 Dear students, now we are going to talk about another form of online community which is called communities of practice. Let's see the concept of the communities of practice first. Community of practice are activity systems that include individuals who are united in action and in the meaning that action has for them and for the larger collective. So this kind of communities have been created to achieve certain collective goals and the members of those communities know that they are being the part of that particular community are engaged to achieve a certain kind of goal which is the collective goal. So when we talk about the COPs features, COPs are not part of formal systems, they are informal entities that exist in the mind of each member. When people participate in problem solving and share the knowledge necessary to solve problems, it is possible to speak about the generation of knowledge in COPs. So COPs are not the formal kind of community and it's a kind of a community which is created to discuss the common social issues and the collective social issues and through this kind of community network, they try to find out the solutions of those issues they are facing in the community. So the members on the basis of their own knowledge and on the basis of their own skills and expertise try to contribute in these kind of community networks to address certain issues which they are facing as a community. COPs are groups whose members regularly engage in sharing and learning based on common interest and can improve organizational performance as well. So when we talk about the COPs members role in the community network, they actually share their own ideas with each other and on the basis of these shareings, they improve their knowledge, their skills and they generate a kind of debate which can become productive to address their issues which are the collective in the nature. So according to Bob and Duffy, COPs have four characteristics. So this kind of online community network have four characteristics and these characteristics are shared knowledge, values and beliefs, similar member histories, mutual interdependency and reproduction of mechanisms. So these are the four features on the basis of which communities of practice have been created or developed.