This toolkit serves as a companion guide for Design Your Own Community of Practice: How to Use the i5 Canvas to Transform Higher Ed.
Community of Practice Leaders' Toolkit
by Bea UniversityRodriguez-FransenDesignInstitute
v. 1.0 September, 2022
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This toolkit serves as a resource as you move through the i5 Canvas, a one-page community of practice (CoP) planning template created by the University Design Institute. It’s designed to help you brainstorm and plan various aspects of your own CoP. You may access a copy of the i5 Canvas template here.
Welcome, Community of Practice Leaders!
4 7 8 Table of Contents i5 Canvas Imagine 33 Inform Inspire Influence Innovate 21 i5 Canvas Toolkit Summary Share Your Story Dyads Values Cards Exercise Guided Visualization & Vision Board Values, Vision & Mission Vision & Mission Statement Generator Community of Practitioners' Circle 16 Team Connection Exercises Online Community Platforms How to Use Miro STORI Method 28 Turn it Around! Cards GUD Dialogue Cards 38 About the University Design Institute 50 Resources & References 51 Just Like Trees 53 Community Rhythm University Design Institute Community of Practice Questionnaire Rotating Meeting Roles Intentional Wellness Pause 48 Collaborating with UDI ASU Principled Innovation Strategic Collaboration Method Events & Convenings STORI Method Tips for Influencing Decision-Makers 44 Facilitation Skills 46 CoP Kickoff Meeting TM TM 49 Invitation to Add to This Toolkit
i5 Canvas
Inspire
What are the principles that will guide your actions in this CoP?
The i5 Canvas is a one-page template that helps you brainstorm and develop a community of practice (CoP). It should be regarded as a "living document" and is not meant to be finalized in one session. You may choose to work on the canvas on an ongoing basis, working on one component each time your community meets. The Values, Vision, Mission and Community Rhythm blocks collectively serve as the foundation for everything that you do in your CoP.
by Bea Rodriguez Fransen
How can you support one another as you re-design your universities?
Imagine your community 1 year from now: what do you see, hear and feel? With your community, brainstorm your values, vision and mission.
What do you want to learn from one another?
How can you become thought leaders? How can you celebrate your stories with one another and the world?
Inform
Imagine
How will you share knowledge and skills and practice them with one another?
Who will be in this community? Who will be your core leaders, and what are their roles?
Innovate
How can you engage decision-makers in the higher education sector to change policies and practices?
Values Community Rhythm
What new knowledge will you cocreate?
Why does your CoP exist?
i5Canvas
How can you prototype and test your innovation before launching it?
Share a short, inspiring, memorable statement on what success means for this CoP.
Vision Mission
What is the meeting cadence for your CoP (schedule, space, modalities)?
Influence
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i5 Community
The following pages include various methods and tools you can use for each component of the i5 Framework, which is explained in detail in the Design Your Own Community of Practice: How to Use the i5 Canvas to Transform Higher Ed. Toolkit for the i5 Canvas of Practice Canvas
Values Community Rhythm
Values, Vision & Mission
Team Connection Exercises
Rotating Meeting Roles
Vision Mission
Values, Vision & Mission
Share Your Story Dyads Values Cards Exercise Values, Vision & Mission Guided Visualization & Vision Board Vision Statement Generator
What is the meeting cadence for your CoP (schedule, space, modalities)?
ASU Principled Innovation
Strategic Collaboration Method TM TM
Imagine Tools
Share Your Story Dyads
Online Community Platforms
ASU University Design Institute
Events & Convenings
Intentional Wellness Pause
Who will be in this community? Who will be the core leaders and what are their roles?
Inform Inspire Tools
Community of Practice Questionnaire
Innovate Tools
What new knowledge will you Howco-create?canyou prototype and test your innovation before launching it?
How can you support one another as you re-design your universities?
Howleaders?can you celebrate your stories with one another and the world?
STORI Method
Share a short, inspiring, memorable statement on what success means for this CoP.
Tools Influence
How can you engage decisionmakers in the higher education sector to change policies and practices?
Tips on Influencing Decision Makers
Tools
How will you share knowledge and skills and practice them with one another?
Values Cards Exercise Guided Visualization & Vision Board Vision & Mission Statement Generator
What do you want to learn from one another?
How to Use Miro
What are the principles that will guide your actions in this CoP?
STORI Method
Values, Vision & Mission Mission Statement Generator
Community of Practitioners' Circle
Why does your CoP exist?
Event Brief Template Event Checklist Template
Turn it Around! Cards GUD Dialogue Cards
Sample Charter
Imagine your community 1 year from now: what do you see, hear and feel? With your community, brainstorm your values, vision and mission.
How can you become thought
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There are many ways you can determine the values, vision, mission, and activities of your community of practice. On the following pages, we provide some examples that you can use or modify according to your style. Feel free to seek other tools or even create your own methods!
Values, Vision & Mission Share Your Story Dyads Values Cards Exercise Guided Visualization & Vision Board Mission Statement Generator Community of Practitioners' Circle Imagine Toolkit
Vision
Purpose: To define values, vision and mission statements
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Values, Vision & Mission
Values
These are the guiding principles that will influence your actions to fulfill your community of practice's vision and mission. To discover your team's values, we recommend the activities Share Your Story Dyads or the Values Cards Exercise.
Mission articulates why your community of practice exists. It is the visible and tangible effect you want your community of practice to create for the higher education sector and the world. Refer to the Mission Statement Generator activity to get started.
Mission
Vision is what success looks like for your community of practice. It is how the higher education sector and the world will look like once you've accomplished your mission. A vision statement should be short, inspiring, and memorable. To guide your team's vision statement, we recommend the Guided Visualization and Vision Board and Vision Statement Generator activity.
This tool is based on the philosophy of Appreciative Inquiry, pioneered in the 1980s by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University (Center for Appreciative Inquiry, 2022). Appreciative Inquiry views the world from a strengths-based perspective, and uses an interview process to uncover strengths and facilitate change in communities and organizations.
Share Your Story Dyads
To identify values of your community of practice, consider discovering the values of your members first. One way to bring these values to the surface is by pairing them up and asking them to interview one another. Provide an interview guide where they can share and document each other's stories, such as a Google Doc or Form. Examples of interview questions include:
After all interviews have been completed, ask each member to introduce their partner and share which values matter the most to them. Aside from generating a list of potential values for your CoP, this activity also provides a way to start building team cohesion.
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Purpose: To discover values of members, while building relationships and team cohesion.
Remember a time in your life that ultimately led you to where you are today. Tell me the story of what happened. What do you value the most about yourself? Your work? The culture of a team you've worked with? Tell me a story that illuminates this value.
Purpose: To collectively identify and prioritize values of the community of practice.
cooperation emphasis on working together to achieve results creativity inventivenessimagination,exercisinginspiration, environment
Share the top 5 values with the group. Discuss whether these values should be adopted, and why. If the group does not agree on a certain value, discuss the other values that were ranked in the top 10.
relationships amongbetweenconnectionsmeaningfulandpeople
Print out the document and create values cards by cutting each text box/defined square.
health physical,prioritizingmental,andemotionalwell-being integrity
Ask each member to contribute a list of values with brief definitions, on a shared document. Use a text box or defined square (see image on the right) to feature each value.
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As a group, generate a list of values for your CoP. As a facilitator:
service
Values Cards Exercise
Ask members to choose 5 values that they believe the community of practice should embody.
Provide each member a set of values cards (print out as many documents as needed).
firm adherence to a shared set of values; walking the talk joy a feeling of pleasuredelight,andhappiness play spontaneity;imagination,theabilitytobeamused
Collect each members' top 5 cards. Rank the top 10 values according to the number of cards submitted.
awareness of and concern for the health of the planet flexibility the ability to adapt to situationsvariousorchanges
You may also choose to do this activity online, using a digital board such as Miro. Members can mark their top 5 values on the board, and the facilitator can count their votes and lead discussions to distill the group's top 5 values.
emphasis on helping others with quality and value trust firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something transformation the act or process of creating a dramatic change in form or appearance
As you gather together in this community, notice what you see around you: what has this community become? What do you hear and feel? How has your relationship with this family grown or changed? How has this community made an impact on your universities and the Imagine,world?
if everything that you just saw, heard, and felt were guaranteed to come true, how would you be sitting right now? What kind of facial expression would you have? How would you be breathing?
I’m now going to invite you to close your eyes and imagine your future as a leader who is part of this community. I’m going to share some questions with you, and I invite you to answer them silently to yourself. Imagine yourself floating through time until you arrive at exactly one year from today: [Date].
Purpose: To activate members' imagination and brainstorm towards creating the vision statement.
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Guided Visualization & Vision Board
Now, open your eyes and take a look at this Vision Board in front of you. Please share what you saw, heard, and felt.
Here is a sample script of a guided visualization that you can use to activate the imagination of your members, along with a vision board sample that your team can use:
_______________________________________ _______________________________________
Step 1: Brainstorm & Answer Questions
Why does this community of practice exist?
Refer to your answers to questions 1, 2, 3, 6, 7.
Adapted from Whole Whale Mission Statement Generator Worksheet 14
Noun: Community of Practice Activity
_______________________________________
Verb: Specific goal
Purpose: To create the vision and mission statements for the community of practice.
(Optional) Verb: Specific goal
Verb: Variation on vision statement
Vision & Mission Statement Generator
your words into a mission statement: We believe in (1) and (2). In order to (3), we (4) and (5). By (6), (7), and (8), we work to (9).
Step 2: Create Vision Statement
Refer to your answers to questions 2, 3, 4, 5, 7. As a group, fill in the blanks below with nouns or verbs you used in your Then,brainstorm.1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.plugin
To generate both your vision and mission statements, answer the questions below as a group: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
What qualitative or quantitative goals are you trying to reach in 1-5 years? What qualitative or quantitative goals are you trying to reach in 100 years? Who is your work serving? Why are you working for them?
Without revealing how, what is our community of practice working to accomplish?
Verb: Variation on vision statement
(Optional) Noun: Community of Practice Activity (Optional) Noun: Community of Practice Activity
What is the problem/s you are trying to solve?
Discuss the statement and revise as needed.
Step 3: Create Mission Statement
(Optional) Noun: Change you want to see in the world
What activities will you do to solve the problem/s?
What purpose do these activities serve?
Then, answer this question in 2 sentences:
The shortened version is your vision statement!
Noun: Change you want to see in the world
Now, shorten what you've just written in to 140 characters:
Purpose: To identify types of members and their roles in the community of practice.
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OCCASIONAL
It is vital that you recruit diverse members: those who have different levels and roles in your university, genders and racial/ethnic identities, ages, introverts and extroverts, etc. The more diverse a team is, the more perspectives and insights members can glean from one another.
Community of Practitioners' Circle
ACTIVE members are individuals who attend meetings on a regular basis. Some may volunteer to participate in committees or special projects.
In some CoPs, core leaders choose to create a charter. Charters can describe the CoP's purpose, mission, membership benefits, meetings, a roster of the leadership team and their roles, role descriptions (President, Vice President, Communications, Recruitment, Networking, Training, etc), and procedures on how to amend the charter. In more established CoPs, members vote for officers or leaders who serve a two-year term, or some other time period that makes sense for the community.
OCCASIONAL members are individuals who sporadically participate in activities of the community of practice.
CORE ACTIVE
Typically, communities of practice have the following types of members:
CORE leaders are usually the founding members of a community of practice. They convene and motivate others through meetings, facilitating and planning activities that shape the culture of their community.
Team Connection Exercises Online Community Platforms How to Use Miro, a digital whiteboard for creative collaboration Inform Toolkit 17
Purpose: To foster emotional connection and a sense of belongingness.
Submit a 2-min video sharing one specific change they'd like to see in higher education.
It's ideal to build in team connection exercises in every meeting. The more connected members feel, the more engaged they will be. Activities could be as simple as a warm-up exercise at the beginning of a meeting, an offline activity encouraging members to get to work together, or an entire session on teambuilding. Here are some ideas that can serve as inspiration:
For these activities, ask for a few volunteers to talk about their choice.
Start each meeting with a minute of silence to think about a reflective question. Take turns sharing reflections. Create a Zoom background theme for each meeting (i.e. favorite food, movie, vacation spot, hobby, way to unwind and relax, a book you recommend, etc)
Offline Activities:
Team Connection Exercises
Create a challenge for all members to participate (i.e. interview a student in their community and write a failure or success story using the STORI model)
Design a 1-hour retreat that includes small group breakout sessions of participants sharing stories about what brought them to this community of practice. Emphasize deep listening and encourage empathy. Ask each person to introduce someone to the whole group. Conclude with a follow-up offline activity or a guided meditation for the whole group.
Quick Warm-up Activities at the Beginning of a Meeting:
Teambuilding Session:
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Online Community Platforms
Purpose: To provide examples of some resources for members to share knowledge and skills with one another
Zoom is excellent for hosting meetings, 1-on-1 virtual cup of coffee conversations, and even large conferences. With participants' permission, sessions can be recorded for those who are not able to attend.
Online platforms can overcome geographic, transportation, and financial barriers because of their ability to provide a virtual meeting space for free. There are many online platforms that communities of practice can choose from, and below are some popular ones that offer free versions.
If your community has technology professionals or resources for paid online platforms, it's a good idea to compare platforms and choose the best one for your needs. Some communities of practice within universities have the financial resources to create their proprietary platform, which requires a dedicated developer to design and troubleshoot the platform on an ongoing basis.
You can create your own Google Site for free, even if you don't have computer programming or design skills. You can centralize your team's work on the Site, with easy access to all your content from Google Workspace, whether it's a Drive folder, Doc, or shared Calendar.
Many communities of practice use Slack to communicate with each other in between regular meetings. This allows members to work together on action items, share announcements and pertinent information with one another, and strengthen their connection.
miro/getting-started/what-is-mirohttps://academy.miro.com/learn/course/getting-started-with-
How to Use Miro
Below is a link to the 25-minute course, "Getting Started with Miro."
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Purpose: To help new Miro users navigate the board so they can collaborate with others online
Miro is an online whiteboard that has infinite workspace and allows a team to collaborate in real-time, regardless of geography and time zones. Miro Academy offers free virtual training on how to navigate this digital tool; you can even earn digital badges that recognize your skills with Miro. Video courses cover a variety of topics, and range from 5 minutes to 45 minutes.
STORI EventsMethod&ConveningsEventBriefTemplateEventChecklist
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Inspire Toolkit
Bea Rodriguez Fransen University Design Institute
SCENE: Choose a specific time and place where your story is situated. Paint a picture for your audience: exactly when and where were you?
OVERCOMING OBSTACLE: Describe the actions you chose to take to overcome the obstacle/s toward your goal.
INSIGHT: Share a piece of wisdom that you learned, with the purpose of influencing your audience to feel, believe, or act a certain way.
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To inspire or influence decision-makers to take action, consider using UDI's STORI Method: a framework that helps you tell your stories succinctly and persuasively.
STORI Method
TASK or TROUBLE: Describe the goal or challenge in the situation that you just described.
Purpose: To share stories of successes and failures, to inspire one another and others outside of the community of practice
RESULTS: Describe the results of your actions.
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With insights gained from our ASU workshop, we built, very quickly, our internal capacity to develop all 36 MBA online courses.
Example of the STORI Method in action
Five months later came the pandemic, which came with a huge currency devaluation We could no longer afford the company that ran our online platforms we had to pay 15 times more than the original cost.
Our launch date for the new online MBA program was set at September 2020. In Oct 2019, we attended a week long ASU workshop on scaling up digital learning, including systems, processes, content development & human resources We were ready to design and scale our own!
We learned how important it is to build our capabilities and capacity in people, processes, and technologies A robust faculty development program for online education is especially vital. Once you establish a trust relationship with faculty, and the expectations about processes and technology use are clear, that's when the magic happens Finally, it's important to establish policies for student identity verification, course content ownership, quality assurance, and accessibility.
Results
Story by: Rami Farran, Director of Academic Services
On the very same day that our team returned to Beirut, street uprisings erupted, as part of a revolution against the corruption of our government All roads were blocked; students and faculty couldn't get to campus.
Office of Innovation & Transformation
American University Beirut
Overcoming Obstacles
Task or Trouble
By 2022, we have on boarded and trained more than 500 faculty members, building their capacity We have over 350 courses re designed (blended & online). We also switched our instructional designers from a waterfall method to a more agile one. In the past our instructional designers were designing an average of 9 courses; today there are designing an average of 20. Finally, we have developed and implemented e learning policies.
In 2019, our university, American University Beirut, decided to go fully online with our MBA program. This decision was driven by student demand.
Insight
Events & Convenings
As you plan your events and convenings, consider creating a checklist or template that anyone in your CoP can use as a reference. Check out the following examples to build your own:
Events Guide toolkit, templates and resources courtesy of Shaping EDU
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Events Checklist
Event Brief Template
Purpose: To use the power of bringing people together so they can get inspired to apply their new knowledge, practice skills, and collaborate with others on initiatives for the CoP
When ASU's Organizational Excellence CoP transitioned from hosting meetings to events, they found that members became even more engaged. Every year, the CoP creates themes to unify their events throughout the year. Similarly, ASU's ShapingEDU CoP hosts annual convenings, mini-summits, and events that bring together hundreds and thousands of members from around the world. For both of these CoPs, their evaluation surveys and verbal feedback have shown that participants walk away from events feeling inspired and connected with one another towards common goals. Experiencing the event provided the motivation for members to apply any skills or knowledge learned, or begin to collaborate with others on initiatives that they could not have done on their own.
Purpose: To provide a detailed event itinerary and action items
Event Brief Template
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Purpose: To help event organizers plan and execute their event efficiently
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Event Checklist Template
STORI Method Tips on Influencing Decision-Makers Turn it Around! Cards GUD Dialogue Cards Influence Toolkit 29
-Darci Nagy, ASU Open Door
Tips for Influencing Decision-Makers
Purpose: Practical tips to influence decision-makers in your institution
We also do more than what's requested of us. Executive staff don't always understand what our capabilities are. For example, a lot of units are constantly asking us to do very tedious things. We asked ourselves: how do we become more efficient with our time, so we can have more time to innovate? So we built a design system with one designer and one developer, which automated some of the requests. The design system and automation freed up our time. As a result, we leveraged our extra time innovating and bringing new ideas to senior leaders. We are constantly asking ourselves: how can we work smarter so we have time to solve bigger problems?
-Amanda Gulley, UX Collaborative CoP
What made us successful is using data to get senior leaders excited and on board. Every year we track the number of activities our community offers to the public and the number of attendees; and we gather feedback from participants. Our surveys show how awesome our program is: annually, up to 45,000 people attend ASU Open Door, and they love it!
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The most important piece is data. We partnered with an Analytics staff to figure out: how do we quantify the design and development to show people who have a business mindset how the work generates outcomes? We integrated Google Analytics and other tools, to help prove the value of UX to our senior leaders.
One child attendee said, "It's better than Disneyland!" We use our qualitative and quantitative data to demonstrate to administrators and deans that we can take it up a notch.
Turn it Around! Flashcards for Education Futures is a learning and advocacy tool for adults, made by youth, to reimagine our approach to education, and our relationship with nature and the living world during this time of climate crisis. Additionally, this deck brings into focus the visions of youth who are typically excluded from the decision-making about their futures. Usually, flashcards are designed by educators for children and youth. This deck of flashcards--which includes original, crowdsourced artwork and messages created by youth-is specifically designed for education policymakers, politicians, and teachers to challenge them to think, see, and act in new ways. By flipping who and what knowledge matters, this project is an urgent reminder that everyone--and everything--must change (Turn It Around, The2022).flashcards
Purpose: To use the power of socially engaged art and youth's voices in policymaking and decision making about the role of education in climate futures
Turn it Around! Cards
were designed by young artists and writers from around the world, which were then curated and published both online and in a printed version. The cards are now being distributed to policymakers, educators, politicians, and others in order to include youth visions in radically re-imagining climate futures. In April 2022, Arizona State University's Global Futures Lab announced that US President Joe Biden made a commitment to give decks of Turn it Around! Cards to all of the heads of government in all of the ASEAN countries during his May meeting. To learn more, visit: turnitaroundcards.org/
GUD Dialogue Cards were first developed in Spring 2022. The cards are intended to spark facilitated discussion on key issues pressuring higher education leaders, institutions and systems around the world. The card decks highlight various perspectives, including students, university presidents, foundation executives, and other primary stakeholders in higher education.
To learn more, contact the University Design Institute here: udi@asu.edu
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Purpose: To use the power of various stakeholders' voices and data in policymaking and decision-making about the future of higher education
GUD Dialogue Cards
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ASU University Design Institute
ASU Principled Innovation Strategic Collaboration Method Innovate Toolkit
TM TM
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ASU University Design Institute
Arizona State University's University Design Institute (UDI) believes that universities must be catalysts for social and economic change. Bringing rich expertise in design, a global network of experts, and 20+ years of higher education innovation experience, UDI works with partners from around the world to create sustainable change in individuals, institutions, and systems.
To date, UDI has co-designed solutions with 90 institutions in 20 countries. To learn more, visit https://udi.asu.edu/ or contact us at udi@asu.edu
They develop design expertise in current and future leaders to accelerate and scale impact, co-design solutions with universities to build institutional capacity and implement new models, and engage diverse stakeholders to address systemic barriers to change.
Purpose: An ASU initiative that partners with diverse institutions throughout the world and co-designs solutions to transform the higher education sector
Purpose: A framework that guides educators, leaders, students and communities to imagine new concepts, catalyze ideas and form new solutions, guided by principles that create positive change for humanity.
TM 36
TM
Principled Innovation is the ability to imagine new concepts, catalyze ideas and form new solutions, guided by principles that create positive change for humanity. This framework helps us design and deliver equitable learning opportunities for all learners, preparing them to be innovative and ethical contributors to the future of education, their communities and a thriving civil society.
Click here to access the Principled Innovation Card Deck. Click here to access the accompanying Facilitation Guide. You can also access a free self-paced course designed by ASU's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College here.
ASU Principled Innovation
Purpose: A framework for increasing social, environmental and financial impact through the generative power of collaboration.
TM
TM 37
To learn more, visit this website or contact Christine Whitney Sanchez on LinkedIn
Strategic Collaboration Method
Created by Christine Whitney Sanchez and Bill Scott, Strategic Collaboration is a framework for increasing social, environmental, and financial impact through the generative power of collaboration. By creating opportunities for collective wisdom, equal voice, diverse perspectives, a focus on the affirmative and an educated eye toward the future, this framework helps people communicate mindfully and develop a practice of continuous inquiry and experimentation that leads to positive action.
Community Rhythm
Community of Practice Questionnaire Rotating Meeting Roles Intentional Wellness Pause Community Rhythm Toolkit 39
MODALITY. Do you prefer to meet online, offline, or a combination of both?
Every 2 weeks
Community of Practice Questionnaire
MEETING FREQUENCY. How often would you like the CoP to meet?
Open Agenda
Designated Facilitator
Purpose: To gather input from members that will inform the scheduling, cadence, structure, content, and delivery of community of practice meetings
FACILITATION ROLES. How would you like to facilitate each meeting?
Other
To help you decide on the logistics of meetings, it's a good idea to listen to your community: what do they need and want? Sample questions include:
Rotating Facilitator
A Google or Airtable Form can capture your members' responses and aggregate their data, which will help you decide the optimal rhythm for your CoP.
Every month
Other MEETING DURATION. How long should each meeting be? 30 min 45 min 1 hour Other
Community rhythm also includes the flow and structure of each session. To facilitate each session, some communities of practice have core members who serve as co-facilitators. Others choose to have a rotating meeting role schedule. Roles may include the following:
NOTE-TAKER takes notes throughout the meeting and records learnings, decisions, and next steps. They may create a summary so that participants can review the session, and to provide a recap for those not able to attend the meeting.
TECH HOST sets up meeting technology, whether the modality is online, hybrid, or face-to-face. They facilitate breakout rooms and troubleshoots technical difficulties as needed.
Rotating Meeting Roles
Purpose: To distribute the responsibilities of preparing and facilitating meetings, and provide opportunities to practice leadership and teamwork skills.
If you choose to rotate roles, check out the tool on the next page.
FACILITATOR serves as a guide, ensuring that the meeting goes smoothly. To facilitate means to make things easier; a good facilitator listens and encourages diverse viewpoints, and helps the group have a substantive conversation.
TIMEKEEPER reminds participants of time constraints and keeps facilitator and participants on track.
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Rotating Meeting
Sets up meeting technology, facilitates breakout rooms & troubleshoots as needed. TechHost
Timekeeper
MeetingDate:
Guides participants through the agenda & ensures everyone's voice is heard.
Facilitator
Reminds participants of time constraints & keeps facilitator and participants on track.
Roles
MeetingDate:
Takes notes and records learnings, decisions & next steps.
MeetingDate:
Note-Taker
MeetingDate:
By holding space for members to take care of their health, you are expressing care and concern for one another's well-being, further strengthening your bond and commitment to your collective work.
Because it takes time and energy to participate in communities of practice, we recommend including an intentional wellness pause, whether quarterly, semi-annually, or annually. This allows members to celebrate their progress as a community, as well as to rest and practice self-care. When people have the time to recharge, it gives them renewed energy to continue taking care of others in their respective communities.
"We believe in care for the health of our network and for ourselves. We see intentional pauses as an important practice for sustained movements and see paid breaks as an act of generously honoring each other’s bodies beyond what or how much we produce. To show appreciation for our work in the world, one of the best things we can do is to give each other time and space to heal. By taking this pause, we want to model what it looks like to take the time we need to be well and recenter ourselves within movement spaces" (Design Justice Network, 2022).
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Purpose: To express our concern for one another's well-being, and prevent burnout from participating in the community of practice
Intentional Wellness Pause
A good model for this practice is the Design Justice Network. Every spring, summer, fall, and winter, they send communications to all members announcing that they are taking a seasonal pause. As their letter indicates:
Facilitation Skills
To facilitate means to make things easier. Facilitators, then, are vital to the growth of your CoP. Recruit members who are skilled facilitators, or consider upskilling and take some professional development courses on group facilitation.
The facilitator serves as a guide, ensuring that the meeting goes smoothly. A good facilitator listens and encourages diverse viewpoints, helps the group have a substantive conversation, and moves people to action.
Consider writing a role description for the facilitator. For example:
You may want to rotate the facilitator role each time you meet. This format helps all of your members practice their own facilitation skills, which can also benefit their respective teams or organizations. Also, consider creating a structure so that everyone is able to participate. For example, assign roles such as a connection activity starter, timekeeper, recorder, tech host, or a closing reflection leader.
Facilitation
Finally, if you are meeting in-person, consider providing food and refreshments, and using an inviting space and configuring the room so that everyone can see and hear one another clearly.
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CoP Kickoff Meeting
What inspired you to become part of this community? Why is this topic important to you?
Here's a suggested structure for your kickoff meeting:
i5 CANVAS GROUP BRAINSTORM. Core leaders share the i5 Canvas and facilitate a group brainstorming session. Remind everyone that the i5 Canvas is meant to be a "living document," and is not meant to be finalized in one session. The CoP may choose to work on the Canvas on an ongoing basis, working on one component each time you meet.
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REFLECT & SHARE. In 1-2 minutes, each member responds to the following questions:
BUILD EXCITEMENT. Make a big splash by announcing your kickoff meeting and/or a call for members.
If you already have a core group of members, share their names, titles, and links to their bios or online profiles. Announce your CoP launch via various marketing channels a newsletter, Slack channels, email lists, flyers, or social media such as LinkedIn.
CoP Kickoff Meeting
WELCOME & PURPOSE. After a quick team connection activity (see Team Connection Exercises), core members share their stories of how and why they were inspired to start the CoP.
CLOSE. Thank members for joining you and ask them to fill out a questionnaire (see Community of Practice Questionnaire). Create the questionnaire to determine your community rhythm, and to solicit feedback that you can incorporate into subsequent meetings.
Collaborating with UDI
Name Institution name/affiliation Community of practice name City & Country Name of the Tool or Method Purpose of the Tool or Method Instructions or Tips Any attachments (PDF) Any website or link to the resource A failure or success story about using this tool in action Do you have a tool or method that you'd like to share with other communities of practice? We invite you to share your own tools with us. Please share with us the following (if applicable): Invitation to Add to this Toolkit Submit Tool/MethodYourHere 49
“Go into the forest, you see the birch, maple, pine. Look underground and all those trees are holding hands. We as people have to do the same.”
Charles Labrador, Mi’kmaq Spiritual Leader, Healer, and Chief of Acadia First Nation, Nova Scotia (McMahon, Griese & Kenyon, 2019)
Take, for example, how trees behave. When you step into a forest, you will notice trees standing quietly and independently; but look underground, and you’ll see vast networks of mycorrhizal fungi that connect these individual trees together, allowing them to communicate and share an enormous amount of information and nutrients, such as water, carbon, nitrogen, and minerals. Yes trees talk with one another and form networks! (Simard, 2016; Wohlleben, 2016). And instead of competing for resources, trees cooperate with one another so that all of them can thrive.
Just like trees, human beings that belong to a community of practice share knowledge and expertise with one another, united by a common concern or goal. We hope that this toolkit will help your own communities of practice harness their collective intelligence in order to transform universities, and the world.
Just Like Trees...
Mycorrhizal networks. Circles represent tree nodes, sized according to the tree’s diameter, and coloured with four different shades of yellow or green that increase in darkness with increasing age class. Lines represent the Euclidean distances between trees that are linked. Line width increases with the number of links between tree pairs (Beiler et al., 2009).
At the University Design Institute, we harness the wisdom of nature and become inspired by its strategies to help solve the most pressing challenges of our time.
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Founded in 2019 at Arizona State University, the vision of the University Design Institute is simple yet profound: that universities around the world emerge as powerful engines of social transformation and economic impact.
Our mission is to become a catalyst for transformation in higher education. We do this by reimagining the future, codesigning solutions with various stakeholders to move from ideas to implementation, and advancing innovative, scalable, and sustainable models. Our growing team is driven by six values:
About the University Design Institute
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The work that we do is centered around six design imperatives that are critical to transformational change in higher education:
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About the University Design Institute
Learn more at https://udi.asu.edu/
To date, we have engaged with 90 institutions in 20 countries, offering leadership programs, facilitating co-design sessions to transform various aspects of their universities, and engaging diverse stakeholders —including funders, policymakers, university leaders, and students—to work towards systems-level change. Now more than ever, it is vital that we intensify our work together in addressing the complex challenges that our world faces.
Cambridge, D., Kaplan, S. & Suter, V. (2005). Community of practice design guide. Educause. Snyder, W.M. & Briggs, X. (2003). Communities of practice: A new tool for government managers.
Vogl, Charles H. (2016). The art of community: Seven principles for belonging. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Books
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Websites
Articles
More Resources
Wenger, E., McDermott, R. & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice. Harvard Business School Press.
Building Effective Communities of Practice by Arizona State University-ShapingEDU.
Wenger-Traynor, E. & Wenger-Traynor, B. (2015). Introduction to communities of practice: A brief overview of the concept and its uses.
Arizona State University. (2022). Building Effective Communities of Practice. ShapingEDU. https://shapingedu.asu.edu/communities-of-practice-intro
Center for Appreciative Inquiry. (2022). What is appreciative inquiry? https://www.centerforappreciativeinquiry.net/more on ai/what is appreciative inquiry ai/
Beiler, K J , Durall, D M , Simard, S W , Maxwell, S A & Kretzer, A M (2009) Architecture of the wood-wide web Rhizopogon spp genets link multiple Douglas-fir cohorts New Phytologist, 185(2), p 543553. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2009.03069.x
McMahon, T.R., Griese, E.R. & Kenyon, D.B. (2019). Cultivating Native American scientists: An application of an Indigenous model to an undergraduate research experience. Cultural Studies of Science Education 14, 77 110.
Webber, E. (2016). Building successful communities of practice: Discover how connecting people makes better organizations. Drew London Ltd.
Wenger, E., McDermott, R. & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Harvard Business School Press.
Simard, S. (2016, June). How trees talk to each other [Video]. TEDSummit. https://www.ted.com/talks/suzanne simard how trees talk to each other
Wenger Traynor, E. & Wenger Traynor, B. (2015). Introduction to communities of practice: A brief overview of the concept and its uses. https://wenger trayner.com/introduction to communities of practice/
References
Snyder, W.M. & Briggs, X. (2003). Communities of practice: A new tool for government managers. IBM Center for the Business of Government. https://www.businessofgovernment.org/sites/default/files/Communities%20of%20Practices.odf .pdf
Cambridge, D., Kaplan, S. & Suter, V. (2005). Community of practice design guide. Educause.
Design Justice Network (2022). We're taking a pause! https://designjustice.org/news 1/2021/4/23/were taking a pause
Wohlleben, P. (2016). The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate - Discoveries from a Secret World. Greystone Books.
Whole Whale Mission Generator Worksheet (nd) https://www wholewhale com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Mission-Statement-Generator-Worksheet pdf
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Vogl, Charles H. (2016). The art of community: Seven principles for belonging. Berrett Koehler Publishers, Inc.