A community of practice is a group of people who share common concerns, problems or passions for a domain and who deepen their knowledge and expertise through interaction and collaboration on an ongoing basis. More and more people, groups and organizations are looking to develop Internet-mediated communities of practice in order to realize specific goals on informal learning and professional development. Harnessing the perceived values of communities across educational sector requires well-designed settings and procedures to achieve a sustainable level of functionality, communality, collaboration and knowledge sharing. Because current research supports the notion that there is not a systematic theory or a blueprint for design of online communities, this work aims to define a basic typology of various critical elements for successful and sustainable Internet-mediated communities of practice, via a meta-analysis and critical synthesis of related literature.
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