Communities of Practice

What is a Community of Practice?

A Community of Practice (COP) is a faculty learning group of 8-12 people who share a common concern, passion about a topic, and come together with a facilitator to deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting with each other on an ongoing basis (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002 p. 4). 

At Weber State, these communities of practice are groups of faculty and staff who commit to exploring areas in teaching and learning in regularly scheduled sessions, followed by actions such as planning and trying out the techniques discussed in the group. 

Your community will provide a supportive environment where members can experiment with new approaches to teaching and learning, share successes and challenges, and/or engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL).
(Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, & William Snyder, 2002).Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2002.)

 

What are the goals of a Faculty Learning Community?

  • To promote faculty interest in teaching and learning, especially for undergraduate students.
  • To create collaborative spaces in which faculty connect with colleagues across disciplines.
  • To promote the exploration and study of theoretical and practical perspectives on teaching and learning.
  • To pilot short-term or semester-long activities in classes or in our broader work with students.
  • To increase faculty capacity to apply evidence-based research to undergraduate education.
  • To cultivate reflective practitioners by reflecting upon individual and collective experiences.

Participant Outcomes:

Participants in learning communities should be able to demonstrate at least two of the following:

  • Integrate research-based, learner-centered, and/or welcoming pedagogies in their teaching.  Related activities could include reviewing and revising course materials such as syllabi, learning outcomes, and class activities.
  • Leverage collaborative relationships with colleagues across disciplines on topics related to learning-centered instructional innovation and student success.  Related activities could include sharing experiences, successes, and challenges with colleagues in the learning community; providing feedback on observations and/or research design and implementation.
  • Build supportive collegial and informal mentoring structures that help to support the intellectual, emotional, and mental well-being of the faculty member.
  • Disseminate practices and scholarship with the broader teaching community at and beyond WSU.  Related activities might include sharing work through presentations, sharing instructional resource materials, and/or presenting findings at a CETL event, an external venue, or through publication.

What are the Benefits of Joining a Community of Practice?

  • Participants become members of a community of peers with shared interests in teaching and learning at WSU.
  • The community provides a space where members share experiences, ideas, and strategies about teaching; experiment with evidence-based practices; build skills; engage in SoTL research; and reflect on their roles as educators. 
  • Each group has $200 to spend on food, snacks, etc., to facilitate group meetups over the academic year. Modest (and varied) stipends will be awarded to group members following successful completion of the community of practice. 
  • Members of learning communities can include their participation as professional development efforts to improve teaching on tenure and promotion documents and faculty annual reviews.  When you make changes to your teaching based upon your participation in a faculty learning community, you can explain those changes as innovations in the documents mentioned above.
  • Participation in a Faculty Learning Community is part of the “Ten Before Tenure” initiative.

Community of Practice Expectations

  • COP members will actively prepare for, attend, and participate in community meetings.  (COPs will likely meet at least twice a month, depending on the group and its goals.  The semester schedule will be set during the first meeting.
  • Each group will submit an executive summary and reflective analysis of their COP participation by May 1, 2026.
  • COPs will be expected to share their learning, activities, and reflections at the Thrive Symposium during the fall 2025 semester.
  • Each COP will also provide a deliverable that can be shared with a larger audience (either at WSU or an external venue). For example, you could select one or more of the following options:
    • Provide instructional resource materials (instructional tools, teaching strategies, videos,  annotated bibliographies,  presentational materials, etc.) on the topic of their COP for the larger teaching community at WSU.
    • Present their work at a conference venue beyond WSU.
    • Publish the findings of their work (through portfolios, white papers, academic journals, etc.)

2025 - 2026 Communities of Practice

 

AI Praxis and Pedagogy

Facilitator: Stephanie Speicher

Description: AI Praxis and Pedagogy is a Community of Practice for faculty wanting to engage in meaningful conversations and the work of revising current or future curriculum as they explore the role of AI in teaching and learning through a lens of reflective action. Meeting throughout the academic year, we will engage in critical dialogue, share classroom strategies, and examine how AI intersects with pedagogy, critical thinking, and human connection.

Grounded in the concept of praxis, the integration of theory, reflection, and intentional practice, we will collaboratively investigate not just how to use AI, but when and why, aligning technological choices with our values and teaching philosophies. Central to our work together will be the overarching question: How do we facilitate critical thinking, meaningful practice, and authentic human connection in our courses?

You will be able to focus on examining your curriculum for one specific course, working to revise one assignment or a series of assignments/signature assignments based on the conversations, insights, and skills gained through this Community of Practice. 

 

Community Engaged Learning

Facilitator: Alexander Lancaster

Description: The Community Engaged Learning Community of Practice will offer members the opportunity to learn about community-engaged teaching and scholarship best practices, including assignments, activities, and original research and/or creative activity. Community members will learn about integrating community-engaged learning theory and practice into their classes and will be connected to opportunities for collaboration and potential grant funding for scholarly work.

 

Critical Thinking in the Classroom

Facilitator: Megan Van Deventer

Description: This Community of Practice explores how to make critical thinking visible in our classrooms. We will examine how to make our own expert thinking accessible to our students, and we will determine teaching practices that spark students' critical thinking within our course content. Grounded in research-based pedagogies and reflective teaching, this CoP offers a collaborative space for faculty to discover classroom strategies that make students’ thinking processes explicit, foster intellectual curiosity, and promote metacognitive routines that lead to student academic success. Together, we will design (and potentially implement!) learning opportunities that make our students' thinking transparent, so we can address misconceptions and celebrate their progress.

 

Faculty Writing Group: Academic Writing

Facilitator: Sarah Steimel

Description:  This community of practice is designed to carve out a dedicated, supportive space for individuals who are striving to complete writing projects and successfully submit them for publication or presentation. Whether you’re working on a journal article, a conference paper, a book chapter, or any other scholarly writing project, this group is here to help you overcome the obstacles that often stand in the way of finishing your work. We understand that academic writing can be a solitary and daunting task, filled with challenges such as procrastination, time management, and self-doubt. Through a combination of best practices in writing group productivity and journal article writing, we aim to create a structured yet flexible environment where participants can set goals, track their progress, and hold themselves accountable.

 

Faculty Writing Group: Non-Academic Public Writing 

Facilitator: Mosiah Gonzalez

Description: This Community of Practice will focus on public-facing writing. Participants will identify at least one topic that is of interest, draft essays intended for non-academic audiences (op-ed, essay, guest article, etc.), offer and receive feedback from the group, and submit the final piece for publication. The goal of this CoP is to increase the visibility of Weber State faculty and their subject matter expertise. Because publication is not guaranteed, goals and outcomes will be measured by 1) subjective report of writing skill improvement, and 2) pieces submitted for publication.

Podcasting in Higher Ed

Facilitators: Justin Burr

Description:  Our Community of Practice will bring together faculty at various stages of podcasting implementation to support one another and collaborate on strategies to implement, improve, and enhance the use of podcasts in our courses. Together, we’ll explore how faculty can use podcasting to present course material, foster engagement, and encourage collaboration. We’ll also share ideas for how students can create their own podcasts as a form of assessment, promoting creativity, communication skills, and deeper learning. In addition, we aim to study the impact of podcasting on student learning and gather student perceptions to guide best practices and continuous improvement.

 

Supporting Hispanic Heritage Language Learners

Facilitator: Electra Gamón Fielding

Description: The focus of this community of practice will be supporting Hispanic heritage language learners, understanding this specific student group, brainstorming about best practices and providing resources and strategies to apply in the classroom. I envision this CoP as a collaborative space where we can reflect on our teaching experiences—what has worked and what hasn’t—and engage with current research on heritage language instruction. Last year I received the UCLA National Language Resource Center certificate on teaching heritage languages, and I plan to incorporate aspects from this workshop into this CoP.

 

Supporting Student Mental Wellness

Facilitator: Maddison Johnston

Description: This community of practice will focus on assisting faculty and staff in supporting student mental wellness. It will include identifying the available mental health resources on campus, available mental health trainings, a discussion on where the “line”/boundary is on support, ways to connect with students to promote belonging and connection, and simple, practical deliverables for faculty and staff to use in order to engage with student wellness.

 

Sustainability Across the Curriculum

Facilitators: Heather Root, Alice Mulder, and Chris Scheidler

Description:

This CoP will meet twice a month for 50-60 minutes to offer ideas, exploration, reflections, and space to foster pedagogies for sustainability and resilience in a time of polycrisis.  

As a group, we hope to:

  • Explore concepts, terms, and examples related to resilience, sustainability, place-based pedagogy, and climate/eco anxiety. 
  • Recall examples of interdisciplinary approaches to resilience.
  • Describe the role of emotion, affect, reflection, and uncertainty in relation to sustainability teaching.
  • Revise existing course materials to integrate sustainability and resilience.
  • Develop a tolerance for ambiguity. 
  • Cultivate an attunement to new relationships

 

Thanks for the Feedback and Crucial Conversations

Facilitator: Don Davies

Description: Communication affects all aspects of our lives, and yet most of us are not particularly good at it. Misunderstanding and conflicts resulting from poor communication are costly to our work productivity and the quality of life we enjoy away from work. This group will focus on giving and receiving feedback. What we can do to increase the clarity on how we see situations will also be discussed. The power of what and how questions, as discussed in the book Never Split the Difference will be another topic of discussion. Permission to Feel and Shift books will help us know how to manage our emotions, which impact our ability to communicate. Investments in improving communication skills pay exponential dividends in all areas of our lives.

 

Why Aren't I/They Reading?

Facilitator: Elaine Schnabel

Description: We are busy people, inundated with technological and familial demands that draw attention away from the stillness or silence necessary for reading. This group is for faculty who want to be reading more and/or faculty who want their students to be reading more. Together, we'll meet once a month to talk about what we're reading, either in our work lives or our personal lives, and share techniques for motivating students to read. This group is open to faculty who read in any format (audio or visual!), any genres (fiction, nonfiction, research, poetry, etc), and at any pace (we're here to enjoy reading, not compete for # of pages read in a semester!). This group welcomes people who have had success motivating students to read...and those who are struggling to do so.

 

Wildcat Roots: A Community for New Faculty Success

Facilitator: Jamie Wankier Randles

Description: Wildcat Roots: A Community for New Faculty Success is a yearlong community of practice designed to help new faculty grow deep roots at Weber State. Together, we’ll explore strategies for faculty, classroom, and course success. This may include navigating the tenure process, launching a research agenda, creating connections with other colleagues across departments, getting involved in committees, or prioritizing wellness. Through shared dialogue, collaborative goal-setting, and peer support, this group offers a space to grow professionally and personally while building lasting connections on campus. This community of practice is open to any new faculty in their first three years of employment as faculty.