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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the value of social learning from group work that emulates a professional community of practice.

A thought piece that first, examines the role of group‐work projects as part of social learning, then outlines key arguments for social learning based upon applying a “communities of practice” approach and finally, discusses the experience of a leading UK university in light of Hoadley and Kilner's “C4P” communities of practice framework. Some reflections are offered to help practitioners and academics who wish to adopt a similar approach.

Developing a communities of practice approach using group work can promote social learning and workplace transferrable skills. The authors discussed five main elements of the C4P communities of practice framework in light of a group project at a leading UK university: “purpose” – to emulate an IT consultancy environment and create energy and results as part of the final year group‐work project; “conversation and connections” – to promote information exchange between group members through meetings, e‐mail, or wikis; “content and context” – drawing upon organisational knowledge and directing groups to improve the quality of project deliverables. Some key reflections include: emulating real world practice helps develop transferrable skills; building membership of a community through simulated teamwork roles encourages motivation; and group leadership helps achieve common purpose.

The paper offers a unique insight and applies a communities of practice framework for analysing and developing group work as part of social learning.

This paper aims to investigate design principles for transforming existing making communities of practice within public libraries into online knowledge-building communities to support youths, families with young children and adult members’ making and tinkering during COVID-19.

Building upon C4P and connected learning framework, the authors analyze existing literature and practitioner reports on informal learning projects related to making and STEM learning, family learning and online learning as well as emergent cases of innovative approaches in response to COVID-19 from public libraries, informal learning institutions and community groups.

The authors suggest 11 design principles around five areas: program design, facilitation, tools and materials, process documentation and sharing and feedback.

This work contributes to the information and learning sciences concerned with community engagement and knowledge creation by suggesting a design model to transform and sustain existing making communities of practice within public libraries into online knowledge-building communities during COVID-19.

The semantic and structural heterogeneity of large Extensible Markup Language (XML) digital libraries emphasizes the need of supporting approximate queries, i.e. queries where the matching conditions are relaxed so as to retrieve results that possibly partially satisfy the user's requests. The paper aims to propose a flexible query answering framework which efficiently supports complex approximate queries on XML data.

To reduce the number of relaxations applicable to a query, the paper relies on the specification of user preferences about the types of approximations allowed. A specifically devised index structure which efficiently supports both semantic and structural approximations, according to the specified user preferences, is proposed. Also, a ranking model to quantify approximations in the results is presented.

Personalized queries, on one hand, effectively narrow the space of query reformulations, on the other hand, enhance the user query capabilities with a great deal of flexibility and control over requests. As to the quality of results, the retrieval process considerably benefits because of the presence of user preferences in the queries. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and the efficiency of the proposal, as well as its scalability.

Future developments concern the evaluation of the effectiveness of personalization on queries through additional examinations of the effects of the variability of parameters expressing user preferences.

The paper is intended for the research community and proposes a novel query model which incorporates user preferences about query relaxations on large heterogeneous XML data collections.

The EarthCube Technology and Architecture Committee working groups needed current information on the development of existing EarthCube-funded projects (e.g. building blocks, conceptual designs, and research coordination networks) to fulfill the goals of the working groups (e.g. gap analysis, use cases, standards bodies and testbed). The aims of this study include a compilation of planned outcomes, an assessment of current work and an investigation of interests in research collaboration among select EarthCube-funded projects.

Twenty-four principal investigators of 24 different EarthCube projects completed the Funded Projects Questionnaire composed of 35 questions in March and April 2015.

The survey response rate was 100 per cent and included a diversity of results ranging from planning stages to early development to final development. The funded projects in this study received awards in 2013 and 2014.

The results are EarthCube-specific and are not generalizable. Suggestions for future research include integration of crosscutting disciplines and perspectives, best practices, guidelines and standards for broader impact.

This study identified potential collaboration opportunities, use cases and gaps (e.g. unmet architectural, functional, operational, organizational and/or technical needs).

The impact on society include an improved understanding of the various EarthCube-funded projects and potential for collaboration within and across multiple disciplines.

This study contributed to the development of select outputs for EarthCube-funded projects’ presentations, Tech Hands Meeting, 2015 All Hands Meeting, select working groups’ outcomes and EarthCube Strategic Technology Plan and is of value to stakeholders, scientists and users.