Communities of Practice

Sections of this topic

    Note that the reader might best be served to first read the
    topic Group Dynamics to understand the basic nature
    of most groups and their typical stages of development. (It’s
    not clear at this time if online groups have similar nature and
    stages.)

    Simply put, Communities of Practice are voluntary groups where
    members share a common priority (a problem, topic, etc.) and enhance
    their learning by interacting on an ongoing basis. Groups usually
    are informal and not part of an overall organization.

    Sections of This Topic Include

    Basics and Overviews
    Starting CoPs
    Some Applications
    General Resources

    Also, consider
    Related Library Topics

    Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Communities of Practice

    In addition to the articles on this current page, see the following blogs which
    have posts related to Communities of Practice. Scan down the blog’s page to
    see various posts. Also, see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the
    sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in
    the blog.

    Library’s
    Leadership Blog

    Library’s
    Supervision Blog

    Library’s
    Team Performance Blog


    Basics and Overviews

    Communities of Practice
    — a Brief Introduction

    Communities
    of Practice — Definition and Elements

    Communities
    of Practice (Wikipedia)

    Communities of Practice
    – An Overview

    Communities
    of Practice

    Starting CoPs

    A Startup Kit
    Starting a Community of Practice (fostering relationships)
    Community of Practice: Start-Up Kit
    Establishing
    a Community of Practice to Enhance TTA

    Some Applications

    A
    Social Aspect to Virtual Worlds

    General Resources

    Fred Nickols’ list
    of resources


    Facilitation Library

    CoP Resources
    Tania Jarosewich on Evaluating Communities of
    Practice


    For the Category of Facilitation and Teams:

    To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may
    want to review some related topics, available from the link below.
    Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

    Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been
    selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

    Related Library Topics

    Recommended Books