Communities of practice: dare to share the knowledge

  • Authors:
  • Debbie Mojta

  • Affiliations:
  • Rutgers University, Camden, NJ

  • Venue:
  • SIGUCCS '04 Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM SIGUCCS conference on User services
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

Communities of practice are not a new idea, but they are being looked at more closely as an important tool for learning and mastering knowledge challenges. Communities of practice often lend themselves to a particular strategic intent for their existence.[6] The Help Desk with all of its ongoing training and sharing naturally lends itself to the purpose of a helping community. An inherent quality of communities of practice is that they connect people across organizational boundaries. By nurturing a community of practice that brings together student help desk staff, user services staff, and system support staff, the Help Desk is able to nurture a knowledge sharing culture that makes the student consultants feel more valued in their work, and willing to seek solutions from their peers as well as across traditional organizational boundaries.[3] The student consultants also contribute knowledge from their unique perspectives. This paper will review the history of our first attempts at developing a community of practice at the Help Desk and the ongoing cultivation process.[5] .