Value creation and identity in cross-organizational communities of practice: A learner's perspective

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2021.100822Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Immediate learning value occurred through extensive community member interactions.

  • Potential learning value was evident in the shift of member perspectives & emergent relationships.

  • Applied learning value materialized through the transfer of community practices in academic work.

  • Realized learning value was confirmed by significantly higher results in epistemic performances.

  • Reframed learning value & identity effects emerged through a shift in perceptions of achievement.

Abstract

The goal of this work is to evaluate the worth of learning, that resulted from student participation in a cross-organizational (industry-academia) Community of Practice (CoP). CoPs are groups of people who share common interest in a field and connect to co-create knowledge and competence within that. In this study, the CoP was integrated in a Higher Education Design course that was following a blended-learning approach. Internal and external collaboration was primarily facilitated through online technologies.

The study employs the Value Creation framework to analyze the types and value of co-created learning and explores these results to draw inferences as to the effects of CoP participation on the learners' identities, which were continuously being reformulated.

The resulting CoP interactions indicated a strong immediate learning value. These also generated new insights (potential value) and familiarized learners with the characteristics of the real-world practice. The effective transfer of knowledge into the academic practice was confirmed by the significant improvements in student performances (applied & realized value). Finally, CoP participation steered a shift in learner perspectives, by pragmatically transforming their perception of achievement and orientating them towards transitioning and evolving in the professional sphere (reframed value).

Introduction

The motivation behind this work stems from the reported lack of adequate higher education (HE) graduate capital and the mismatch between their actual -versus the expected - competencies in today's industry, particularly in the creative domains (Leung & Bentley, 2017; Mulgan, Townsley, & Price, 2016; WEF, 2016). This gap results in lower employability prospects due to the graduates' inability to respond to complex workplace requirements; as these have shifted from basic subject knowledge, to attributes such as creativity, critical thinking and decision-making, life-long learning - and importantly - sound intra and inter-personal skills, such as self-awareness, communication, and collaboration, that are required in diverse work settings (Gilbuena, Sherrett, Gummer, Champagne, & Koretsky, 2015; Mourshed, Patel, & Suder, 2014; Scott, 2015).

One of the reasons for this skills gap is reportedly the lack of communication between industry and academia. Sternly designed curricula that are disconnected from the needs and authentic challenges of real-life practice, fail to motivate students to produce innovative outcomes, whose value is socially judged by their intended audience (Glăveanu, 2014a; Herrington, Reeves, & Oliver, 2014; Lombardi, 2007). This lack of authenticity suggests a form of education that is distant from reality, driven by artificial objectives, shaped by predictable single-path problem-solving processes, while perpetuating individualistic effort, that is subject to rigid academic evaluation; all of which compromise creativity in the learning processes and outcomes (Runco & Jaeger, 2012).

Authenticity in modern-day education involves a high degree of collaboration amongst learners and external (industry) stakeholders, facilitated through effective online environments, for the production of innovative end-results that are suitable for real-world purposes (Glăveanu, 2014b). This is particularly true in the creative industries, such as the Design disciplines, incorporating fields like Engineering, Media & Technology, industrial design, and HCI (Nelson & Stolterman, 2014), that rely extensively on the social human infrastructure and the inherent technology-supported team collaborations for the development of useful, novel, and technically advanced products (L. Dym, Agogino, Eris, Frey, & Leifer, 2005). The need for such creative and authentic connections has given rise to a wave of university-industry alliances (Edmondson, Valigra, Kenward, Hudson, & Belfield, 2012; WEF, 2016). That said, only a few institutions have so far endorsed such incentives, hence the lack of research reporting on their contribution in learning (Albats, 2018; Ivascu, Cirjaliu, & Draghici, 2016).

This work, proposes that the model of Communities of Practice (CoPs) can support such alliances, bridging the two spheres (academia-industry) and leveraging their joint potential for learning. CoPs are groups of people with common interest and goals in a specific field, who connect to co-create knowledge and expertise (Wenger, 1998). In pursuing authenticity as part of a situative learning approach (P. Brown, 2015), in this work we add a cross-organizational dimension to the original model, by inviting stakeholders form both the academia and industry (i.e. experts, mentors, clients) as participants (Iskanius & Pohjola, 2016; Probst & Borzillo, 2008). We do so as we hypothesize that the formal HE curriculum can be augmented through the experience of real-world practices mediated through the technology-supported CoP practice.

Within cross-organizational and blended learning contexts, the role of online technologies is critical. Aside of enabling the necessary social learning and collaboration (collocated/remote) processes of the academic members, they also interconnect with the industrial members of the CoP, who are inherently disparate in terms of time, space and culture. Thus, as the majority of effective CoP interventions in education evolve within the intra-organizational scope (academia or industry only) (DeChambeau, 2017; Fegan, 2017; Park, 2015; Pharo, Davison, McGregor, Warr, & Brown, 2014; Power & Armstrong, 2017; Tight, 2015), this study is significant, as it constitutes a first-time validation of a technologically-enabled, cross-organizational CoP model that is directly embedded in the blended HE curriculum (Keay, May, & O'Mahony, 2014). Additionally, the study responds to a critical gap in the investigation of CoPs, concerning their contribution to learning of value, particularly in specific epistemic domains, such as the Design disciplines (Amin & Roberts, 2008; Smith, Hayes, & Shea, 2017). In this regard, the role of technology gains special significance in its call to support the particular Design-oriented, epistemic needs, rather than relying on a “one fits all” configuration (Hafeez, Alghatas, Foroudi, Nguyen, & Gupta, 2019). Specifically it should cater for processes like conceptual and practical experimentation, the creation of visual design (prototypes, flow-charts, sketches) and programming artifacts (i.e. interactive applications), that can be accessed or edited via a modular visibility scheme (i.e. private, team-based, class/group-wide, community-wide, public), in different rhythms (synchronously/asynchronously), and across various channels (i.e. audio/video, chat). The respective technology configuration design in this study, is extensively discussed in parallel work (Mavri, Ioannou, & Loizides, 2019).

To derive results in respect of the abovementioned objectives, we examine the learning processes and outcomes of HE Design students, as CoP members of a self-formed organic CoP that was extended for the purposes of this research, through the addition of external (industry) members, by employing the Value Creation (VC) framework to guide our analysis. This seeks to assess the value of learning that is co-created in CoP practice, by connecting “specific activities to desired outcomes” (Wenger, 2009). For clarity purposes, it classifies learning in five distinct cycles, by evaluating the interactions of the CoP, the knowledge capital created, its transfer into the practice, the CoP members' performance improvements, and their reframed perceptions of learning and achievement, as a result.

We then process these VC findings to understand the CoP's effects on the learners' identities. Identity is an integral part of social learning and its investigation within the graduate social capital can thus help derive conclusive inferences towards the quest for its viability in today's fast moving industries (Wenger, 1998).

This study is primarily guided by the following questions:

RQ1: What types of learning are facilitated through membership in a technology-supported cross-organizational CoP, as classified by the Value Creation framework?

RQ2: How does membership in a cross-organizational CoP impact the learners' identity, as a constitutive part of learning and future professional viability?

The primary focus of this work is to report its findings, exclusively from a learner's perspective. It hence employs the VC framework, which principally investigates phenomena related to learners and learning. While other perspectives (i.e. industry stakeholders) can help draw a more conclusive picture of the cross-organizational learning potential, they fall under a larger scope of research and are investigated in a different body of work.

Section snippets

Communities of practice

Communities of Practice (CoPs) (Wenger, 1998) originate from apprenticeship and situated experience theories (Herrington & Oliver, 2000; Lave, 1991). Learning in CoPs presupposes a practice with three constitutive components: joint enterprise (common cause), mutual engagement, and shared repertoire (common vocabulary, resources), which constitute the community a “living curriculum” (Wenger, 1998). Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP), that is, the entry and gradual enculturation of

Participants

38 third-year (in a four-year course) undergraduate students participated in the study, while attending the Web Design and Development (WDD) I module (13-weeks - semester 1). The students (age range 21–24, M = 22.4) were divided by registration into two groups (G1, N = 21 and G2, N = 17) based on their direction (G1:Multimedia, G2:Graphic Arts). Students had previously followed the same curricula and their GPAs - on a scale of 10 - (G1: M = 7279, SD=,912), (G2: M = 7260, SD=,565) bore no

Data analysis

Transcribed qualitative data was formatted and imported into NVivo, a Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS). We used a thematic analysis method in two coding phases. Specifically, the initial phase of reviewing and coding adopted a structural coding method. This method provided a way to categorize text segments by topic, according to the questions asked during the data collection, as a semantic (explicit, surface meaning) approach (Braun, Clarke, Hayfield, & Terry, 2019;

Results based on the value creation framework

The original CoP authors (Wenger, 1998) assert that the value of the VC framework lies in its ability to detect particular indicators in the narratives that match specific cycles of VC. Combining the two helps create a robust picture of the value of learning in CoPs. In this study we provide a detailed analysis of findings investigated through the lens of the five VC cycles. We also include tables at the end of each cycle section, to summarize a) the relevant indicators suggested by the

Discussion

In this work we set out to understand and analyze the value of learning, enabled through participation in a cross-organizational CoP by reporting on categorized findings based on the VC Framework (RQ1). In doing so, we also performed a first-time validation of the cross-organizational model in the HE Design and relevant fields, in purpose of equipping young graduates with creative and social aptitude and thus, work-readiness for their forthcoming transition to the industry.

We begin with

Conclusion

The objective of this work was to assess the value of learning and effects on learner identity, as the result of participation in a technology-supported, cross-organizational CoP in Higher Education Design studies.

Using the Value Creation framework, findings were classified based on five distinct cycles. The abundant learning and collaboration exchanges, through full and peripheral participation indicate sound immediate learning value. A shift in learner perspectives, the emergent

Declaration of interest

This work has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No. 739578 and the Government of the Republic of Cyprus through the Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy.

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