Community of Practice
The Community of Practice is one of the most important activities of the VISConti project. During the start up period of the project we worked on the development of a membership made up of individuals who are keen on building a profile within a community that is for innovators be they students, teachers or science professionals from industry. The Community of Practice has a web based infrastructure within which it can develop and test tools made for intensive exchange between VET and industry.
Community building is the essence of any project that works with a network frame of mind. A Community of Practice is more than just networking. It is a group of individuals usually from the same professional field who come together for a specific purpose.
Click to go to the platform of the VISConti Community of Practice
Wenger (1998) describes the structure of a CoP as consisting of three interrelated terms: 'mutual engagement', 'joint enterprise' and 'shared repertoire' (Wenger 1998, pp. 72–73).
- Mutual Engagement: Firstly, through participation in the community, members establish norms and build collaborative relationships; this is termed mutual engagement. These relationships are the ties that bind the members of the community together as a social entity. In the VISConti Community of Practice members are invited or accepted with the new members knowing full well what the CoP is intended for.
- Joint Enterprise: Secondly, through their interactions, they create a shared understanding of what binds them together; this is termed the joint enterprise. The joint enterprise is (re)negotiated by its members and is sometimes referred to as the 'domain' of the community. In our case the joint mission is that of upping the professional profile of its members. This became even more defined with the start of the UPPScience project that stands for Using Profiling and Publishing for the upping of scientific approaches.
- Shared Repertoire: Finally, as part of its practice, the community produces a set of communal resources, which is termed their shared repertoire; this is used in the pursuit of their joint enterprise and can include both literal and symbolic meanings. This why we put together a list of definitions for VISConti so that there may be a glossary of shared meanings for all the members of the VISConti Community of Practice.
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