The "COP" in COPPER
COP refers to
communities of practice. According to
Cultivating Communities of Practice by Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott and William Snyder (2002, Harvard Business School Press), "communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interaction on an ongoing basis." In that spirit we are a collection of campus-based COPS joined together to form a larger COP.
Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder have written what is perhaps the key work in the study of communities of practice, describing their attributes, stages of development, and challenges. While their primary focus is on communities in the business world, the basic concepts and strategies apply to educational settings as well. This is an excellent book to add to your summer reading list if you have an interest in deepening your knowledge of a concept that has been the subject of great attention in organizational literature. It's also a great aid in understanding and facilitating the process we are experiencing in our Carnegie SoTL work.
We are pleased that one of the book's authors, Bill Snyder, will be the keynote speaker at the
Middlesex Carnegie Summer Institute, June 24-26.