Below is a sample of the Community of Practice training program I made for the Thai public school system. If you are interested in discussing the full training program, please use the contact page to get in touch.

This course trains participants how to design, develop and run a community of practice. Participants first discover and discuss the definition and purpose of a community of practice. Then they study, discuss, and debate the advantages of a real-life community of practice and apply that knowledge to local contexts. With a solid grasp of what a community of practice is and how they are beneficial organizations and communities, participants move on to learn about using online resources with which they can build their communities.

Next, participants become familiar with the reflective cycle, and they learn specific strategies for using it in educational contexts and in communities of practice. At this stage, participants begin designing and building the framework with which they will structure their community of practice. At the completion of Part 1 of the course, participants will have complete set of plans they will use to return home with and set up their own communities of practice. Finally, after 2 months of working on their plans, participants will return to the classroom to discuss and critique the work they have done.

1. Participants will understand the basic principles and practices of designing, developing, and administrating a community of practice.
2. Participants will develop good attitudes towards building and maintaining a community of practice.
3. Participants will produce and maintain and community of practice within and across school districts.

To what extent the program achieved its intended outcomes is measure in the following ways.

1. Pre-test  --  Post-test evaluations
2. Questionnaire measuring the attitudes of participants
3. Analysis of participant projects following a 2-month working period

The design of this course is heavily influenced by andragogy (adult learning theory) and the basic tenets of the process of human learning and knowledge transfer -- mostly as described in Blooms taxonomy, or some reiterated form it. If you would like to know how a course designed on such principles can benefit your organization, please contact me here.

The Learning Experience

Each major program objective starts with lower level competences from Bloom's taxonomy. Looking at the course sample below, you can see learning outcomes using words like

• recognize
• classify
• define
• denote

In the later stages of the program, and at some levels in each major objective, you see a shift in the words used in the learning outcomes. Here I begin using words like

• improve
• critique
• design
• implement
• produce

Learning activities were designed in light of current learning theory for adult learners. They are active and student-centered, including the following

• instructor-led activities (minimal usage)
• individual work
• partner work
• group work
• case-study work
• presentations