Cultivating Communities of Practice on a National Scale to Support the Shift to Remote Education

Abstract

Educational innovations and just-in-time supports spread more quickly through social networks thanthrough traditional dissemination avenues. Therefore, in coordinating national level support efforts for the shift to online and remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the principal strategies of theEngineering Collaboration for Online and Remote Education (E-CORE/CIEL) Project was to developnational Communities of Practice (CoPs) to foster connections between instructors. Using an autoethnographic process, this reflective paper aims to synthesize the learnings from the team working to cultivate these CoPs. The analysis of the reflections provides insight on: the needs of the Canadian community of engineering educators during a year of remote education, the perceivedbenefits of engaging in CoPs, considerations for cultivating CoPs in different contexts, andrecommendations for future cross-institutional CoP efforts.