As I was meandering through Etienne Wenger’s website (which is well worth a visit if you want to explore Communities of Practice further) last week I came across his thinking around levels of participation and I thought it was a really useful approach for exploring the different ways people get involved with social learning. I use something similar as a means of mapping different stakeholders and their proximity, or otherwise to a project or organisation.
You will pretty much always have a small energised core of committed people who are actively engaged and help keep the community going. Around them will be a collection of people who are actively involved although I think it is interesting that Etienne points out that they may not necessarily all hold the same view of the purpose of the community. Certainly, when I have evaluated collaborations it is not unusual for people to share a commitment but to have differing perspectives as to the aim of the collective.
People may be in the outer layers because they are new to the community, or they are more comfortable interacting when they have something specific to offer. They may also move in and out of different levels of participation. The point is you don’t have to put lots of energy into driving everyone towards the core.
Reflecting on levels of engagement is a useful way of thinking about any collective activity, from online groups to community projects, inevitably you are going to get some people who participate more actively than others. It is a good way of thinking about where you put your focus and that it is alright for people to be in different places, the thing to be aware of is a weak core or over-active engagement. Some other things to look out for include:
- Being mindful when a Community of Practice overly reflects levels and power relationships outside the community
- Noticing if there is little movement between the layers
- Members that may be being marginalised
- Core members becoming overwhelmed or feeling unduly responsible for the community
- A lack of diversity of perspectives
Some of the most interesting Communities of Practice I have been part of are those that cross sectors, disciplines and cultures. I once participated in a three country programme that explored the use of creative practices as part of non-routine organisational change initiatives. The contributions from the French team often involved showing us films of workers campaigning in the streets and sabotaging factories. This was part of the strand on restructuring and the English team was completely bemused by the French contributions at the time, but we came to learn a huge amount about employee relations in France. As well as the power of documentary artistic practice for telling the stories of those who are often ignored. Anyway, I digress!
There are several questions that might be helpful to consider:
- Are people’s levels of engagement where I expect them to be?
- If the engagement is not what I anticipated is that because my assumptions were misplaced or is there something that needs addressing in the community?
- Might there be opportunities to engage people more?
- Do we have all the transactional participants we need? Are there any gaps?
- Are people able to move freely between the layers?
- Does the core group reflect a particular power relationship to the other layers?
- Is the core group representative of the community as a whole?
Note that people will move in and out of these categories over the life of a community. Interactions and knowledge flows between these constituencies create many opportunities for learning and are a sign of community health. Different types of participants in a community of practice have different perspectives, needs, and ambitions. (Etienne Wenger)