What is Design for Learning (D4L)

This chapter outlines key design features that may be necessary to ‘grow’ a successful intentionally designed community of practice (CoP) in education. Prior research on communities of practice (CoPs) has emphasised their benefits for knowledge management and the relative difficulties involved in ‘managing’ CoPs, given that such communities are frequently conceptualised as self-organizing entities. The chapter reports on reflections from the JISC-funded (2006-08) eLIDA CAMEL project, which created a community of practice in education based on the CAMEL CoP model imported from a Uruguayan self-help farming group and adapted by JISC infoNet and ALT (2005-06). The chapter provides a case study of a successful inter-institutional CoP and recommends that certain indispensable design features may be necessary to ‘grow’ CoPs, including sufficiency of duration of the community, limitations in shared focus, collaborative planning, expert leadership/ facilitation, an emphasis on building trust, explicating tacit knowledge and social networking in a framework fostering practitioner expertise.