Formation of an Online Community of Practice: An Inductive Study Unearthing Key Elements

Informal conversations occur all day long among employees. These conversations allow employees to share experience such as innovative ideas for performing a task. Internalizing those experiences enables sharing of tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is valuable to business because it embodies expertise. Shared with others as storytelling or "war" stories, tacit knowledge is difficult to catalog and store. A model for connecting and sharing tacit knowledge is a community of practice. Information systems can be used to create, support, and maintain communities of practice in a variety of settings. Analogies can be drawn in the development of informal, learning communities in distance education to the creation of online communities of practice. Qualitative investigations of online interactions in a distance course highlight the development of an online community of practice. Implications of this study are discussed as well as the lessons learned.