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Learning and Knowledge-building in Open-source Communities

A Social-experiential Approach

University of Innsbruck, Austria, andrea.hemetsberger{at}uibk.ac.at

Christian Reinhardt

University of Innsbruck, Austria, christian.reinhardt{at}uibk.ac.at

Open-source communities are innovative online communities, some of which have recently attracted increasing attention. The study suggests that members of innovative online communities learn and build collective knowledge through the use of ‘technologies’ and the establishment of discursive practices that enable virtual re-experience. Theories of knowledge creation and learning have been reviewed and a social-experiential view of learning has been applied in order to examine the reflective inquiry processes and collective learning practices. The findings demonstrate that re-experience is enabled by code, transactive group memory, instructive content and discourse, and reflective discourse. The manifestations of learning processes lead to concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation at the individual level. Collective reflection, collective conceptualization, virtual experimentation, and participative practice are initiated at the social level. Empirical evidence is based on an interpretive investigation of the K Desktop Environment (KDE) community—an open-source software project that is administered online.

Key Words: experiential learning • knowledge-building • open-source

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