This brief lays out practical considerations and strategies to successfully design and start up a community of practice (CoP). We believe the lessons shared here apply to anyone interested in starting a CoP. They may be particularly helpful for Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Lead Agencies, Child Care and Early Education (CCEE) researchers, training and technical assistance (TTA) staff, and funders planning to establish a CoP.
It is the first in a two-part series for offering successful communities of practice. Refer to the second brief, “Community of Practice Tips and Lessons Learned: Aligning Session Structure to Goals,” to learn about structuring CoP sessions to align with identified goals.
Why This Matters
A successful CoP offers a rich environment for peers with common interests to share knowledge and learn from one another, and improve their practices in research, policy administration, or delivering services, for example. A CoP will most efficiently and effectively achieve those goals under the right conditions. This brief can support the development of those conditions from the beginning of the CoP.
Key Takeaways
This brief answers the following key questions and provides concrete examples :
- What are the goals of the CoP?
- Who will participate in the CoP?
- What roles and responsibilities are needed to run a CoP?
- How will you structure the CoP meeting?
- How will your CoP interact?
- What planning activities and decisions need to be made before the first CoP meeting?
How We Did It
We draw from our own work over the last decade supporting CoPs through various research and evaluation capacity centers, including the Center to Support Research and Evaluation Capacity of CCDF Lead Agencies (CSRE). Our experiences center around helping two different types of professionals, researchers and policy administrators, working in researcher-agency partnerships.
