Remedial Boundary Work and Gatekeeper Centrality in a Virtual Entrepreneur Community

Virtual communities of practice invoke novel forms of boundary work that are newly visible via publicly recorded discourse and failure narratives. This boundary work has critical implications for occupational knowledge, membership, and stratification. Building on social exchange theorization of network gatekeeping, the author tests the assumption that centralized peers are more competitive gatekeepers, in that they react more negatively to remedial narratives. The author tests this theory using empirical data from a virtual entrepreneur community on Reddit. The author finds that a peer’s tenure in the community network is directly related to exclusive, competitive boundary work of remedial members. However, by looking beyond the network structure to the content of the tie, the author finds that exclusive boundary work is not as impactful as inclusive, collaborative boundary work in this open network setting. The author builds on relational cohesion and exchange commitment theory to explain how remedial practitioners circumvent central community gatekeepers through failure narratives that provoke empathy from peripheral peers who experience higher uncertainty than core peers. Understanding these dynamics is critical to promoting recovery from failure and vitality of the community of practice.

A virtual community of practice to support physician uptake of a novel abortion practice: A mixed methods case study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Virtual communities of practice (VCoPs) have been used to support innovation and quality in clinical care. The drug mifepristone was introduced into Canada in 2017 for medical abortion. We created a VCoP to support implementation of this medical abortion practice across Canada. OBJECTIVE To describe the development and utilization of the Canadian Abortion Providers Support-Communauté de pratique canadienne sur l’avortement (CAPS-CPCA) VCoP and explore physicians’ experience with CAPS-CPCA and their views on its value in supporting implementation. METHODS This was a mixed methods intrinsic case study of Canadian clinicians’ utilization and perceptions of the CAPS-CPCA VCoP during the first two years of a novel practice. We sampled both physicians who joined the CAPS-CPCA VCoP, and those who were interested to provide the novel practice but did not join the VCoP. We designed the VCoP features to address known barriers to implementation of medical abortion in primary care. Our secure on-line platform allowed asynchronous access to information, practice resources, clinical support, discussion forums and email notices. We collected data from the platform, surveys of physician members, and interviews with member and non-member physicians. We analyzed descriptive statistics for website metrics, physician characteristics and practices, and their use of the VCoP. We used qualitative methods to explore their experiences and perceptions of the VCoP. RESULTS From January 1, 2017 to June 30, 2019, 430 physicians representing all provinces and territories in Canada joined the VCoP. Of the 222 who completed a baseline survey, 70.3% were family physicians, 80.2% were female and 35% had no prior abortion experience. Twelve months after baseline, 77.9% of those surveyed had provided mifepristone abortion and one-third said the website was helpful or very helpful. Logging into the site was burdensome for some, but members valued downloadable resources (eg. patient information, consent forms, clinical checklists), and found email announcements helpful for keeping up to date with changing regulations. Few asked clinical questions to the VCoP experts, but members felt this feature was important for isolated or rural providers. Information collected through member polls about regulatory barriers to implementation was used in the project’s knowledge translation activities with policymakers to mitigate those barriers. CONCLUSIONS A VCoP developed to address known and discovered barriers to uptake of a novel medical abortion method was successful in engaging and supporting physicians from across Canada to implement this practice, including many with no prior abortion experience. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT RR2-doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2018-028443

Virtual communities of practice to improve clinical outcomes in healthcare: protocol for a 10-year scoping review

IntroductionVirtual communities of practice (VCoPs) use a common online platform to provide healthcare professionals with the opportunity to access highly specialised knowledge, build a professional support network and promote the translation of research evidence into practice. There is limited reporting of how best to design and administer VCoPs within healthcare organisations. The primary aim of this scoping review is to identify the best methods used to establish and maintain VCoPs. Findings shall be used to develop a flexible framework to guide the establishment and facilitation of a VCoP for healthcare professionals to ensure the translation of falls prevention clinical guidelines into practice.Methods and analysisA five-stage scoping review process will be followed based on Arksey and O’Malley’s framework and refined by the Joanna Briggs Institute Methodology. An initial limited search of PubMed and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature will identify relevant studies and assist with search term development. This will be followed by a search of five online databases to identify papers published from January 2010 until November 2020. Papers will be independently screened by two reviewers, and data extracted and analysed using a reporting framework. Qualitative data will be analysed thematically and numerical synthesis of the data will be conducted.Results and disseminationThe results of this scoping review will highlight the best ways to design and manage VCoPs in healthcare organisations. The findings will be presented at relevant stakeholder workshops, conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals.

STEAM Education Using Design Thinking Process Through Virtual Communities of Practice (STEAM-DT-VCoPs)

These objectives of the study are 1) to design STEAM education using Design Thinking Process through Virtual Communities of Practice (STEAM-DT-VCoPs), and 2) to evaluate the designed STEAM-DT-VCoPs. It divides the research procedures into two phases. The first phase is to design STEAM-DT-VCoPs, and the second phase is to evaluate the STEAM-DT-VCoPs. The sample group of this study comprises fourteen experts selected by purposive sampling. The arithmetic mean and standard deviation analyzed data. The research findings are: 1) The STEAM-DT-VCoPs comprise three steps are 1.1) the role of virtual communities of STEAM practice 1.2) Design Thinking Process through Virtual Communities of Practice, and 1.3) the various disciplines in STEAM education. 2) The experts agree that STEAM-DT-VCoPs is the highest level of appropriateness.

Improving the Quality of Life of Family Caregivers of People with Alzheimer’s Disease through Virtual Communities of Practice: A Quasiexperimental Study

Caring for a person with dementia burdens family caregivers, and there is a close negative relationship between this burden and their quality of life (QoL). Research suggests that caregivers’ main needs are information and training about the disease and support from others experiencing the same situation, and Internet interventions hold considerable promise for meeting these needs. Virtual communities of practice (VCoPs) are Internet frameworks to share knowledge where members collaborate and achieve a sense of trust in the community. This paper seeks to evaluate the impact of participating in a VCoP (developed through an App) on the QoL of caregivers to people with Alzheimer’s. Results show QoL before and after the intervention changed significantly. The impact of VCoP on caregivers’ overall QoL is moderated by age and relation with the person with Alzheimer’s, specifically those over 65, and spouses. VCoPs allow interaction and knowledge sharing among caregivers which provide them mainly with information and support from peers helping them to meet their needs. Furthermore, caregivers’ QoL did not decrease when their relative deteriorated functionally, which could be due to the participation in VCoP. Although we found significant pre- and post differences in caregivers’ health literacy, we must report the ambiguous result that this variable only impacts on QoL’s physical domain. Participants also reported that they had a positive experience because the App was perceived to be a useful tool, because they could manage their own participation and they met peers and felt less lonely. Results suggest that participation in a VCoP impacts positively on caregivers’ QoL.

Key factors in Knowledge Sharing Behavior in Virtual Communities of Practice: A Systematic Review

Virtual Communities of Practice (VCOP) are environments widely recognized as knowledge management instruments, and their sociocultural contributions are being incipiently valued. However, VCOPs are complex participation contexts due to their sociotechnical and sociocultural nature. Participation mechanisms, particularly Knowledge Sharing Behavior (KSB), have been studied from heterogeneous theoretical foundations and practical research methods. Therefore, a wide dispersion of factors and dimensions has been identified. This paper aims to present an overview that summarizes and systematizes the key drivers of KSB in VCOPs. This paper presents a systematic review of KSB in VCOPs, based on 42 studies retrieved from WOS, SCOPUS and Science Direct. The review was conducted using the PRISMA model. The selection and qualitative synthesis of articles was enriched using Nvivo for coding and analysis of the full text documents. The results suggest that KSB in VCOPs have a multidimensional and multifactorial character that includes personal, interpersonal, contextual, and technological factors. The typology of factors presented could serve in academic settings to conduct new theoretical or empirical research, or in practitioner settings to implement VCOPs in institutions across diverse sectors. New assessment instruments of KSB in VCOPs could be based on this typology.