Moodle and Web 2.0: Tools for a Community of Practice
The aim of this paper is to present a project to develop a web 2.0 community of practice (CoP) on the management of multilingualism at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) on the basis of a learning-by-working paradigm.
The theoretical framework for the project is based on the work on CoP developed by E. Wenger, and work by other authors, such as Nonaka, Hildreth & Kimble, Cross & Baird, Synder, Brown & Duguid, and Rotta.
CoPs are an innovative solution for producing knowledge in the workplace from a social-constructionist view: members of the CoP contribute through their experience, expertise, and their specific situated knowledge to share best practices. carry out proposals and produce guidelines and reference texts. In the case presented here, the CoP is aimed at building up collaboratively productions of knowledge on the management of multilingualism at the UAB, in the context of its Plan for languages: a strategic pledge for multilingualism, approved last July, and to be developed in action plans.
A Moodle environment prototype has been designed to be used as an intranet network for knowledge management and learning, an environment where the members of the CoP can collaboratively build up their productions of knowledge and share their experiences. The Moodle environment has been organised by topics, and Moodle modules, activities and resources are used to build up and share knowledge production. Besides Moodle native resources, web 2.0 tools have also been used.
Keywords: E-Learning, Community of Practice, Knowledge Management
Assistant Director, Service of Language, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona