Communities of Practice

When my team formed earlier in the semester, our presentation date felt so far away. Flashforward to this week and all of a sudden we are near the end of the semester! My the time did fly.

I am disappointed that I had to miss last week's presentation on Experiential Learning, as it paved the way for Communities of Practice and it was my second choice topic.

This was such an interesting learning theory to get to research in depth over the last half of the semester. In applying the concept to my own work environments, I find it fascinating that prior to even knowing about Communities of Practice, I can definitely attest that the work environments that I have worked in that have had unintentional CoPs have been better environments than those that did not. In our presentation, the first scenario was clearly from my own work life because I work at Boston University in the Office of Distance Education as an Instructional Designer. Our Director encourages but does not force or require that we seek out other knowledge sharing opportunities and trainings on campus and we typically have informal once a month breakfast sessions, where different people in the office can share updates on a training or any new type of instructional design development they are working on. Not only does it allow information to be shared within our larger team, but it allows for relationship building, so that this type of scenario can continue to flourish.

In my last job, the opposite was quite true as people had this idea that if they shared too much work knowledge, they would be expendable and therefore it was quite difficult to do my job.

During the break between semesters, I hope to be able to read in full the Cultivating Communities of Practice text to see what other insights I can bring to my work environment.