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This chapter describes the process used to design, develop and assess a faculty-centric virtual Community of Practice (vCoP) within the environment of post-secondary educational. The primary goals for developing a faculty-centric vCoP were to provide: on-demand, multi-modal learning opportunities for globally-distributed faculty with diverse abilities, a forum for faculty members to share their ideas and best practices, and a self-supported, sustainable and scalable learning community, while increasing social capital. To guide the development of the resulting community artifact, the systems approach model was applied (Dick in The systematic design of instruction. Pearson/Allyn and Bacon, Boston, 2005). Further guided by the empirical work of Chiu (Decis Support Syst 42(3):1872–1888, 2006) regarding knowledge sharing and the development of social capital in vCoPs, as well as the 21 typology elements outlined by Dube (Interdiscip J Inf Knowl Manag 1(1):69–93, 2006), this study extends the understanding of effective vCoP implementations. In an ever-expanding realm of instruction and the digitization of instruction within post-secondary education, a supportive Community of Practice is deemed critical to the effective dissemination of skills, techniques and information. Thus, to address this gap, a faculty-centric vCoP development framework is proposed and examined in detail. This chapter provides a comprehensive literature review, presents a theoretical framework, discusses challenges and goals of a faculty-centric vCoP, explains the framework development methodology used, highlights key findings and discusses benefits and limitations of the findings. This chapter examines a suggested development framework and processes to develop a vCoP in the post-secondary educational setting with the goal of fostering knowledge creation and knowledge sharing among participants. |
