Creation, animation and perennial activities of Communities of Practice supported by ICT

The creation and the management of Community of Practice (CoP) supported by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can be an answer to the need of capitalizing and sharing knowledge for many private or public institutions. This paper describes the creation process and the development of six CoPs belonging to different fields (learning with ICT, education, and health). It aims at answering to two questions: “Is it possible to create, animate and let a CoP supported by ICT become perennial?” and “Do ICT facilitate CoP’s development?” After presenting the main characteristics of a CoP and existing typologies, we describe the Web services used by the CoPs we followed during research projects. The collect of data was based on different methods: observations (e.g. concerning CoP members’ participation to face-to-face activities and use of ICT services), questionnaires, learners’ logbooks, interviews, users’ productions analysis and shared documents. We examine the evolution of each community referring to their objectives and to the CoP’s life cycle. We underline the obstacles and the facilitating factors to act as a CoP. Finally, we conclude, answering our two questions, and providing some recommendations about the management of CoPs supported by ICT.