CVEs and Sustaining Functions of On-line Tutorship

The impact of Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) on communities’ development is a topic still rather unexplored. All the interaction processes mediated by these technological environments are characterised, from both psychosocial and discursive points of view, by absolutely new practices and by the absence of some communication features, typical of face-to face. The “Community of Practice” model, allows us to analyse the growth of virtual communities along the construction of a shared repertoire, the involvement in a common enterprise and the sharing of a mutual engagement. Communities of practice use technology in social and material contexts, sharing meanings about the technology uses and peculiarities through a continuous negotiating process. The analysis is aimed at describing how a community of practice is established in a virtual world where both textual and graphical interactions are allowed. Conversational and quantitative results show: a) how the community of practice evolves over the time, b) the specificity of the interactions mediated by the virtual environment; c) the role of different participants in the management of discourse in interaction, with a detailed analysis of the on-line tutorship impact on the development of the community.