Many of the CoMs (Community of Mentors) team took an early morning drive to Whyalla on 30th May to launch this new project in company with the other Spencer Cultural Awareness Project. Two of our number, including State LearnScope Manager, Marlene Manto, caught a delayed flight from Adelaide – delayed as the previous plane had hit a kangaroo on the Whyalla runway the night before. There had been no injuries to passengers – the same could not be said about the kangaroo or the plane.
Whyalla Campus Manager, Lyndon Giles welcomed the group, and after wishing us well, handed the formal introductions to Marlene, who filled us in on the ‘bigger picture’, ensuring that we have gained more familiarity with the Framework agenda, and where LearnScope has influenced the goal of Creative Capable People through its projects, building on the capabilities of practitioners and staff in the area of flexible learning.
The key objectives of this initial workshop were to:
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Officially launch the project
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Meet and network with other members of the project
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Determine some mentoring relationships, and look at how we might pair people
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Learn more about, and see how we might build our own Community of Practice to support these mentors.
Marlene, as a key proponent of the advantages of Communities of Practice through her research and studies as a 2002 Flexible Learning Leader, took us through a discussion of what makes a community, some of its elements and how it can be nurtured, nourished and developed. She differentiated between communities of interest (such as sporting groups, clubs etc), and developed her theme to show us that a Community of Practice is generally more specific. A Community of Practice, according to Ettienne Wenger has three key elements:
- Domain – there must be a common ground
- Community – the socialising, collegiate relationship between participants must be nurtured. They must trust each other, in order to share ideas, and work together to solve problems together and network across teams and business units.
- Practice - this involves the processes and means by which the participants share skills and knowledge, and accumulate and disseminate new knowledge.
As a result of the discussion within the various groups, we drew up a chart reflecting how we might view our Spencer Community of Mentors. I have attached the result of one of the group’s brainstorming activities. There were four different set of charts drawn up, each reflecting similar themes which will help us determine just what our Community of Mentors might look like.
We were then introduced to the Port Augusta Learning Community through Steve Fawcett, who gave us an insight into this very dynamic community, its development and current standing. This gave us an opportunity to compare this larger community with our proposed smaller one.
The day left us to drive home again re-invigorated for the challenges ahead, and eager to embrace this new LearnScope Project.
The Project Team for the Spencer CoMs includes:
Annette Kirby – Project Sponsor
Anna Papazoglov – Project Manager
Margaret Granger – Project Facilitator
20 staff from across the wide expanse of Spencer, spanning different campuses and workgroups. This project aims to provide a working example of sharing knowledge through networking, collaboration and the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to overcome the challenges of distance and isolation.
I assume that the 20 staff across Spencer have some sort of mentoring role with other staff. Perhaps you could give a few more details about how this mentoring relationship is intended to work?
We are currently at the stage of developing the Mentor/Mentee pairings, and developing the Community of Practice as the means of embracing the whole group.