Implementing Communities of Practice in Higher Education

Jacquie McDonald has worked with higher education academics designing online and distance-learning courses and professional learning programs for over 25 years. Her experience and research demonstrate the value of communities of practice (CoP) in building the social learning and teaching capacity of educators, and contributing to scholarly practice and publications. Since 2006 she has led the successful implementation of communities of practice at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. This initiative was recognised by a 2009 Australian Universities Quality Agency commendation and 2009 Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) citation. She has led a number of institutional and national fellowships and grants in CoP leadership, implementation and research. She has been invited by national and international universities to facilitate workshops and contribute to CoP projects.Aileen Cater-Steel is a professor of information systems at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). Her research interests include IT service management, IT governance, e-learning, and research supervision. At USQ she facilitates a community of practice for research supervisors. Aileen has led two Australian Research Council Linkage projects in the area of IT service management and is an active researcher in the Australian Centre for Sustainable Business Development. Aileen’s work has been published in many top-tier international academic journals. She has published three edited collections of research articles. Aileen is a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society. Prior to her academic career, Aileen held senior IT positions in the public and private sector.

• Part 1 Profiles of Higher Education Communities of Practice: Case Studies.- 1 Sustaining the Momentum: A cross-institutional community of practice for research supervisors.- 2 The roleo f higher education in facilitating communities of practice to support health professionals practice.- 3 Building a network and finding a community of practice for undergraduate mathematics lecturers.- 4 Communities practising generous scholarship: Cultures of collegiality in academic writing retreats.- 5 Using Technology to Build Engagement in a Global Scholarship of Teaching and Learning(SoTL) Community of Practice.- 6 Researcher preparation for indigenous fundamental research through collaborative participation.- 7 Imagining the world: Creating an artistic community of practice in an academic environment.- Part II Communities of Practice - Curriculum Development.- 8 Enabling stories: Narrative, leadership, and identity in a faculty-based teaching community of practice.- 9 Choosing change: Using a community of practice model to support curriculum reform and improve teaching quality in the first year.- 10 Communities of Practice: A practical approach to enhance student learning at a South African university.- 11 A facilitated Community of Practice: Enabling student success in the blended learning environment.- 12 A Community of Practice for Blended Science and Engineering Learning and Teaching at UniSA.- 13 Sustainability Focused CoP: Enabling transformative education.- Part III Student focused Communities of Practice.- 14 A doctoral Community of Practice: A spatial entity across social media.- 15 A Student-Staff Community of Practice within an Inter-University Final-Year Project.- 16 Learning Value and Identity Formation: Social Learning and the Graduate Studies Experience.- 17 Equity Buddies: Building communities of practice to support the transition and retention of students through their first year at university.- 18 The practice of being a student: CoPs and graduate student success.- 19 The Lifecycle of a Student-led Community of Practice in Higher Education.- Part IV Virtual Communities of Practice in Higher Education.- 20 Meitheal: An Irish Case Study in Building a Virtual Community of Practice in Transitional Times.- 21 Facilitating a Community of Practice (CoP) in the Arts: Connecting online university learning to 'real-world' experience.- 22 The Australian Chemistry Discipline Network - A supportive community of practice in a hard science.- 23 Bringing focus through community: Social learning in online teaching, learning and research.- 24 Practicing the Practice: The Heutagogy Community of Practice.- 25 The connected community of practice in educational technology: A model for future networked professional development?.- 26 International collaborative writing groups as communities of practice.- 27 Principles of Modeling COPs for pedagogical change: Lessons learns from practice 2006 to 2014.

“Religious and theological education readers are likely to glean inspiration, ideas, and implementation strategies that contribute to learning with and from one another in today’s isolating yet interconnected world.” (Anne-Marie Ellithorpe, The Wabash Center Journal On Teaching, Vol. 1 (1), 2020)