Participatory Forums and the Informal Transfer of KnowledgeUS Army Officers and Complex Records within a Professional Community of Practice

Heather SoykaUniversity of Pittsburgh

SAA 2013

Site of study: Company Command

Questions

• What can a continuum approach reveal about the nature of an information system created and used by a professional community of practice?

• What is the role of records in actively creating and sustaining this community?

• What can this case study reveal about the records continuum model?

Frameworks

• Records continuum model (Upward, 2005): a framework for considering systems rather than individual actors that recognizes that human activity is mediated by communication and organizational contexts

Frameworks

• Communities of Practice (Lave & Wenger, 1999): groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis Three defining common characteristics:• Domain• Community• Practice

Social theory of learning

• Social theory of learning (Wenger, 1999) places social participation as an important process in learning and knowing1) Meaning2) Practice3) Community4) Identity

Sources of Data

•Forum and forum posts

•Published versions of forum conversations

•Interviews with forum creators and administrators at the United States Military Academy

•Interviews with forum members

•Selected forum posts published in ARMY magazine on a monthly basis since 2005

•Set of narratives that is complex, mediated, individual, and corporate

•View of war from the edges of the organization

Pilot Test

Recordkeeping Vector

Evidential Vector

Transactional Vector Auth

ority

Vec

tor

DIMENSION 2Capture Records

DIMENSION 3Organise

Recordkeeping Regime

DIMENSION 4Ensure Societal

Memory

DIMENSION 1Document

Accountable Acts

ACTS

Collective Memory

Organisational/Individual Memory

Evidence

Representational Trace

[Archival] Document

Records

Archive

Archives

Insti

tutio

n

Org

anis

ation

Uni

t(s)

Acto

rs Acts

Activities

Functions

Purpose

Records Continuum

Emerging Themes

• Micro/macro level impact that can be mapped using the records continuum as a framework

• Impact of records on the formation, sustainability, and growth of community

• Use of knowledge management as a community records practice that contributes to formation of identity

Thank you!

Heather Soykahas76@pitt.edu