CoP

Communities of Practice: Everything you need to know

What is a Work Smarter Together Community of Practice?

“A community of practice is a group of people who come together to build and share knowledge, to build and share skills, to build networks, and to build recognition.”

Put simply, it is a group of people who genuinely care about the same real-life problems or hot topics, and who on that basis interact regularly to learn together and from each other.(Wenger et al., 2002) 

This kind of community might form around a common role or a common task or a common skill set or a common ‘customer’:  it is the interests and focus of the group which shape the community of practice.

What is THE Work Smarter Together Community of Practice?

The Work Smarter Together Community of practice, formed in May 2017, is the group which runs the annual and biennial University events, supports individual CoPs and publishes the periodic WST newsletter.  The shared interest of this group is in celebrating collaboration and creativity in UCD and finding ways to support people who are active in this way .

What Work Smarter Together Communities of Practice are already in UCD?

There are currently several active Communities of Practice, proudly supported by Work Smarter Together:

What makes a successful CoP?

This is a list of what make a successful CoP:  

  • committed core group from a common domain
  • being focused on the work we do here in UCD in delivering education, research, administration and support
  • clear purpose 
  • committed to building and sharing knowledge
  • committed to building and sharing skills
  • committed to building networks
  • committed to building recognition
  • meet periodically
  • circulate news to its community periodically

If you are thinking of starting a CoP, and the above list describes what you are thinking of doing/being, then contact UCD Agile at agile@ucd.ie – it is the University’s support vehicle for CoPs of this kind.   

Click here for Agile’s contact details