Virtual Communities of Practice: Knowledge Sharing and E-Collaboration in an Online Community

Abstract

Tire advent of tire Internet has allowed people to be interconnected even if they are separated by geographical boundaries. Virtual Communities of Practice, or VCoPs, are groups of people who share the same interest and primarily rely on the internet to connect and share practices with one another across geographical barriers and time zones (Ayala, 2002). Bringing together people online from different organizational areas to discuss issues lead to knowledge sharing, which is the means by which an organization obtains access to its own and other organization’s knowledge (Cummings, 2003). Through this, members of a certain VCoP are able to transfer knowledge through their interactions with their peers that allowed them to integrate among themselves the shared practices that they obtained through their activities. Knowledge sharing in a VCoP is possible through electronic collaboration, or e-collaboration, which is defined as a collaboration using electronic technologies among different individuals to accomplish a common task (Kock & D’Arcy, 2002). With this, it is significant to pose a study regarding virtual community of practice in an online community because it would give an insight on the shared practices that characterize knowledge sharing through e-collaboration in an online interaction space. This study aims to answer the question “What are the interactions that describe knowledge sharing in the VCoP?” with the following sub-problems; 1.) “What are the discussions that the members of the online community engage in that contributes to their knowledge sharing?,” 2.)“What is the group identity of the online community?,” 3.) What are the shared practices that characterize knowledge sharing in an online community?” and 4.)“What primary roles exist within the VCoP that allow members to share and gain knowledge form one another?” Tire qualitative study was conducted on the PiPho Organization, an online community and forum for Filipino Photographers. A total of eight (8) online sessions were conducted to the 77 active members who participated in tire study, and tire said online sessions were conducted from January 7 to 22,2007. The study focused on tire PiPho members’ discussions and interactions in tire VCoP to determine the group discussions, shared practices, group identity, and tire primary roles that contributed to the knowledge sharing in the VCoP. An observation guide was used as tire research instrument of the study, and it directed the course of the study by giving the guidelines that were observed dining the interaction of the participants in the study. The study used two observation guides—one that was directed towards the personal knowledge that members shared and gamed during the online sessions, and the other which was for the shared knowledge and practices of the organization. The qualitative study that was done and conducted on the PiPho online community revealed that the imparting and gaining of knowledge are the interactions that describe the knowledge sharing in the VCoP. The study showed that the topics that were discussed during the online sessions can be categorized into three general topics: the technical, evaluative, and descriptive, which contributed to the knowledge sharing of the VCoP. The study revealed that certain shared practices—such as their exchange of information and ideas, posting of inquiries about certain topics, sharing of stories and experiences, and their sharing of online documents, which are all about photography—characterized knowledge sharing in the PiPho online community. The researcher determined that the group identity of the participants was their passion for photography, and this was manifested in the discussions that the participants engaged in during the online sessions. Tire study also revealed that two primary roles were evident during the course of the study, and these were the roles of the apprentices and the masters.