As soon as I read what Jenkins meant by “knowledge community,” I knew I had to write about my job as a Resident Assistant with University Housing (applications for 2011-2012 RAs are now up and active - the deadline is January 9, 2011). Not only is the job itself part of a knowledge community, there are also several knowledge communities within the position that I have come to know and work with. I like Jenkins’s (and, actually, Pierre Lèvy’s) definition of a knowledge community and collective intelligence as “no one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity” (27). This to me is the perfect description of the knowledge community of Resident Assistants.
As RAs, it is our job to supervise those students living on campus, making sure they aren’t acting like hot messes while they’re in the halls, fostering living environments which offer interesting and diversified learning experiences, and letting everyone at FSU know that there is no such thing as a DORM at Florida State! We have RESIDNECE HALLS!! Thank you very much. :-)
At the most general level of this knowledge community, we have everyone who is an RA at this moment in time, as well as those who have been there before us. Our worldwide, multi-generational RA family has set up several sites on the internet so that we may share ideas, lend helping hands to our comrades-in-halls, and just share stories about our crazy - though lovable - residents. Some of the main sites for this (like SurvivorSucks.com) are ResidentAssistant.com and ResLife.net.
Within the umbrella community of RAs, we are broken down into groups based on which side of campus we live/work on, which hall we live/work in, and even which floor we’re assigned to. We are also separated into other knowledge communities within Housing, such as committees for Staff Development, Alcohol Awareness Week, Student Staff Selection, Hall Ambassadors, and the list only continues. For my wonderful fellow Broward/Landis/Gilchrist staff members, we are constantly updating each other on our committees’ events and goings-on. We even bring in knowledge from/of organizations outside Housing to enrich our monthly programs and help each other and our residents have the best experience we can offer.
The RA position is an ideal example of Jenkins’s (and Walsh’s) concept of an “expert paradigm [creating] and ‘exterior’ and an ‘interior’ […] there are people who know things and others who don’t” (53). The Head Staff know things the RAs don’t. The RAs know things the residents don’t. There is that constant hierarchy of knowledge which Jenkins discusses along with the brain trusts of the Survivor spoilers (39). Most of the knowledge in this hierarchy, however, is at some revealed to those lower on the ladder’s rungs.
Yet another knowledge community which I have had the great fortune of being introduced to is the NASPA (Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education – I have no idea where they got the acronym…) Undergraduate Fellows Program. This is a national program of students interested in careers in Higher Education/Student Affairs (HESA) which offers students a chance to work with professionals at their institution to learn about the various areas of HESA, gain experience in the field, and work with other students in the program.
Within the program there are even more knowledge communities, which are literally called NASPA Knowledge Communities. They consist of a broad range of topics in HESA, offering discussions and workshops in which students from around the country can participate, sharing their thoughts and knowledge on the different areas.
After reading the sections from Jenkins’s book, I am fast becoming aware of the numerous knowledge communities in which I am involved, and how those KCs are broken down into even more specified KCs.
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