed them. It was a sense of pride for what we were creating, both the tangible and intangible. It was risking admitting that I felt unsure about my ability to meet others' expectations and hearing others say that feeling was alright. It was excitement about the connections we were creating. It was validating each other, ourselves and what we are passionate about. There was passion. There was excitement. There was a high level of energy. I can't wait to experience this again.

This section will provide a high level overview of the important aspects of the course and some of the key concepts of CoP. It is not my intent to go into either of these areas in much detail. I intend this overview to set the stage for my examination of what helped create a space for community in the KEU course.

Course Design. The CoP course had its own web site and KEU used forum software, similar to FELIX's Alta Vista, called Caucus. This online "space" is quite sophisticated. It is password secured so only those participating had access. The basic components of the course consisted of three separate conversation areas (like different FELIX forums): (a) Joint Inquiry, (b) Mini-projects and (c) Leadership Groups. The Joint Inquiry was the home base for our course. The first page began with a welcome note stating our objective: "to give you a chance to not only learn about communities of practice, but explore the possibility for coalescing one in a virtual environment."

The Joint Inquiry was the space that contained the places where we all talked about common issues of concern. As important topics surfaced new conversations were started. By the end of the course some of the added conversation threads were named: (a) Introductions, (b) Our Agreements, (c) Course Overview, (d) Our Learning Journey (e) Awareness and (f) Technology tips, questions and answers.

Our Learning Journey was where the Mini-Projects began. As individuals expressed an interest in a topic and others voiced their shared interest, George or Etienne would suggest someone create a Mini-Project discussion thread (like a topic on a FELIX forum). They would ask the person with the initial posting to create a plan for the mini-project and share it with the rest of the group. The mini-project initial posting usually contained suggestions for areas of discussion and possible products that the group might develop on that topic. Examples of our Mini-Projects include: (a) What are the barriers and enablers to CoP?, (b) Constellation of practices, (c) Electronic CoP, (d) Edge Communities.

We were also asked to join a Leadership Group to represent our Mini-Project. The Leadership Groups were conversation threads that covered the different functions that are needed to help facilitate community formation. Leadership Groups consisted of: (a) project facilitation - members paid particular attention to the group's learning process, (b) learning journal - key insights were captured as shared group knowledge, (c) question basket - community generated questions were recorded, categorized and if important brought back before the community, (d) conversation summaries - regular summaries of conversations served to record the main points for existing members and help new members join and (e) community formation - this group attended to the growth of the community.

CoP Concepts. Here are some brief descriptions of the major CoP concepts. First, here is the definition of CoP:

Communities of Practice (CoP) - CoP are informal groups who are "bound by what they do together . . . and by what they have learned through their mutual engagements in these activities" (Wenger, 1998a, p. 2) over time. Together, as peers (Brown & Gray, 1995), they develop a shared practice or joint enterprise. "We all belong to a number of them -- at work, at school, in our hobbies. Some have a name; some don't. We are core members of some, and belong to others more peripherally" (Wenger, 1998a, p. 2).

In his research on CoP Etienne Wenger has found that a CoP defines itself along the following three dimensions:

Joint enterprise - "What it is about" (Wenger, 1998a, p. 2). A CoP's joint enterprise exists through a process of continual negotiation and evolving accountability as members pursue that enterprise. (Wenger, 1998b)

Mutual engagement - Members of the group are "engaged in actions whose meanings they negotiate with one another" and they have a relationship with one another. Mutual engagement "defines the community" (Wenger, 1998b, p. 73).

Repertoire - "The repertoire of a community of practice includes routines, words, tools, ways of doing things, stories, gestures, symbols, genres, actions or concepts that the community has produced or adopted in the course of its existence, and which have become part of its practice. The repertoire combines both reificative and participative aspects. It includes the discourse by which members create meaningful statements about the world, as well as the styles by which they express their forms of membership and their identities as members" (Wenger, 1998b, p. 83).

Wenger proposes that CoP members continually negotiate the meaning of their enterprise. This negotiation occurs primarily through the convergence of two processes. They are:

Reification - Reification involves treating an abstract concept as having an existence. "[T]he process of reification provides a shortcut to communication" and it serves to direct "the negotiation of meaning" (Wenger, 1998b, p. 58). This paper is an example of the reification of my course experience.

Participation - "[T]he social experience of living in the world in terms of membership in social communities and active involvement in social enterprises. . . . [P]articipation . . . shapes our experience and it also shapes those communities" (Wenger, 1998b, p. 55-56). "It is a constituent of our identities" (p. 57).

Participation/Reification - To Wenger participation and reification are processes that form an interacting duality. They are "both distinct and complementary" (Wenger, 1998b, p. 62). Together these processes are essential for the key function of a CoP, the negotiation of meaning. "Participation and reification both require and enable each other. . . . [I]t takes our participation to produce, interpret, and use reification. . . . [O]ur participation requires interaction and thus generates short-cuts to coordinated meanings that reflect our enterprises and our takes on the world" (p. 66).

One of Wenger's CoP concepts is particularly important to me. When I read his brief section on brokers I knew that is a role I often choose to play. Wenger explains brokering in this way:

Brokering - Brokering involves the transfer of knowledge between different communities through the connections of multimembership of some participants. "Brokering is a common feature of the relation of a community of practice with the outside" (Wenger, 1998b, p. 109). About brokers Wenger writes, "Although we all do some brokering, my experience is that certain individuals seem to thrive on being brokers: they love to create connections and engage in 'import--export,' and so would rather stay at the boundaries of many practices than move to the core of any one practice" (p. 109).

There is a myth going around that "technology will create collaboration. . . . The Web and the Internet can facilitate collaboration, but they don't create it" according to an organizational consultant that works in Silicon Valley (Stamps, 1997, p. 7). My past personal experiences confirms this statement. Technology can extend and sometimes enhance our ability to collaborate. Manville and Foote state that Information Technology "must provide a way to form communities, not simply provide information. . . . Communities of practice must have the necessary tools to form, evolve, and develop as freely as possible" (1996, p. 79).

In this section I will present what I believe are the important factors that helped create a space for community to develop during our KEU course. The factors that will be covered include: (a) George and Etienne's course design and holding a safe space during the course, (b) the structure of the web site, (c) the initial introductions, (d) the course agreements, and (e) the Awareness discussion.

George and Etienne. George and Etienne were of course key to the creation of a space for our community to develop. Their overall design of the course was intended to give us the opportunity to build a CoP. It was in the doing that we also learned the relevant CoP concepts. George reported that initially they were going to make the many written documents they have part of the course content. I believe they decided instead to build the space for interactions, as in a CoP, and have the documents only available as resources. If they had gone with their early design we would have had a very different experience. At the end I might have felt it was more of a course but less of a community.

In the second paragraph of this paper I initially referred to George and Etienne as instructors but later changed it to facilitators. During the course they were actively engaged in all of our discussions. Their personal introductions set the tone for the rest of our conversations (see Introductions section below). As they continually honored our agreements (see Agreements section below) in the actions they took they served as our models. George and Etienne did not "teach" us in the usual classroom manner but I certainly learned, nevertheless. I agree with Brown and Gray that "learning is less about absorbing information than it is abut becoming part of a community" (1995, p. 3).

Maybe Etienne and George should be called the leaders. If so they used a non-directing, non-controlling leadership style. Instead they guided, helped, connected, encouraged and enabled us all to be leaders. Etienne states that CoP "development ultimately depends on internal leadership" (1998a, p. 4). CoP also need to be nurtured rather than designed or manipulated. This was George and Etienne's stance throughout the course.

To give you an example, early in Our Learning Journey discussion I posted a question about management initiatives to create CoP as they are naturally forming groups. In the posting I said I did not know if this was the appropriate place for this question. George quickly assured me this was the perfect place for my important questions. He also used his posting as an opportunity to mention the Keepers of the Questions Leadership Group and thus reminded us of the Leadership Group discussions. George and Etienne continuously made connections between different aspects of our community. In this way they provided a brokering function as they shared knowledge from different areas. They seemed to gently guide us around this foreign land.

Etienne and George's experience with CoP came through without lecturing to us. But I also had the sense they were learning with us. They did this by sharing their CoP consulting struggles in such a way that we felt comfortable to offer our perspectives on their situations. So the discussions seemed like a dialogue between peers.

To me George and Etienne also functioned in an important role, as holders of a safe space. A consulting colleague of mine and I have discussed the need, when working with clients, for the consultant to hold a safe space for the group to dialogue. I believe George and Etienne did this during our course. Currently I am unable to articulate the concept of holding the space for a group any more than this. I have helped to do it but I do not know how to talk about it. At this time I have more of an intuitive than cognitive knowing of holding a safe space.

George and Etienne must have also trusted in our process and believed that the right people would show up. According to Etienne a CoP "must be self-organizing to learn effectively and . . . participation must be intrinsically self-sustaining" (1998a, p. 5). Trusting in the process is critical to holding a safe space. Those who must be in control of a group would not be capable of any of this. In fact Stewart reports this is even more serious for CoP because "managing them can kill them" (1996, p. 3).

Web Site. When I began thinking about writing this paper I remembered I had been involved in another online group back in March. It was on online discussion group, called ACTLIST, that discussed Donald Schon's books, The Reflective Practitioner and Educating the Reflective Practitioner. Comparing this discussion group with my KEU course helps to highlight important differences in online experiences.

ACTLIST had around 100 participants and lasted for one month. The technology, purpose and format were also different. We received two papers to read and comment on each week. They were to be the subject of our discussions. Papers and comments came to me as emails. These emails felt like a flood of conversation that I was unsure of how to connect into. I spent on average one and a half hours per day reading papers and emails. I was not a very active member of this discussion. I only sent a few emails to this group. The ACTLIST group certainly never coalesced into a community for me and I would not classify this experience as significant either.

The KEU course lasted from 8-24-98 to 9-6-98. There were thirty participants, including George, Etienne and others who helped with this course. In the course outline they stated forty students would be the maximum. I do not know the number of "registered" students. We were told to allow one hour each day to participate in the class. I spent approximately four hours per day on this course. Several others commented that one hour was not enough time. I was very active in these discussions.

Unlike the ACTLIST emails I had to get into our course area on the Internet to read what others had posted and to post my own messages. So it felt like the course had its own space. There was also more discussion organization than ACTLIST since messages were posted and stored under different topics. This KEU online space was confusing at first for me but there was much more of a sense of structure, purpose and accomplishment than with ACTLIST.

One of the discussion threads in the Joint Inquiry was called Our Learning Journey. It served as our "community" area. This is where we all participated in an online conversation about the course work. Here we talked about what we were interested in about CoP and our personal struggles with understanding, implementing and being part of CoP. This was the place where we all posted, we all kept returning to this space. Often other discussions would be started from these discussions. For example a topic area was opened to talk about the technology and related problems after several participants asked for help. Another one was started toward the end to discuss how the course could be improved. Creating these new conversation threads helped us organize our questions, comments and interactions.

I believe KEU was successful in providing us an online space to develop our CoP. We were able to have the kinds of conversations that are necessary for meaning making, a core function of CoP. There was enough structure to anchor our community development but not so much that we were not allowed to evolve. Bringing "people together in shared work spaces" where they can "be in constant contact with one another" (Stamps, 1997, p. 2) increases learning. I believe this also leads to community development.

Introductions. During the KEU course, one of the participants posted an article that says the whole tone of virtual groups is set by the first postings (Coutu, 1998). I believe our group supported these findings. In the article Diane Coutu reported on research by Jarvenpaa and Leidner on the development of trust in teams. According to their findings trust develops differently in virtual teams than it does in face-to-face teams. Trust in face-to-face teams develops slowly over time while "the initial electronic messages appear to set the tone for how virtual-team members will interrelate throughout an entire project" (Coutu, 1998, p. 1). So I decided to compare our initial course postings with the ones from ACTLIST.

The KEU postings began with introductions. These included highlights of our personal information, something about our varied backgrounds and why we were interested in CoP. Etienne shared information about his family, his background and why he has been studying CoP. George told us about his activist background and his early searches for community. T.J., the first student to post, said later he felt comfortable to post something about his activist background because of George's posting (personal communication, 9/14/98). All of the postings were very interesting and stayed with the same tone of sharing on a somewhat personal level. Even at this early stage there were acknowledgements and appreciations of other's postings (see Agreements section below). This tone continued throughout the course.

I looked back at the ACTLIST initial posting. Instead of introductions it was a paper called "Reflecting on What?" by Dr. Willem J.A.M. Overmeer (email, February 28,1998). I find it interesting that in the paper Overmeer makes the point that a person needs to reflect on something and we need to connect our "thinking" and our "doing" more directly. I believe George and Etienne were successful in combining thinking and doing through their design of the KEU course. While ACTLIST, on the other hand, stayed in a thinking about thinking mode since we only read academic papers and discussed them. Overmeer's paper seemed to create a disconnect between ACTLIST's espoused and practiced values that continued throughout the discussion.

Often ACTLIST participants attempted to share their personal experiences with the group to establish relevance for the discussion but these were not the group's direct experience of anything. We, as separate individuals, could only reflect on someone else's reflection of their experience. During the KEU course we reflected as we were mutually engaged in developing shared meanings and repertoire around our joint enterprise of creating and understanding a CoP (Wenger, 1998b). This is probably key to why the KEU group felt like a community to me. A CoP "defines itself in the doing as members develop among themselves their own understanding of what their practice is about . . . and engage in a collective process of learning" (Wenger, 1998a, p. 3). In comparison ACTLIST seems now like a large group participating in an intellectual exercise, not developing a community.

It may be unfair to compare ACTLIST with CoP 101 since their purposes were different. I do believe this comparison does offer information for anyone who wants to create a community that must interact in a virtual environment. You must pay careful attention to the initial postings. Introductions of the participants and of the endeavor must, therefore, be done in a mindful way. The appropriate initiation may be a critical component to creating the space online for communities to grow. This space is where online groups need to create meaning together as they develop their repertoire.

Agreements. One of our first discussion threads was called Agreements. It began with George posting a quote by Chadima and Hulin (1995). I have chosen to quote directly from the source:

The initial course agreements proposed by George and Etienne were: (a) listen generously, (b) speaking straight, (c) acknowledgement and appreciation and (d) privacy. I believe these agreements are all self-explanatory.

In retrospect I find it interesting that we all seemed to readily accept the agreements suggested by George and Etienne. I wonder if those who were drawn to this class were just naturally in agreement? However, as I write this section I find myself wondering how those that did not post anything felt about our agreements. Was there not really space for disagreement as suggested by Chadima and Hulin above? Were we together long enough to have the disagreements that are necessary for reaching agreement? Since I liked George and Etienne's agreements did I not notice the lack of disagreement during the course?

In our Agreements discussion a few people did make a few suggestions for additional agreements. Examples included: (a) Show up, (b) Participate as much as you can and recognize others are participating as much as they can, (c) Play and court joy, (d) Be open to outcomes. All of the agreements were simple and seem important. I believe our course agreements did help to create the space for our community to develop. During the course everyone seemed to comply with all the agreements so this may be an indication they accepted them.

In the middle of our Agreements discussion one of the participants pointed out that instead of trying to get clearer about this group's agreements we were trying to figure out a general process of developing agreements. We decided there are different processes for different CoP. In general the more members already know each other the less need for formal agreement development.

Along with the process we talked about how specific agreements need to be. I reported that my student CoP found out the hard way that detailed agreements are not always best. For one collaborative project we spent a lot of time developing very specific agreements. We found some of them had to be broken which resulted in a better product. We decided that agreements are necessary but not sufficient.

In his book, "Communities of Practice (1998b)," Etienne says CoP designs should be minimal and the rest gets worked out in the doing. Brown and Gray advise the adoption of "elegantly minimal processes that allow communities to emerge" (1995, p. 3). Although we only had a few course agreements I believe they were powerful enough to support our community evolution. They seemed to emphasize an honoring of each person that I feel helped to create the space for us to negotiate the meaning of our CoP.

With regard to CoP in general, it is still not clear whether formal agreements are necessary since they are self-organizing systems that define themselves in the doing? CoP need the flexibility to ensure its members "can participate in different ways and to different degrees" (Wenger, 1998a, p. 3) because this is a source of learning for the community. So what service can agreements provide when CoP have flexible boundaries? Currently our understanding of CoP is more tacit. In time as we understand them more explicitly our understanding of the what and the how of creating useful agreements should increase.

Awareness. George Pór's wife, Mihaela Moussou, told our group she was taking on the role of standing back from the discussions to see what was needed for balance. She must have seen some unfulfilled need when she started the "Awareness" discussion. Here we talked less about cognitive issues and more about us as whole persons, with mind, body, heart and spirit, interacting in this environment. After the course Mihaela reported that the creation of sacred space online is a passion of hers. The nature of this conversation thread was particularly meaningful for me and seemed to be so for others too.

A CoP, in general, develops a shared practice that "includes both the explicit and the tacit." The explicit includes such things as "the tools, the documents, the images." Examples of tacit aspects may include "the subtle clues, . . . the recognizable intuitions, . . . the embodied understandings, the underlying assumptions" (Wenger, 1997, p. 38). The explicit was taken care of in the rest of our course area. To me this is where we looked more directly at the tacit aspects of an online CoP. Here I will try to give you a flavor of this conversation.

Mihaela began posting daily activities and tips for us. They began with a suggestion to get up, stretch and become aware of our body. Another one came after I shared with the group that I felt overwhelmed, confused and worried about whether I was doing things "right." The instructions were to: get up from the computer, go to a mirror and make exaggerated faces to express what you are feeling. Mihaela began the sharing with some cartoon-like faces to convey her feelings. Then a few of us joined her and reported on our mirror exercise. After I shared and others replied to my post I remember feeling as though I had been given permission to feel confused and insecure. More importantly I knew it was safe to continue to share my feelings with them.

Other activities included instructions to go tell someone how much you appreciate them. Mihaela reported bringing George to tears. For one I call the telescope exercise we were to roll up a piece of paper, look around the room and pick something to really look at. Then take the telescope away and see how the object looks in the larger context. I reported: "Through my telescope I looked at my stuffed Fozzie Bear and Kermit (I love Jim Hensen) and they became larger than life. They sit in the corner of my office and I only occasionally notice them. It felt like I tapped into that kid in me that loves things like that."

One person reported looking around his hotel room and seeing his tired face in the mirror. When he remembered that he deserved to be tired he smiled. He then realized he had just combined the mirror and the telescope exercise.

Early in the Awareness discussion one of the women commented that only women were posting here. I had noticed but had not said anything. That posting got several men to join us. We began discussing whether there are gender issues worth exploring relative to CoP. Gender seemed too fuzzy and potentially divisive for all of us. We decided it would be better to explore issues of identity instead.

In this conversation thread we talked about many different aspects of self. We discussed our desires to find ways to have supportive environments at work that welcome all aspects of each person, including the connection to family. One participant reported having unusually vivid dreams during the course. Another said he woke up thinking about our discussions. We also explored how the Internet can be many different things to different people at different times. It was both one single woman's source of community and the source of frustration for a father pulled between our online community and being with his family.

I found myself really looking forward to this discussion. I valued this conversation because it helped me to feel like I was involved in this experience on many more levels than just my head. I do not believe I've ever experienced this online before. It seemed to enhance my sense of community with this group. Future online possibilities are enticing to me.

I hope the description of my experience does not seem too flat. I realize that behind this story there is so much more that is tacit to me. I want the impact this course had on me to come through. In his ethnography of Xerox service technicians, a CoP, Julian Orr (1996) discusses at length the critical element stories play in the technicians work. He says their stories serve to create an identity to counteract the image their corporation presents of their work. Developing this story has helped me to establish a more explicit community identity for my CoP 101 group. Through this story telling my online experience has come to have an even greater value for me. It feels more concrete. I also see a broader relevance for the intentional creation of space to allow a community to develop.

As I looked through the CoP literature I noticed no one addresses directly my concept of creating a space for community. I wonder if this is a result of the history of the term community. It seems historically the space was created first and then community arose from that. As when families chose to settle close to one another. From that act a town formed. Given today's life style maybe there is a greater need to focus our efforts on the intentional development of space so that a community might evolve. The Internet is one possible place.

In their article "The People are the Company" John Seely Brown, Vice President of Xerox and Estee Solomon Gray, a consultant state that "The age of desktop computing is giving way to the era of social computing" (1995, p. 4). Within Xerox there is a project that Brown and Gray say is "a collection of audio, video, and communications technologies to help communities form and flourish. . . . [I]t supports interactions that are richer and more focused than free-form electronic discussion groups." They call this "a network place, rather than an electronic space, where people interact as a community" (p. 5). Brown and Gray believe "We are in the formative stages of this revolution of community" (p. 5).

What happened during my CoP course supports Brown and Gray's belief in the possibility of a community revolution. To me there are important lessons from this course for the creation of future online communities. I feel compelled to report that the CoP 101 community has unfortunately not been sustained past the end of the course even though we were given a new online space to use. There are many factors that possibly explain this but I will not go into them here. I choose instead to remain focused on the sense of community I felt grow during this course and what I learned about the development of an online community. Design, structure, beginnings, agreements and whole person experiences are important aspects for the creation of the space for electronic communities whether they are called a "community of practice" or not.

Bibliography

Brown, J. S., & Gray, E. S. (1995). The People are the company (Premiere Issue). Fast Company. Available: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/01/people.html [1998, August 23].

Chadima, D., & Hulin, G. (1995). Rediscovering the circle: Community in balance. In K. Gozdz (Ed.), Community building: Renewing spirit and learning in business (pp. 174-184). San Francisco: New Leaders Press.

Coutu, D. L. (1998). Trust in virtual teams. Harvard Business Review, 76(3), 20-21.

Manville, B., & Foote, N. (1996, July). Harvest your workers' knowledge. Datamation, 42(13), 78-81.

Orr, J. E. (1996). Talking about machines: An ethnography of a modern job. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Stamps, D. (1997). Communities of practice: Learning is social, training is irrelevant? Training, 34(2), 34-42.

Wenger, E. (1997). Practice, learning, meaning, identity. Training, 34(2), 38-39.

Wenger, E. (1998a). Communities of practice: Learning as a social system. The Systems Thinker, 9(5), 1-5.

Wenger, E. (1998b). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.