CoP Facilitators

This page is a space where Community of Practice facilitators can meet, exchange ideas, and share resources. We all have something to learn and something to share; feel free to add / share resources by logging in with your CWL.

Broader Context

What is a Community of Practice?

To start us off, here is a link to an excellent article which introduces the concept of Communities of Practice in clear, simple language. Wenger, the same author, also has this 'Quick start-up guide', a 1-page graphic which includes some critical success factors and the key elements of a Community of Practice.

Brief bibliography on forming, facilitating and sustaining communities of practice

Successful Community of Practice examples

Communities of practice are all around us. Whenever we meet regularly to share ideas, best practices, 'tips' with others who do work similar to ours, we are engaging in a community of practice. Sometimes we call this a 'staff meeting', 'lunch & learn', or 'collab session' - other times we call this a community of practice.

Here we can collect and share examples of communities of practice that inspire us:

• thischangedmypractice.com This site 'delivers quick summaries of impactful clinical studies, clinical pearls and even practice tips relevant to BC physicians, written by BC phsyicians'.
• teambasedlearning.org As the home for an international community of team-based learning (TBL) practitioners, this site is a community of practice, a social network, and an incredible resource for those new to TBL.

Practical Resources for CoP Facilitators

Marketing Tips

At the May 2012 Community of Practice professional development event at UBC, Sukhi Guhman and Michael Wong, two members of the CTLT professional event planning staff, shared tips for event planning and marketing. You can view their presentation here: Event Marketing Basics.

Their presentation gives an overview of the basics of audience, purpose, and tone. They discuss ways to write effective headlines, hooks, and blurbs - using actual examples from CoP meetings at UBC.

Role descriptions and example emails

The following are some emails / examples that CoP facilitators might find useful. Do you have a template that you often use in your community of practice emails? Upload it here or email a copy to ctltcopdeveloper@exchange.ubc.ca.

Co-Facilitator Role Description

If you are looking for a co-facilitator for your CoP, one way to solicit interest is to send an email to community members with a co-facilitator role description. Helpful information to put in that email includes:

• brief review of the CoP
• description of what the co-facilitator would do
• benefits to co-facilitating
• how you anticipate co-facilitators working together
• time commitment

Sample email:

Would you like to help co-facilitate this community?

For anywhere from 3-12 months (negotiable), you, as a member of the [insert CoP name here], are invited to co-facilitate with [insert current facilitator here], the current facilitator. The two co-facilitators work together to develop and plan upcoming community events.

What does the co-facilitator get?

A chance to connect their current work in [insert topic area] to similar initiatives taking place in the University community, and an opportunity to share strategies, resources, and research ideas. You’ll build facilitation and leadership skills as you work to accommodate the interests and needs of the community of practice members. In addition, you’ll have an opportunity to work more closely with CTLT staff and learn more about facilities and resources available at UBC.

What commitment is involved?

On average, a co-facilitator will spend about 5 hours per month. The time commitment will increase when the community is more active, and decrease where there are fewer events. A co-facilitator may commit to a time period of anywhere from 3 – 12 months. Tasks involved include:

• Meeting with the co-facilitator to prepare agendas
• Facilitating community participation at meetings
• Maintaining online space (blog, event listings) with co-facilitator

If you are interested in becoming a co-facilitator of this community, please contact [insert current facilitator here]

Guest speakers/facilitator welcome email

As a facilitator, you often identify members of the community of practice to lead or facilitate portions of the meeting. How do you ensure that these 'guest facilitators' stay on track? The best practice is to meet with the meeting facilitators either in person or by phone before the meeting; however, if that is not possible, here is an example email template:

Dear ***,

Thank you for offering to facilitate our next community of practice meeting! As you know, the community is a collaborative space where we share ideas and learn from each other, and so I wanted to be sure that we structure the meeting to allow time for that sharing of expertise from all members present, once you've gotten the conversation started.

Here's my suggestion for an agenda for our next meeting. Note that I've indicated approximate times here, but these can always be adjusted on the day of the meeting, I won't print the times on the actual agenda.
- Introductions (maximum 15 minutes) - name & department & connection to today's topic
- Your presentation (maximum 10 minutes) - sharing what you have learned from the work you do. This is a community of peers, so don't feel this has to be a polished / perfect presentation - rather the intention is to share the successes & challenges of the real work that you engage in. It'd be ideal if you have a few areas in which you'd like to gain input from the group.
- Discussion (20 - 40 minutes) - I am happy to facilitate this section
- Planning topic/time/etc for the next meetings (15 minutes) - I will be leading this section.

For the discussion portion, let's keep an eye on the energy of the group - if the conversation seems to have reached a natural close, I'll have an activity ready to get people talking further (probably going into pairs/threes to share ideas).

Look forward to seeing you on meeting day. Are you able to arrive about 15 minutes before the meeting starts just to touch base? Let me know if you'll need any kind of projection or other technology.

Regards,

• • • [your name]

Accumulated wisdom: Ideas from UBC CoP Facilitators

Notes from May 2012 CoP Facilitators: Challenges & What Works?

At this meeting, we brainstormed a list of challenges that we face in our communities of practice & matched those with ‘things that work’ in our experience. Three collections of challenges & ‘things that work’ were then taken by 3 different groups.

Group A Challenge: Official roles within C of P (tensions & responsibilities)

This group wanted to focus in particular on 'sharing power' and the 'difference between grassroots and astroturf'

Things that work

• clarifying how support facilitators roles work
• shared power (co-facilitators)
• retaining rotating group of core co-facilitators
• asking minutes-taker to put notes on wiki
• clarify role as support person (‘I’m here to serve you’)
• mitigating conflicts of interest (structural support person)
• planning sessions
• institutional memory carrier – giving new people context
• intervening for participants rather than against someone
• note-taker & poster/sharer roles

Action Items

All: develop facilitation skills Facilitator action: define roles (facilitator, minutes-taker, etc) Mali action: provide resources about what C of P roles are (see this page for a start) Mali action: share resources about best practices / strategies – x tends to mean y, for eg… (working on this idea - clarity/help would be appreciated!)

Group B Challenge: Engaging Community Members

What works

• Being open to changes / changing format / structure
• Make decision to say goodbye to CoP
• Clearly identifying ‘what’s in it for me?’
• Discussing ‘what is a CoP?’
• Facilitators taking a lead role – events
• Member spotlights & sharing stories
• Participants: open to the ideas / journey; don’t have an agenda
• Facilitators: have an agenda, wanting to move forward

Action Items

Mali & CoP Facilitators: clearly link sign-up for CoP on CoP pages (Mali says: I've worked on this further; check out what is there now and see what you think) Have a discussion with CoP facilitators or Mali about when a CoP at CTLT is really a CoP and when it is not…(Mali says: this is an important ongoing conversation with various groups. Should it also be a larger-group conversation, or no?)

Group C Challenge: Members

This group focused on the following aspects of membership:

• new versus old
• how to contact them?
• How to get them involved?
• How to address the needs & interests of both new & old members?

What works

• Exchange ideas, share, puzzles / issues
• Collaboration
• Action Teams
• Keeping discussion practical

Action Items

• Literature / articles listed on the CoP website (literature relevant to each CoP)
• A list of UBC projects related to each CoP on the website
• A list of events / conferences related to each CoP

Community of Practice Bibilography

Resources on Communities of practice (Formation, Facilitation and Sustainment)

What else would you like to see here?

I hope the resources are helpful! If you have other ideas, email Mali at ctltcopdeveloper@exchange.ubc.ca and tell me what else you'd like to see on this page.