As a team we have talked about how to launch DIVAS community of practice to the stakeholders but we do not know what is going to happen or whether it will succeed. There was a concern about the approach we should adopt to develop and support the community. To announce it to our award leaders is likely to cause problems if the initiative fails to gain support.
It was agreed with the project manager to start approaching the existing in-house communities creators .I had a meeting with Helen Walmsley (E-learning Models Co-ordinator) who runs and supports Models of Best Practice online community. We discussed how to develop a successful community of practice; I took notes of several helpful tips and advice from her.
To be familiar with this subject I looked into relevant books in the library (e.g. Cultivating Communities of Practices) and online articles. I came to the decision for the prevalent approach in getting the community started:
1. Identify the domain of the people, who will have an interest in this community, they are award leaders in this case
2. Arrange a face-to-face meeting with them where we can have the opportunity to explain about the project and introduce DIVAS community of practice and give them a chance to login to the system. The most important activity will be getting to know them more closely, capturing their expectations and requirements of the community and establishing good relationships with them.
3. Let them know about the next online meeting’s subject and date.
However, the plan was slightly changed. It was recognised that September can be a hectic time for award leaders to physically attend meetings because of their involvement with students enrolments and they need to prepare their learning materials for the new academic year, hence the project manager recommended to start with an online event in late September followed by a face-to –face event in Late October.
It was agreed with the project manager to start approaching the existing in-house communities creators .I had a meeting with Helen Walmsley (E-learning Models Co-ordinator) who runs and supports Models of Best Practice online community. We discussed how to develop a successful community of practice; I took notes of several helpful tips and advice from her.
To be familiar with this subject I looked into relevant books in the library (e.g. Cultivating Communities of Practices) and online articles. I came to the decision for the prevalent approach in getting the community started:
1. Identify the domain of the people, who will have an interest in this community, they are award leaders in this case
2. Arrange a face-to-face meeting with them where we can have the opportunity to explain about the project and introduce DIVAS community of practice and give them a chance to login to the system. The most important activity will be getting to know them more closely, capturing their expectations and requirements of the community and establishing good relationships with them.
3. Let them know about the next online meeting’s subject and date.
However, the plan was slightly changed. It was recognised that September can be a hectic time for award leaders to physically attend meetings because of their involvement with students enrolments and they need to prepare their learning materials for the new academic year, hence the project manager recommended to start with an online event in late September followed by a face-to –face event in Late October.
