Using Gamification to Animate a Virtual Community.

A Community of Practice (CoP) is a group of individuals who willingly come together because they have common interests in a specific area and want to develop their skills and competences by collaborating with other members and sharing their experience. CoPs have been applied to diverse environments, including organizations, education, associations and the social sector, as well as the governmental institutions and international development. A community of practice may emerge from both bottom-up or top-down initiatives and it will exist as long as the members believe they have something to contribute to it, or gain from it. The widespread access to personal computers and to the internet made the virtual environment very interesting for communities of practice, providing collaboration tools and both synchronous and asynchronous forms of communication. However, some differences and drawbacks in the interaction between individuals are also registered in the translation to the virtual environment. Keeping these communities alive depends a lot on the motivation of members, on their commitment and will to participate. Those are not easy to attain and maintain, especially on the online environment. Different approaches have been implemented to animate a community (be it real or virtual) and ensure a high level of communication and experience sharing. Of course, providing a rich and valuable knowledge repository is crucial, but the question is, how to turn passive community members into active participants? In this paper we present three communities of practice with completely different domains and communities (footwear industry professionals, trainers and trainees; innovation and marketing students, teachers and experts; and serious games practitioners and researchers). We compare the approaches that were used to animate the individuals to participate and to be involved in those communities. In particular, we present the results of using gamification as a form of motivating participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]