Summary, April 2021 Core e-Forum, “Community of Practice (CoP): Supporting Cross-Sector Work”
In the April Core E-Forum, participants were asked to discuss Communities of Practice (CoP), consider how a CoP could/should function, and how it might be useful to apply at organizations with distributed personnel. While many participants had little experience with CoPs prior to the e-forum, a wide variety of aspects of CoPs were discussed, including membership, organizational structure, and motivation for forming a CoP. These discussions also identified key areas for continued investigation, including how CoPs differ from other working or interest groups, the decision-making power of CoPs, and the balance between formality and flexibility in creating and sustaining the community. In discussing CoP membership, e-forum participants agreed that enthusiastic support is essential to ensure the long-term success of the community. Some participants observed that engagement suffers when members are inactive or roles are unclear; similarly, respondents also noted that simply providing a shared time, location, and topic of shared…Continue Reading