What is a community of practice in higher education?
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.
What is a community of practice education?
A community of practice is a group of individuals with similar roles and responsibilities coming together to share ideas and best practices. They spend time discussing important topics, asking questions and sharing answers.
What are the different types of communities of practice?
There are four basic types of communities:
- Helping Communities. provide a forum for community members to help each other with everyday work needs.
- Best Practice Communities. develop and disseminate best practices, guidelines, and strategies for their members’ use.
- Knowledge Stewarding Communities.
- Innovation Communities.
Why are communities of practice important?
Communities of practice are important as a professional learning strategy, because they have the potential to: Capture and share existing knowledge to help people improve their practice by providing a forum to identify solutions to common problems and a process to collect and evaluate best practices.
What are the three distinguishing features of a community of practice?
A CoP is organized around a “practice.” Three characteristics or qualities define a “practice”:
- Joint Enterprise. The members of a CoP are there to accomplish something on an ongoing basis; they have some kind of work in common and they see clearly the larger purpose of that work.
- Mutual Engagement.
- Shared Repertoire.
What is community practice theory?
Communities of Practice (CoPs) is a multi-purpose concept. As a social learning theory, CoP considers learning in a social context requiring both participation and reification (making something concrete) in order to make learning meaningful.