Actors & AcademicsDavid Hopes

Digital CoPs and Robbers: Communities of Practice and the

Transformation of Research

• Externalise

• Bottom-up

• Nomothetic

Main Findings:

1. CoPs exist

2. 3 general processes of use

3. Different patterns of use between CoPs

4. CoPs have distinct learning styles

5. Learning styles are mutable

identification gathering evidence

looking

looking more closely analysing detail

reading from the artefact

assessing materials

assessing condition

reading the label

looking from further away

viewing holistically

looking from different angles

touching handling

measuring

opening

thinking

question use

object types

reconciling with metadata

listening

smelling

tasting

digital

physical

0.00% 5.00% 10.00% 15.00% 20.00% 25.00%

6.00%

21.29%

1.80%

12.96%

ActorsAcademics

Identification of the Artefact Using Sight

Identification of the Artefact Using Touch

digital

physical

0.00% 1.00% 2.00% 3.00% 4.00% 5.00% 6.00% 7.00% 8.00%

1.01%

6.09%

1.20%

6.76%

ActorsAcademics

Identification of the Artefact Using Smell, Taste and Hearing

digital

physical

0.00% 0.20% 0.40% 0.60% 0.80% 1.00% 1.20% 1.40% 1.60% 1.80% 2.00%

0.00230000000000001

0

1.20%

1.81%

ActorsAcademics

Frames of Reference in the Contextualisation of Artefacts

CoP Physical Digital

Actors Actor (15%)Character (11%)Play (9%)Production (4%)Maker (2%)

41%

Actor (9%)Play (8%)Production (7%)Character (2%)Text (2%)

28%

Academics Character (2%)Production (2%)Actor (1%)Play (1%)Maker (0.2%)

6.2%

Character (4%)Play (3%)Text (2%)Production (1%)Actor (1%)Maker (0.2%)

11.2%

Actors & AcademicsDavid Hopes