I work for an international public company which is engaged in the stimulating task of adopting an Agile process for software envisioning and development. We have become a community of practice as we share and learn from one another. Together, we are looking at questions such as: What Agile techniques work for us and which don't? How does the Agile process change the way we work together? What do we know we know? What are our best practices?
This is social learning, or informal learning, and everyone in the community of practice can join in.
Can we apply the 90-9-1 rule to an online environment, such as our company's wiki, where a community of practice meets every day for social learning? A casual review of who's contributing to our corporate wiki seems to add credence to the 90-9-1 rule, for it is the same small number of people who are contributing to the wiki, day after day.
Does a person's participatory role change over time?
Is "lurking" a bad thing?
Is lurking a bad thing?
Wenger describes the concept of legitimate peripheral participation as the process by which newcomers become experienced members and eventually old timers of a community of practice. They start by engaging in low-risk, basic activities (like reading someone else's wiki post). This is a way that newcomers become acquainted with the tasks, vocabulary, and organizing principles of the community.
As I examine the patterns of participation in our company's Agile community of practice, my goal is to uncover the rhythms of participation, to see if those newcomers become inbound, heading toward full participation. I wonder if I can unveil the ways in which this participatory role change can be facilitated by the "insiders". I am interested to discover if we have "boundary" members, and how they behave. And what are the signs that someone is in the process of becoming "outbound"?
This entry was posted in Agents and interactions, Learning and tagged 90-9-1 rule, Agile, Communities of Practice, Community of Practice, Etienne Wenger, Jakob Nielson, legitimate peripheral participation, participation inequality by Joanna Wiebe. Bookmark the permalink.