Week 6, 6.4 New media cultures

The New Media Cultures course in my opinion fits into the Community of Practice description. All the students are at the same level, trying to work at tasks in order to pass the course. Using Wenger’s model you can apply NMC unit to CofP. For example, what is it about? The students understand the unit and what is needed of them to pass it. How it functions? The students are part of a mutual engagement in order to pass the course. They work together in the ‘meat space’ time and comment on each others posts, raising questions about each other’s work in order to help develop their knowledge of the subject. What capability is has produced. The students have a shared repertoire about terms that they have learnt in this module, skills that they have learnt together and shared routines regarding timetables and classes together. The CofP will not end after this module; the students on the MCC course will continue to work together throughout their 3 years at university. This therefore backs up Wenger’s thoughts of that CofP ‘do not appear the minute a project is started and does not disappear with the end of a task’. Even though you could argue that the NMC course does fit in with the idea of the organizational practice because of this statement, that once the task is complete the CofP disappears, it is also true to say that the CofP continues with the same group of people through other modules and to finally complete the degree. In the NMC module, there isn’t much of a power hierarchy. As this unit doesn’t mirror other modules on the course the power is much more evened out. The tutors don’t hold usual seminar groups, where they guide the students on the topic, but the emphasis is on the students discussing the topics together. Despite this, the tutors do have some power in deciding the subjects which are going to be discussed and the marking scheme, but a lot more freedom is given to the individual about what points they want to cover in their blog.