Developing Communities of Practice (CoPs): Lessons learned from teaching with Wikipedia

While advances in knowledge production have offered rich resources for classroom content and how to deliver it to learners, instructors still encounter challenges in developing communities of practice (CoPs) in an e-learning environment. Teaching novice learners to become professional experts within a community with a shared purpose and who are dispersed geographically can be designed, but requires deliberate effort. Using Wikipedia’s editing feature as an example, this article explores how to establish CoPs in e-learning spaces.