The development of an Online Community of Practice is an exciting idea, a wonderful opportunity to enhance industry networks and an opportunity to up skill in IT. What are the Key Steps to implementation?
10 Key Steps to Ensuring the Successful Development of an Online Community of Practice
- Gather together a Community of committed people who have an interest in enhancing their existing network eg. industry partners.
- Ensure that this Community have varied talents and skills – invite some people with expertise to run a workshop for the Community eg. research skills, I T skills, community of practice experience etc
- Write Funding Submissions – great for inviting guest experts and backfill to encourage upskilling and time commitment - we couldn’t have achieved our goals without Learnscope 2003 funding!
- Meet at least once a fortnight f2f when developing the Community Hub to maintain continuity and commitment. We had 10 workshops - the first five were weekly and then we moved to fortnightly gatherings.
- First workshop explore what ‘Communities of Practice’ are through Research and Guest Speakers - discuss how this can be developed into an online environment.
- Early Workshops should focus on up-skilling participants in computer skills and online communication. Investigate Communication Hubs – how they work, how they can be developed and show some existing examples.
- Hold a Brainstorming Session – what content do we want in our Hub; what should our Hub look like (design); how will we use it; how will we keep it going?
- Allow Time to develop, write, redesign and redefine the Hub. This must come from the whole group – they need to feel that they own it and then they will use it.
- Present to other Industry partners and interested parties for feedback eg Networking 2003, Other Learnscope Teams, Australian Flexible Learning Community
- Hold a launch of the Communication Hub to spread the word of its availability. Talk to other Industry Areas about its application in their area.
FUTURE:
Discuss with the group ideas in keeping the Communication Hub going beyond the life of setting it up.
For example: hold regular online chat sessions, meet f2f once a month, continually add content so the ‘space’ is changing, nominate a different person to be responsible for the hub each month etc
this is a great list and all sounds good- and is still problematic to actually put into practice especially once you are dispersed. I think that your thoughts would be valuable to add to the discussion about refining our vision in the main community hub for *this* community of practice. It would be good to hear your thoughts based on this experience that you've had.