Communities of Practice at the University of Greenwich

What do we mean by Community of Practice (CoP)?

Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) introduced the notion of communities of practice in their book Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. They highlight however, that the COP notion has been around since human beings chose to group together and form societies. Therefore, their definition of a CoP is defined as ‘a model of situational learning, based on collaboration among peers, where individuals work to a common purpose, defined by knowledge rather than task’ (Wenger, 1996). Wenger’s work on the development of the CoP illustrates how learning occurs through a social network and what are the impacts are of such learning.

It is via the process of sharing information and experiences within the group that the members learn from each other, and have an opportunity to develop their own knowledge and skills.(Lave and Wenger, 1991)

Communities of practice are voluntary; what makes them successful over time is their ability to generate enough excitement, relevance and value to attract and engage members.(Wenger et al. 2002, p.1)

Greenwich Connect encourages and supports COP at the university. Recently a common theme in technology enhanced learning has emerged that consequently lead the GC team to facilitated our first CoP coffee meeting on the 17th of July. The theme for the first meeting was “Flipped Classroom approaches”. During the meeting a number of topics were discussed: the pedagogy underpinning flipped classroom approaches; ways of ensuring students’ engagement; ways of dealing with material preparation for larger groups; brainstorming activities during the “contact time”, etc. The feedback after this informal meeting was very positive and all participants mentioned that they will introduce this approach in their practice/ develop their current flipped approach. Above all, participants bounced ideas off each other and showed interest in staying in touch and collaborating.

To take things further, the Greenwich Connect team have created a space on the Basecamp online software that provides UoG staff interested in flipped classroom approaches with somewhere to share their thoughts/concerns and possible resources. Please let us know if you would like to join this community, via greenwichconnect@gre.ac.uk.