‘Creating an information literate Scotland’

Community of Practice

Lesley ThomsonKnowledge Management Officer, Scottish Centre for Regeneration

What is a Community of Practice (CoP)?

• What it is about – joint enterprise as understood and continually renegotiated by its members

• How it functions – mutual engagement that bind members together into a social entity

• What capability it has produced – shared repertoire of communal resources that members have developed over time

Wenger, E. (1998) 'Communities of Practice. Learning as a social system', Systems Thinker,  http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/lss.shtml. Accessed September 10 2007.

Types of CoP

• Helping Communities - forum for members to help each other with everyday work needs

• Best Practice Communities - develop and disseminate good practice, guidelines, and procedures

• Knowledge Stewarding Communities - organise, manage, and steward a body of knowledge

• Innovation Communities - create breakthrough ideas, new knowledge, and new practices

Community Roles

• Champion/Sponsor - able to envision the services of a CoP over time

• Facilitator/Coordinator - consulting, connecting, facilitating, helping, guiding

• Leader - energises the sharing process and provides continuous nourishment for the community

• Librarian - organises information/data • Technical Steward - understands business needs and

ensures the appropriate tools are available to meet them• Experts - subject matter specialist• Members - without these there is no community;

the essence of a community is its members

CoP Platform

• IDeA and IS support local government improvement by helping councils connect, collaborate and share knowledge

• CoPs key tool for continuous and sustainable improvement

• IDeA commissioned platform to deliver the largest professional networking environment in the public sector

• IS agreement with IDeA to enable use of the platform by groups in Scotland

• increasing use demonstrating how social media tools can facilitate more effective networking and collaboration