Joining with my morning coffee in-hand and happy to be an early contributor to the conversation! (the early bird gets the tweet?)
Community around open education is going to be a key theme for me over the MOOC. I've been co-chairing an Open Education (OE) Working Group at my institution and community (surprise, surprise) is coming out as one of the main themes - mainly that we need more of it. So I really appreciated the reading and the way it explored sustainability of community within the "Institution"
I am curious to hear from others how they have engaged or fostered a community of practice within that institutional context. What has worked? What hasn't? What do you consider to be the key elements to a thriving community of practice?
Here's my own initial attempt:
- What works? facilitated opportunities to come together so that faculty can see tangible ways to engage while being encouraged to be valued contributing members, not simply observers
- What hasn't? the community ownership over it's own leadership - meaning, that I've seen CoPs fail because they were overly facilitated or the facilitation didn't take up within the community such that there was greater ownership. If it comes down to one person to set the meetings, send the emails, share the resources, and wait for engagement the community isn't much of a community and is bound to collapse
- Key elements? food, time & space, sustained small opportunities for engagement both face-to-face and online, no obligation but high expectations