THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL SOFTWARE ON DEVELOPING COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE TO ENHANCE ADULT LEARNING.

Learning is a highly social activity that occurs as a consequence of social participation and engagement. Communities of practice have proved their positive impact in adult learning.They have multiple functions in adult learning process: to create and sustain an interactive learning environment, to manage life and learning experiences, to build and share knowledge, in few words to act like a knowledge management system.It will be valuable if computer- based environments could support learning mechanisms. Social software can support the development of a community of practice. These results were revealed after conducting a qualitative ethnographic research study in the context of a small community of practice. In the first way, the research reveals that virtual worlds can be applied within small communities of practice. Secondly, this study shows that the usage of social software does offer facilities that support the engagement, imagination, and alignment, the key-elements in adult learning architecture. Thirdly, this study shows that every single social software example (virtual worlds, wikis, blogs)offers its unique contribution to the implementation of the architecture of learning, which results in an optimal combination of services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]