Communities in practice: a community dimension for the UNSW Learning and Teaching Exchange

An online learning and teaching exchange, integrating a range of communities of practice with a showcase of good practice, and the tools to develop sound teaching approaches - it sounds a fine venture, but what should it encompass? How will it be framed and contextualised? How will it be managed? And - most importantly - whom is it for, and how will it engage users in a meaningful way, embedded into the context of their current practice? This is not an untrodden path, there are numerous examples of exchanges, repositories and communities developed on a grander scale than the one planned for [University of New South Wales] UNSW, most recently the [Australian Learning and Teaching Council] ALTC (formerly Carrick) Exchange, designed and developed under the auspices of [Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education] ASCLITE. The designers of the UNSW Learning and Teaching Exchange have learned from and built on these developments, with an intention to eventually complement those wider initiatives. Our Exchange will provide an environment for UNSW academics to share their learning and teaching practice and develop their academic career in a local context, aiming to integrate local activities with wider initiatives in learning and teaching research and practice nationally and internationally. This paper draws on the literature on communities of practice and the scholarship of teaching and learning, and reviews some recent online developments in higher education that informed the planning of the UNSW Learning and Teaching Exchange.

Published abstract reprinted by permission of the copyright owner.

An online learning and teaching exchange, integrating a range of communities of practice with a showcase of good practice, and the tools to develop sound teaching approaches - it sounds a fine venture, but what should it encompass? How will it be framed and contextualised? How will it be managed? And - most importantly - whom is it for, and how will it engage users in a meaningful way, embedded into the context of their current practice? This is not an untrodden path, there are numerous examples of exchanges, repositories and communities developed on a grander scale than the one planned ...  [+] Show more