In this chapter, we are going to use Moodle to support an informal community of practice within an organization. This is one of the areas where Moodle's social constructivist perspective becomes evident. Moodle was built to support people working together to learn and to teach each other. In the business community, these informal learning groups have become known as "communities of practice".
Communities of practice are "groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in the area by interacting on an on-going basis".
Communities of practice (CoPs) have become widespread in a number of organizations. Ford Motor Company, Cisco, IBM, and other large organizations have developed communities of practice to help technical specialists working in different branches of the organization come together to trade best practices and collaboratively solve problems.
Research into...