We’ve been hearing more and more interest in Communities of Practice (or CoPs) recently, so we thought it would be useful to explore what CoPs are, how and where they might be useful, as well as highlighting some resources. So in this episode we’re going to explore some tips for getting started with CoPs.
Let’s start with what we mean when we say Communities of Practice. Wenger-Trayner et al. (2023) say that Communities of Practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly (p. 11). They talk about CoPs as having three parts—domain, community and practice. The domain is the area of capability that brings members together; something they care about. Community is obviously the people involved and their relationships. Practice is learning from and with each other. This corresponds to three critical questions for starting CoPs: what is the CoP about, who should be involved, and what should they do together?
CoPs can be particularly useful as enablers of change because they create opportunities for peer-to-peer learning and knowledge sharing. CoPs can help break down expert—practitioner boundaries. Because CoPs are all about collaborative problem-solving, they’re spaces where solutions and new ideas can emerge. CoPs provide ongoing professional development and support that’s directly relevant to a participants’ daily work. This isn’t like formal training; as learning within a CoP is informal and can be immediately applied.
CoPs also build social capital and networks that can be useful in the future. Perhaps that’s because CoPs help capture and share practical experience that’s sometimes difficult to document but helps improve our practice. They create space for both tacit knowledge—what we pick up through experience—and explicit knowledge, the kind we can write down and share more formally, to come together in useful and often unexpected ways.
And that blend of knowledge becomes even more powerful when we look at how it plays out on the ground. We wondered about examples of CoPs in agriculture. A farm discussion group can be a type of CoP, that is, when they cultivate farmers learning from each other’s experiences rather than being led by an outside expert! There are also examples of CoPs such as industry-specific technical networks where specialists working on particular crops or farming systems come together to solve a problem or issue.
When thinking about CoPs Denise realised she’s been part of a CoP for a while now focused on Technology of Participation trained facilitators. It’s a group that comes together once a month, usually online, to talk through issues and challenges with facilitation practice, using a Technology of Participation lens. Members of the group take turns to facilitate meetings and whoever turns up are the people that take part. There’s a core of 6 to 12 people that are regular contributors. It’s been really helpful for Denise’s facilitation practice and thinking and she’s really grateful for the opportunity to take part.
John was reminded of a CoP I was part of in the 1990s when he worked for the Queensland Department of Primary Industries. Information Extension Officers (IEOs) had just been appointed, and a few of the IEOs in each business group formed the IEO Network as they realised they were facing similar challenges. With about 20 members, they met face-to-face several times a year, each time hosted by a different region. John reflects that the CoP helped IEOs stay connected across the state, share ideas, and solve problems together. Looking back, it was a great example of an informal, practitioner-led community of practice that really shaped how the IEOs worked.
Based on our experience and reading, here are a few tips about CoPs. When starting or joining a CoP, we need to be clear about the purpose and focus. The domain needs to be meaningful to potential members and a genuine shared interest and need among participants, rather than an imposed requirement to participate. Structure and format are also critical to discuss. We need to decide how often we’ll meet and whether meetings will be online, face-to-face, or (ugh!) a hybrid approach. It’s important to consider how learning will be documented and shared, and to establish some basic ground rules for participation.
Another thing we need to keep an eye on is engagement and participation. Often there’ll be a core group of members who drive the CoP. Others will dip in and out. So we need to consider how new members will be welcomed and integrated into the group. All forms of participation can be valuable, and the CoP should create opportunities for both formal and informal interaction.
For this episode we’ve drawn heavily from a guidebook called Communities of Practice within and across organisations (Wenger-Trayner et al., 2023) This brought together the social learning and CoP research that Etienne and Bev Wenger-Trayner had been doing with the experiences of Phil Reid and Claude Bruderlein in supporting CoPs in their workplaces. It’s also freely available online which is really helpful! We’ve listed some other resources below that we think are useful.
As one of our Australian prime ministers reminded us, life wasn’t meant to be easy, and so it can be with CoPs. We’ve created a CoP for extension practitioners, hosted by Mighty Networks. While we have almost 200 members, it’s been challenging to get the level of interaction we were hoping for, even though we try seeding conversations at various times. We suspect that’s partly because it’s an online community, whereas if we were able to meet regularly in-person, then it would be a different story. If you haven’t done so yet, you’d be most welcome to join our online community, and it’s free!
If you have experience working with online CoPs and can suggest what we might try to revitalise our community, we’d love to hear from you! And, now you’ve read our thoughts, we’d like to hear yours! Add a comment below and tell us about your experiences with Communities of Practice, including any tips and further ideas about it. We don’t want this to be just a one-way conversation—join in by sharing your thoughts and ideas with us!
Thanks folks for reading this Enablers of change episode. Remember to subscribe to our newsletter if you’d like to know when new episodes are available. And if you liked what you read, please tell your friends so they too can join the conversation!
Resources
Bailey, A., Elias, M., Victor, M., Maru, J., & Nicol, A. (2022). Social Learning In Situations Of Complexity: Guidelines For Fostering Communities Of Practice. Available online
Nuutinen, M., Neely, C., García, C., & Avagyan, A. (2016). Guidebook for online facilitators: sharing experiences from climate change and agriculture communities of practice. Mitigation of Climate Change in Agriculture Series (FAO) eng no. 12. Available online
Wenger-Trayner, É., Wenger-Trayner, B., Reid, P., & Bruderlein, C. (2023). Communities of practice within and across organizations: A guidebook. Available online
Hmm, I have been part of an online CoP research group looking at how to incorporate First Nations philosophies in Western Science, particularly around agriculture and NRM. We have been going for 4 years. Incentives: COVID lockdowns, do some informal training, then write some papers about it.
Great, thanks for sharing that with us Wes!