#5Communities of Practice

Collaborative intelligence in the digital age is about the construction of knowledge with the support of fellow humans and technology. Dr. Bill Pope references Sir Isaac Newton: what we are doing is we are standing on the shoulders of giants. We are producing work that has been socially inherited. One works “as a collaborative player in a knowledge environment” (Pope). An example of collaborative intelligence found in the world of business would be the automatic speech transcription service offered by the company otter.ai (Markoff). For instance, Zoom provides the otter.ai service as a way to record and archive the verbal speech of a business meeting which took place through video conferencing. In this instance, “the giant” on whose shoulder one stands could be the entire meeting, which is the collective intelligence of the group. The individual members of the meeting could then stand on this giant’s shoulder by using the transcription to produce future work. In this way I agree with Dr. Mary Kalantzis--I see how the workplace could become less of a “zero-sum competitive economy and more of a “help economy” if people stand on one another's shoulders as a human pyramid. Dr. Mary Kalantzis also explains that this collaborative intelligence is motivating enabling one to do good and better work because one has pride in showcasing one’s own work. In my workplace, documents in The Box allow me to do better work. The Box is an app for sharing documents before and after my community of practice physically meets. A community of practice is defined as “a group of learners who are in the process of learning about the same thing.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVTkpEvT_9k The three elements of this community are 1) the domain (or shared topic) 2) the shared activities 3) the shared repertoire including tools and strategies such as how to have discussion or do research. One criticism of the community of practice concept is that guidance is not sufficient. I agree that sometimes more guidance is needed. If my colleagues and I were able to consult the transcripts afforded by otter.ai’s service perhaps we would have more guidance. However, participants like myself may be concerned about too much transparency and not enough privacy. In conclusion, a community of practice allows learners to benefit from fellow learners, and this is the future of work.

John, Markoff. "From your Mouth to Your Screen, Transcribing Takes the Next Step." The New York Times, 2 Oct. 2019. Accessed 10 Oct. 2019.

Introduction to Communities of Practice., You Tube www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVTkpEvT_9k. Accessed 10 Oct. 2019.

Collaborative Intelligence Part 5A:. Narrated by Dr. William Pope, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Coursera Course: E-Learning: Innovative Approaches to Teaching and Learning for the Digital Age. Accessed 10 Oct. 2019.