There are a whole lot of new conversations going on. Academics are making time away from rigid school, faculty, campus and discipline silos and are starting new creative spaces thanks to the Communities of Practice concept, known as COPs.

A recent 'metacop' meeting for champions of the COPs concept heard that CQUniversity is fairly well advanced in taking up COPs, compared with other universities.

LINK for larger list view

LINK to the main website for COPs at CQUniversity

In fact, there are already 10 COPs established across the University, with others in development phases.

Names of these new communities range from 'simulation learning' and 'teamwork as a graduate attribute' to 'internationalisation of the learning experience' and 'assessment'. LINK HERE for a list of COPs already established

Metacop meeting participants heard that, while there was already a central COPs website and each COP had access to a licenced Sakai-based web portal, each individual COP would have freedom of choice about its web portal for sharing and communication among members.

Participants discussed use of a COPs budget to enable staff support, a facilitation workshop for metacop champions and possibly some travel, to help encourage further COPs across the CQUniversity network.

COPs advocate Associate Professor Peter Reaburn says it's important to focus on the 'what's in it for me?' factor, as academics already have busy lives.

Peter says COPs can be big or small, intensive or casual ... they are an organic entity designed to share practice and build knowledge, for the benefit of all participants, and should not be confused with teams or task forces.

CoPs create a social fabric for learning - to share practice and build capacity, use each other as sounding boards and build on each other's ideas. They often help members share a passion and sense of identity.

"Anyone can join an exisiting COP and they can contact the champion  for the COP they are interested in," he says. "People can also start a new COP and they can contact us for details and support."

Elements of communities of practice include:

• A domain of knowledge that creates a common ground and sense of common identity
• A community of people who care about the domain and create the social fabric of learning
• A shared practice developed to become effective in the domain