(Former) Call for Papers:
Actions and Identities in Virtual Communities of Practice

Workshop at the 7th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW 2001)
16-20 September 2001. Bonn, Germany.

Finally! Here are the position papers

Workshop theme and background

Communities of practice are a hot topic in CSCW and knowledge management as they have been identified as social groups that support effective information and knowledge sharing as well as learning. As the number of physically distributed groups have increased so has the interest in the concept of virtual communities of practice.

This workshop will explore an aspect of virtual communities of practice that we consider important for understanding these social groups. The question is where the actions are in virtual communities of practice. Our focus is the relations between the locations of activity in virtual communities of practice. In particular, we want to investigate if and how it matters that activities in physical space create and maintain interaction in virtual communities of practice.

In order to investigate virtual communities of practice, we need to draw from several research areas. We know from sociology that humans are social beings that tend to form communities and we know from research in virtual communities that humans are able to form such communities in the virtual. We also know that ``communities of practice'' may emerge whenever people work together. However, social participation - as a constituent of communities of practice - is not just engaging in certain activities, such as working in a team, but actively participating in the practices of social communities and constructing identities in relation to these communities.

Such participation shapes not just what participants do but also self­perception and understanding of their own activities, i.e., their identities within specific communities of practice. Apparently, communication and socialisation can happen in the virtual to some extent. The action, however, still happens in the real world when interacting with the physical and social environment.

2 Goals and objectives

The overall goal of the workshop is to develop our understanding of the relations between virtual socialising and activities in the physical world, especially with regard to learning. Potential topics to investigate are as follows:

With the Internet, virtual communities use a medium which is not transparent to its participants. Communicating and acting in virtual communities is to some extent bound to the tools used by the community. Representations of persons, actions, artifacts, the communication flow, argumentation lines, etc. may play an important role in building identities and practices as well as in learning. We are also interested in the interdependencies between the tools (the medium) and the different dimensions of learning (as belonging, as becoming, as experience, and as doing) connected with the concept of communities of practice. And, as a consequence, what we can learn for tool design.

3 Intended participants

Participants should be familiar with either ``communities of practice'' or ``virtual communities'' but we do not expect participants to be experts in these particular areas. The ``action'' issue, in particular, demands an interdisciplinary perspective so that the workshop could benefit from a broad range of backgrounds from cognitive science to social sciences.

Participants are requested to submit either a position paper (1-2 pages) stating background and interest in the workshop or a 1-page position paper and a full paper that is suitable for publication. The position papers will be structured into a number of moderated discussion threads which will contribute to a summary of issues and positions at the end of the panel. Also, the position papers will be made available on the workshop home page. We intend to submit the full papers as a collection for publication. Lawrence Erlbaum expressed interest to publish such a collection.

Submissions (only PDF or postscript) should be sent to the contact address listed above.