A knowledge management approach to developing communities of practice amongst university and college staff

Abstract

The Higher Education Learning Partnerships Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (HELP CETL) supports staff involved in the delivery of higher education level Foundation degrees through a network of nineteen further education colleges. This is managed centrally through the University of Plymouth’s partnership’s faculty but raises the challenge of making best use of the vast amount of knowledge and expertise about teaching and related issues which is held by a range of people who are displaced by geographic location and are disconnected from other practitioners in other institutions.

A mechanism by which this expertise might be shared was required and to achieve this, a knowledge management system using a Community of Practice (CoP) framework was investigated and then employed as the key HELP CETL communication and information sharing tool. The Tomoye Ecco Knowledge Management System was used to create the Knowledge Exchange Network (KEN), which provides a set of features designed to enable community members to become involved and share ideas and experiences. This paper reflects on experiences of selecting, implementing, evaluating and further developing KEN for a large scale deployment.