A professional community goes online - a study of an online learning community in general medicine

Abstract: The aim of the study is to investigate how an e-mailing list, organised and managed by a Swedish professional association of general medicine, functions as an online learning community (OLC). In a contemporary networked society, people participate online in order to share knowledge and experiences about shared interests. Swedish professional and occupational associations face crucial challenges when building OLCs to support their members as they lack knowledge about maintaining online activities and professional networks that last longer than just a month. The longitudinal empirical material based on postings sent for a period of seven years has been collected from the web archive supporting the e-mailing list. The research questions examine the text -based material focusing on the characteristics of the participants, what they do online, and what they talk about. The analysis of the demographic statistics of participation, content analyses, and social network analyses take their departure in sociocultural theories and concepts of communities of practice. The findings indicate that e-mailing lists have the potential to enhance participation in online professional communities due to the participants’ strict focus on the specialist subject when contributing online. The online activities show that the OLC is more than just an exchange of e-mail, sent back and forth among a group of participants. The OLC becomes an arena for the formation of professional identities that holds the general practice all together. Even if the number of subscribers increases over the years it does not automatically raise the number of contributing participants. The thesis suggests that OLCs can be built upon existing asynchronous tools which are embedded in professionals’ daily work. Design implications derived from this thesis challenge professional and occupational associations to rethink strategies for organising continual professional development in terms of existing infrastructures for participation.