Learning communities are something I have been thinking about for a while, considering: the value; management and best environment.

The value of a learning community is hard to argue against, 'many hands make light work'. They are great for knowledge sharing and problem solving, with advice from a community of shared interests and goals.

Thinking about the communities I'm involved in, each of has different goals, but this does not necessarily mean they can't complement each other:

• Social/friendship community
• Learning Community: Practitioner working in a similar field to myself
• Working community: Colleagues   

Membership is by no means exclusive! There are many people who sit in all three.

However, the management of communities is another matter and has become very dependent on technology or environment used.

Social Community

My Social Community was probably the first to become established and the environment of choice is Facebook (interestingly a technology that came from a Learning Higher Education community at Harvard University). However this has grown rapidly and you sometimes have to question the manageability of such a large network.

Learning Community

Learning communities are different to social communities, but are not mutually-exclusive. There are several types of learning community, in higher education we often are more considerate of student learning communities, which take place within institutional VLEs and other environments.

We also have personal learning communities, my learning community in currently managed in Twitter. Setting up this community has probably come out of considerations and lessons learn't from building the Social Community. As meantioned my social community got large and unmanageable very quickly. With my Learning Community I have been more selective and cautious about its growth. Furthermore, an evolved understanding of Social Networks taught me lesson and Twitter is very adaptable to this, for example multiple user accounts for different learning networks.

The purpose of a learning community is to develop a knowledge and understand of a sharred interest. I my case my learning community is very much focused on technology and educational practice. In Twitter, people often refer to useful websites and resources, examples from there own working practice and there own thoughts and ideas. This has enabled me to build-up a huge bank of knowledge that I would not otherwise have access to or have time to research indepnedently.

Working Community

Once again this is not a mutually exclusive community as many members of my learning community are respected colleagues. However, (and this is really where the idea for this blog post came from) probably the least evolved in terms of the management of knowledge sharing. Knowledge sharing within this network tends to take place in three medium: informal chats in the open-plan office or around the coffee machine, in formally arranged meetings and committees, or email. From these medium, notes and minutes are taken in meeting and emails are archived, but is the knowledge shared? It is this question that prompted me to start considering how could knowledge sharing happen within SSDS?

There I have considered two options:

External Solution

To develop a network in an external solution like Twitter, Facebook or a private social network like Ning. However, although these solution already exist and are established the use of which would involve reskilling colleagues in these enviroments. This isn't necessarily a problem, but familiarity = security. I think my Learning Community found it easy to establish itself in Twitter as we are a community intersted in new technologies and adapt easily to them.

The focus of a Working Community is delvelop new and innovative practice that fulfils the requirments of it's customer, in the case of SSDS the Students of the University of Leicester. Furthermore the innovation often has to be informed by straregy. Therefore with this being the focus you do not want members of the community to be put off by the barriers of technology. Therefore the second option I have considered:

The evolution of the SSDS Staff intranet.

The idea for this suggestion came after a discussion with a colleague about their website. For the public facing version of their website they did not want staff to have their desk telephone numbers and personal (work) email address published. Where i respect the efficentcy of everything going through a central administrative person (PRINCE 2!), this would be frustrating if I was a colleague wanting to contact another colleague to discuss an idea. This is when the idea of a evoloved Working Network within the SSDS intranet came to me.

The SSDS Staff intranet is a secure section of our website only available to internal SSDS staff that colleague and I have been building for a while. It is design as a central point of information for all the members of a large service distrubuted widely over the University Campus. Staff members can visit the intranet to get advice on everyday administrative procedures and find out information.

With the request for less public information about staff on public facing websites, the full contatc details could be stored in a staff section of the intranet. But could this also be utalised as a platform for a Working Network?

Within the staff section of the intranet there would be alphabetised and service lists of staff. However below this each staff member could have a Profile (completed my them) and attached to this profile each member could have a Blog (similar to this). On their blogs staff members could write their ideas (like this one). This would enable colleagues who are interested to read one-anothers ideas and build a community of practice and collaborate, similar to a Learning Network.

RSS feeds from the blogs could be taken to a higher level of the intranet to enable staff to see the most recent thoughts and developments. 

As meantioned previously working networks tend to have a strategic vision. Therefore to give this idea a strategic vison; a former colleague of my at BDRA, a lifelong, respected academic, once gave me a piece of advice:

"to stay ahead in academia, you always have to have an idea in your back pocket"

At the time he was talking about research and getting funding, but I think the same rule applies in all areas of education. Therefore with colleagues collaborating and developing ideas with in Working Network will produce a swelling "back pocket" of new ideas and initotives.