Value creation: What matters most in Communities of Learning Practice in higher education

• Published in: Studies in educational evaluation Vol. 62; no. September 2019; pp. 209 - 223
• Main Authors: Dingyloudi, Filitsa, Strijbos, Jan-Willem, de Laat, Maarten F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01-09-2019
• Subjects: Communities of learning practice; Community involvement; Higher education; Learning communities; Narratives; Participation; Stories; Student participation; University students; Value adding; Value creation; Values; Germany; Communities of learning practice; Learning communities; Value creation; Stories; Narratives
• ISSN: 0191-491X; 1879-2529
• DOI: 10.1016/j.stueduc.2019.05.006

•Value creation in learning communities as defined by community members themselves.•Combining content analysis and thematic analysis to unravel value creation.•Communities of Learning Practice can enable value creation for their members.
This study examines the phenomenon of value creation enabled by peers’ voluntary participation in Communities of Learning Practice (CoLPs) in higher education, with the aim to extract which experiences of learning community participation are considered valuable by learning community members. The participants were 27 international master students at a German university. Data were collected from participants’ written narratives-so called value creation stories. A systematic qualitative research approach was employed. Initially, we conducted a theory-driven content analysis to classify members’ attributed values. Subsequently, we performed an emergent data-driven thematic analysis to extrapolate the specifics of attributed values by participants. This study underscores the role of learning community members’ agency in value creation, by having community members, instead of external members, define value creation for themselves, as an individual and collective process and “outcome” enabled by participation in CoLPs.