**4. Method**

During the second stage in the ACCELERA project, which was carried out between 2006 and 2009, the activities centred on analysing the roles of the agents and processes that are involved and take part in KCM in virtual environments. The objective was twofold:


The final sample in the study was made up of 343 people (14 CoP moderators, 28 institutional managers and 301 CoP participants) in fourteen CoPs chosen intentionally according to three criteria: a) they develop KCM processes in socio-educational/training environments; b) their KCM is based on online and/or in-person communities of practice; and c) the participants had easy access to the CoP.

The CoPs ultimately chosen came from the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialised Training of the Generalitat de Catalunya (4 CoPs), the Health Protection Agency of the Generalitat de Catalunya (4 CoPs), the Educational Management Support Network in Latin America (2 CoPs), the Coyahique Commune in Chile (2 CoPs) and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (2 CoPs).

The methods used to gather information included an exploratory interview with the institutional managers, knowledge managers and moderators of the fourteen communities, content analysis of the forums based on the Community of Inquiry model (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2001), analysis of the general operation of the communities, and questionnaires for the participants and two discussion groups with the participation of some members of the communities, institutional managers and experts in various fields of KCM.

All the instruments were devised based on the following measures, which were in turn drawn from the basic dimensions of any KCM process (Collison & Parcell, 2003; Gorelick, Milton a& April, 2004; Milton, 2005; Petrides & Nguyen, 2006, Rodríguez-Gomez, 2009):


3. People in KCM, particularly their competences, motivations, attitudes, beliefs and values: If knowledge is personal and sticky, it is crucial to motivate and encourage the members of the organisation to share, use and create it on a regular basis. KCM is impossible if people do not value the importance of knowledge, are unwilling to share and create knowledge or do not have the competences needed to so do.
