Exchanging cultural heritage knowledge, communicating cultures and participating in community through a virtual community of practice

Abstract: Purpose: The reason behind this study comes from the numerous difficulties and challenges that have affected promoting the cultural integration of Syrian immigrant craftsmen and decreased their opportunities for practicing their crafts in Sweden. Thus, the main aim of this study is to explore these challenges that eased up their integration and also hindered entering the Swedish labor market from Syrian craftsmen’s experiences to provide potential solutions to real obstacles through participating in an interactive online community of practice. These obstacles are not identified yet, for that reason, this study aims to identify gaps to cultural integration and practising professional work through involving online communities of practice central structural features and dimensions to overcome real obstacles in Sweden. The focus will be on the concept of cultural integration embodied in exchanging cultural heritage handicrafts knowledge and skills by Syrian and Swedish craftsmen through interactive online communities to overcome real barriers to cultural integration and practicing professional work in Sweden. Theory: This study follows the notion of the community of practice principles (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and Wenger’s (2000) social theory of learning. These theories stress the role of social practices and active participation of members in a community who share the same concerns as a means to promote knowledge acquisition, which consequently leads to personal and professional development. Design based research is another theory adopted since this research aims to provide design recommendation for the online community of practice platforms that is based on participants' needs to overcome real barriers to cultural integration and practising professional work in Sweden. Method: In-depth online interviews and online written questionnaire Results: Through exploring Syrian immigrants' craftsmen motives, activities and impacts of utilizing interactive online communities to overcome real barriers to cultural integration and practicing professional work in Sweden, the participants of this study expressed the crucial role of online communities that can play in exchanging heritage knowledge by employing mutual learning and social learning practices. The results also showed that active participation in online communities can produce positive effects on the cultural integration process since connecting cultures can be facilitated by social networks features such as locating relevant people, communicating through online forums, sharing heritage crafts and personal experiences, receiving reviews and feedback, and also receiving multicultural projects offers. Furthermore, involving structural features and dimensions of a community of practice in an Interactive online community might provide substitutional mediums to overcome barriers that were identified as knowledge, skills, environmental and communication gaps to cultural integration, and also to practicing professional work in Sweden.