McGill Knowledge Management Community of Practice

Communities of practice act as facilitated experiential learning environments through which opportunistic learning increases the transfer rate of knowledge. The unique design of this virtual CoP will engage students in action learning within a social context that includes the extended KM community in a technologically rich environment. Students will not only learn new practical skills through the scheduled roles and assignments but will also have the opportunity to learn how to improve the design of CoPs through their experience with GSLIS’s KM CoP. The involvement of KM practitioners in the CoP acts as an added value teaching method that will allow students to learn about real world and real time issues in the KM field.

Students will have the opportunity to map their theoretical learning to a large extent with what the experts out in the field are doing and the experts will benefit from a stronger academic and theoretical framework on which to base their KM practices. The interaction of these two groups, together with the networked ‘alumni’ from previous course semesters, will serve to create a richer knowledge environment. The current limitation of the Foundations of KM course is not simply just that we do not have software tools in place, but that there is no ‘safe’ environment in which students can practice and apply what they learn. The impact of such a practice environment is expected to be quite significant on the effectiveness and efficiency of student learning.

The community of practice will serve as a virtual learning environment that links the academic and business worlds to the mutual benefit of both, through a form of cognitive apprenticeship. Through cognitive apprenticeship, the desired behaviour is first modeled by the expert who can provide coaching to the students. This coaching gives the learners insight into the “how” as well as the “why” of the modeled behavior. Personal reflection allows the learner to compare him or herself with the coach. Then the learner can articulate the processes and skills in his/her own language (“teachback”) and explore and evolve his/her own approach through peer evaluation.

Involvement in a CoP supports the notion that learning is fundamentally a social experience that is best accomplished through participation. Knowing depends on engagement in practice while a lack of participation results in learning failure. Participatory learning is continuously integrated into the life of the CoP and engagement is inseparable from empowerment.

Although many online communities now exist, few have been evaluated within a formal academic context. This innovative community of practice will have significant impact on the transfer of learning and application of key KM concepts to students as well as provide a type of “pseudo-experience” or cognitive internship in key KM roles and responsibilities. A number of KM curricula have been, or are in the process of being, implemented in a number of Library and Information Studies programs worldwide. It is anticipated that instructors in other programs would also be interested in participating as community members and even adopting the approach in some of their own courses. It should be noted that a good proportion of current KM courses are only offered as online courses, which emphasizes an even greater need for community-based activities to enhance the learning of students.