Digital Delights

"In the context of an article on MOOCs I co-author, one of the reviewers raised the question of how networks and communities, in particular networks for learning and communities of practice, are different from each other. Without tracing the complex history of learning in social networks, one can safely say that all of it is rooted in the pioneering work on social learning done by such people as Alfred Bandura and, later on, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. Was Bandura interest in all kinds of learning, primarily formal, school-based learning, Lave and Wenger thank their fame to their development of the concept of a community of practice. The participants of such communities learn by peripheral participationthey claim, that is through their presence in the many professional discussions that take place in the context of the community. Thus learning is social, as with Bandura, but also almost accidental."