Ohio ABLE Communities of Practice

What is a Community of Practice?

A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who share a common concern, a set of problems, or interest in a topic and who come together to fulfill both individual and group goals.[1]

Why are Communities of Practice important?

Communities of Practice are important because they:

  • Connect people who might not otherwise have the opportunity to interact, either as frequently or at all;
  • Provide a shared context for people to communicate and share information, stories, and personal experiences in a way that builds understanding and insight;
  • Enable dialogue between people who come together to explore new possibilities, solve challenging problems, and create new, mutually beneficial opportunities;
  • Stimulate learning by serving as a vehicle for authentic communication, mentoring, coaching, and self-reflection;
  • Capture and diffuse existing knowledge to help people improve their practice providing a forum to identify solutions to common problems and a process to collect and evaluate best practices;
  • Introduce collaborative processes to groups and organizations as well as between organizations to encourage the free flow of ideas and exchange of information;
  • Help people organize around purposeful actions that deliver tangible results;
  • Generate new knowledge to help people transform their practice to accommodate changes in needs and technologies.[2]

Development of PICP Communities of Practice

In FY 2014 Ohio implemented Program Improvement Consultation Plans (PICP) for local program management following a year-long pilot of the initiative. As a key support for local administrators with similar program goals, communities of practice were established around areas of common interest. The four administrator communities are: Enrollment/Recruitment, Persistence/Student Retention, Student Academic Achievement (programs with enrollment with fewer than 499), and Student Academic Achievement (programs with enrollment with more than 500).

Support for PICP Communities of Practice

Ohio ABLE State Program Office and the Ohio ABLE Professional Development Network (PDN) are employing a variety of mechanisms(e.g., face-to-face meetings, webinars, discussion prompts within CoP forums) to provide PD, resources, and technical assistance to administrators participating in the PICP CoPs. The following offers a more detailed snapshot of the PICP community support activities.

Mechanism/Timeline / Activity
Face-to-face meeting
(Fall Administrator Summit)
November 2013 /
  1. Configure administrator teams into the four communities identified above.
  2. Facilitate leadership capacity building sessions within designated communities.
  3. Developed virtual communities based on local program PICP plan development.
  4. Determine key themes* from PICP plans.

Moodle CoP forums
Fall 2013-Spring 2014 /
  1. Develop (CoP) infrastructure (e.g., ABLE Moodle space, determine moderators, discussion prompts).
  2. Promote CoP to potential participants.
  3. Post discussion prompts to forums (e.g., recruitment/ promotion, data management, partnerships, managed enrollment, curriculum, technology), one new prompt offered each month.
  4. New discussion topics are introduced each month.
  5. Technical assistance and resources are suggested from peers, the state office, and the PDN as needs arise.

Webinar check-in meetingsDecember 2013, March 2014, May 2014 /
  1. Host three webinar check-in meetings for each CoP to discuss plan progress and provide PD support in real time.

Face-to-face meeting
(Ohio Association of Adult and Continuing Education Conference)
April 2014 /
  1. Facilitate face-to-face CoP sessions at statewide conference.

*Key themes from PICP plans are being used to seed discussion threads within the four virtual communities, to set agendas for quarterly webinar check-in meetings, and to determine resources and technical assistance.

Scaling from PICP Communities of Practice to Other Areas

Intentionally, engaging local administrators in communities and the networking and informal learning that can result from peer-to-peer interaction sets the stage for the development of teacher and support staff communities. Currently, communities have also been established for ESOL teachers and technology support personnel. Over time as the need arises, Ohio ABLE will continue to scale the community of practice approach to other priority areas.

Overview Prepared by Ohio ABLE Professional Development Network, 3/1/20141

[1]Dermott, R., Snyder, W., & Wenger, E. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Boston: Harvard University Press.

[2] Cambridge, D., Kaplan, S., & Suter, V. (2005). Community of practice design guide: A step-by-step guide for designing & cultivating communities of practice in higher education. Retrieved December 12, 2013 from