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From Harvard business school this text by Dr. Etienne Wenger with its brief outline is for "cultivating" communities of practice.

The author provides seven principles for creating effective CoPs. Each of the principles is detailed throughout the article in an effort to get the most out of your CoP. These principles are geared towards corporations and business but many of them can easily be transitioned into the classroom.

While this article overall is about designing a CoP, I felt it was insightful because it informs the reader of factors that contribute to a successful CoP and the elements required to form one.

In this video, the audience sees first-hand a CoP in action. What seems small, a group of principals across 27 schools are working to meet, collaborate and share. Emphasis is placed on the idea of sharing because that is how individuals and schools will grow. Sharing practice and knowledge plays the most critical part in a CoP.

This study evaluated the CoPs in State Farm Insurance to study various variables and their impact on the effectivenss of CoPs. SOme of the varialbes include level of trust among members, connectedness, member committment, community leadership strength, perceived impact on job performance, and perceived community effetiveness.

This site contains a lot of information about COP and is organized as answers to FAQs. Importantly it covers tools that can be used to facilitate CoPs

This article has a great layout. I appreciated how I could decide what information I needed and click on the questions for answers. All of the information was interesting and useful in order to learn about social learning, communities and networks as well as cultivating communities of practice. Thank you for sharing this great resource.

In this article with an interesting format Wenger & Trayner tackle the frequently asked questions surrounding social learning, communities, and networks. Section 1.2 on Cultivating communities of practice was most helpful to me to truly understand the purpose of COP's by looking at the objectives.

This article mainly summarizes the work of Etienne Wenger concerning CoPs. Additionally the article has an included video discussing the benefits of CoPs in the workplace.

This study shows a very specific CoP example, using geography teachers in New Zealand as the subject of research. In the introduction, the researcher states "mandating professional development services to several hired geography teachers is impractical...and needs to be voluntary rather than mandatory." This statement is consistent with CoPs having membership of like-individuals connecting because of their learning needs and wants. Furthermore, the study shows a positive result when connecting 'distant' people as a cost effective way to circumvent budgetary restraints for professional development.

Communities of Practice need to be voluntary and non-threatening in order for an individual to join. In this study, I like how they set up their Community of Practice so that the individual could join a topic or subject matter group that was relevant to their situation or needs. As teachers we are often placed in professional development training that has no relevance to the needs of our classroom. I also like how they set up a dialogue for the members of the group. Participants not only posted their own ideas but shared thoughts and ideas through discussion with others in the group. It seemed to be less intimidating because much of the dialogue took place online. One of the factors that impacted the participants was time. Just like educators in the U.S., the educators in this study found it difficult to find the time to fully participate in these Communities of Practice and some did not even finish the modules. As a result, dialogue toward the end of the module fizzled out and was less engaging for some participants. That is one of my concerns with Communities of Practice. Sometimes if one is not being forced to complete a project, it does not get completed. It takes a lot of discipline to be part of a Community of Practice and a willingness to be there for the other group members.

This article explained what actually is done in a CoP and it helped me to connect it to PLNs and Connectivism. In a CoP, communities of people that have common goals and interests are sharing, collaborating and discussing ideas, solutions, and problems that have to do with their particular interest/goals. Through these interactions, new knowledge is formed and they are able to continue to gain more insight and advance in their endeavors. A CoP is a PLN and uses Connectivist theory to enhance the learning and networking.

Communities develop through a variety of ways. A table is provided with many examples that help to clarify these ways. Some include problem solving, requests for information, seeking experience, reusing assets, and discussing developments. It is very easy to apply these examples to a variety of personal and professional CoPs.

This article explains why communities of practice are so important for the business realm. In one statement it explained that companies have now figured out that "knowledge = power, so share and it multiplies". This idea is synonymous with connectivism and the idea that in order to gain more knowledge more connections must be made through sharing, collaborating, creating, etc. This article also made the distinction between tacit knowledge that is rooted in people's life experiences with explicit knowledge that is deliberately shared outside of people. This distinction also helped me to really see the reason why connectivism, PLNs and CoPs work so well together. You have a group of people, connected by common interests and goals, that are expanding upon their knowledge by sharing their own collective experiences and goals in effort to connect with others that can share insight, collaborate with and add to their ideas, solutions and questions.

Allee uses the term organizational intelligence to describe how CoPs are becoming more prevalent in the modern workforce. He talks about how he has consulted with various multinational companies to help them create CoPs and to get employees at various levels to share their expertise.

This paper looks at the use of specific communities of practice (CoP) created at McMaster University designed to promote informal teacher professional development (TPD). They found that the CoP's that were specifically created to foster teacher interaction affective, were not only effective but that several additional CoPs were organically created by the faculty during the writing of the paper. They use this as evidence of the effectiveness of CoPs for TPD.

Authors present communities of practice (CoP) as groups with a common desire for change, as providing opportunities for collaboration and reflection, and as catalysts for development of societal products and tools. They note that CoP transcend traditional barriers/demographics and reach groups formed by individual selection. CoP, while also focused on collaboration and dialogue as well as the development desired outcomes, are more open to sharing with the broader community than other collaborative models. Discussion of use of CoP in context of early childhood intervention.

I'm in love with world of graphic design. How many people can say that they teach their craft, I can. That said, I needed to find a CoP that does just that. Although this is from the University of Brighton it provides support with young aspiring graphic designers. 

That is great! I would love to teach more of what I love to do. This is a great article that explores CoP within a specific group of learners interested in the same topic (graphic designing).

This is a fantastic resource to learn more about CoPs, particularly if you are considering forming one. It provides basic info and background about CoPs, but also provides a few examples, and also concludes with some links to external Websites where you can see additional examples of live CoPs.

A short, succinct and very basic intro to the basics of CoP. Gives some background about the theory, and provides nice quotes from a well-known CoP advocate. This wikibook is easy to understand and will provide CoP newbies with the elements of CoP.

SUMMARY: This resource is geared towards school and district leaders to better understand the necessity of CoPs for not only their teachers but also themselves. It provides simple strategies to infuse educational environments with rich resources that lead to growing PLCs and CoPs.

Thanks for sharing this Cate. I follow CoSN and am usually up on their stuff, but I had not seen this resource. I love the fact that it includes action steps for superintendents. Too often that level of leadership is left out, then people wonder why change is not really taking place.

This provides district administrators with concrete steps for building communities of practice that can help educators develop technical abilities. Suggestions include finding pockets of excellence and working with and benchmarking from other school districts.

Video details what a CoP is and how it will work. Also talks about joining existing versus starting a new CoP for what best suits you. I think the video is short enough and to the point that it is a valuable resource for someone who is starting out and trying to find more information about a community of practice.

This blogger explains in his opinion the difference between a PLN and CoP. He admits that they are both so similar, but explains a couple of way they differ. PLN's can be more random, where of CoPs are not. In other words in PLN's people can connect via the web at random or different times to learn something where in CoP's meetings are more deliberate and subject focused. Also, another difference is that PLN are extremely flexible and loose where CoP's have a shared domain.

Summary: This is a site that provides a community of practice startup kit. This site walks through with detail the process of starting a community of practice. The visuals are great, and there is a ton of valuable resources provided. The page is a bit old, "2000" but much of the information is still pertinent today.

Todd - What an AWESOME find. I am just not sure just how current all the information is. Many times the article references the "Winding Down" of CoPs, mainly because this seems to be more of a corporate-type CoP model. As educators come and go from a CoP, I am not convinced it would wind down. Also, this article references the value of the telephone and Convergence since 2000 has increased the values of Podcasts, SKYPE, Google Hangouts, blogs, glogs, Facebook, Twitter, and online chat as nearly replacing the phone. The guidelines posted in the article have a great deal of value. The Venn diagram on page 9 and the indicators of a successful CoP on pp. 9-10 resonated with me. I will be interested to see how they mesh with our coursework.