I thought it was interesting in doing the initial onboarding of this course that they encouraged us to join this website - cgscholar. At the time I thought that it was mainly to promote a sense of community and that there is an opportunity to connect with our peers which helps with the issue of retention rates in online courses that are notoriously low. 

On completing the social cognitivism module of the course, it gave me more context and helped put words to the benefits and necessity of social learning. Joining this community is similar to creating a more well-defined affinity space where all the members have some vested interest in learning, knowledge and human development and this website acts as a platform for all of us to share our thoughts. These updates from the users are helpful in producing a collective intelligence that goes beyond the assigned readings and videos. Reading what my peers have shared about the topics gives me access to their unique perspective and background, providing a deeper analysis and understanding of the topic. The quality of the comments and updates directly affects my quality of learning and the knowledge that I will take away from this course. The website also offers certain affordances that allows me to take my participation in the community to different levels based on my desire and subsequent action. 

While the videos on this topic focused more on apprentice type relationships and informal education like wine tasting, tailoring and gaming and this course follows a more traditional format of formal education, some principles of situated cognition and communities of practice still apply. The practice and goal would be to form a written response to show understanding and criticality. Meaning, identity, and community - the remaining three requirement of Wenger's community of practice - could also be fulfilled, although not as directly as in the former examples.