This community has been a lifesaver and a lifeline for me with the quick switch to online modes of instruction due to the pandemic. Communities of Practice have so much to offer.

Yep!  We've had more success than most at establishing and maintaining an online CoP than most.  With the generous support of NSF (and NITLE before them) and the ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry, we've kept the website and the community evolving and growing.  We've focused on content, curricular change and most recently on the professional development factors that support faculty change.  

We have certainly learned from other educators and groups, and we've worked hard to share with other groups that things that we think have contributed to our success.

While not all users/members are as active as Flo, it is definitely true that a lot of users/members are.  We have tried to keep a variety of ways to stay active in the community so that there is something for everyone but the most hermetic.  We have an active presence on Facebook and Twitter (mostly in response to requests by and managed by more recent additions to the community) in addition to fora on the VIPEr site.  Most recently, we've been using a Discord Channel to try to recreate in the broader community the same sense of belonging that the Leadership has shared through a persistent Skype chat for going on ten years.

The level of discussion and participation has increased dramatically since COVID19, but we've has a long snake-y tail of participation slithering along for years now.

Alison, many years ago we wrote a piece on community building for Academic Commons that you might find interesting. (The piece is also the origin of the name of this video.)

https://academiccommons.org/come-for-the-content-stay-for-the-community/

It discusses the most critical elements for building the community.

I agree with everything that Sheila has said. Here are some of the elements that I think are most important to the success of our community.

1. the focused nature of the community
   We are closely focused on a topic that is relevant to all of us.
2. the low barrier to participation
   You can be very involved or be a lurker. The website is our entry point with materials that any faculty member (and in many cases truly anyone) can use. It's okay to just come for the content. 
3. different ways to participate in the community
   As Sheila pointed out, there are many ways to participate in the community online. We've had relatively low barrier face-to-face ways to participate in the community such as social events, introductory workshops, and symposia at professional meetings. (We hope to resume these in the not too distant future because face-to-face really helps to build connections.) We also have many entry points to help faculty step up their involvement. Some of the most intensive are things like the Fellows projects or our multi-day content development workshops. We have more advanced workshops at professional meetings. Online, we've had Learning Object development parties (our next one is scheduled for early June) where we commit to working on LOs one day knowing that people will be there on Discord to support us. We've also done Community Challenges where we ask community members to develop LOs on a specific topic in a defined time range.
4. community
   IONiC is all about community. We appreciate the help we get from other people and we like helping each other out.   

Barbara, as an ViPER lurker (background in Inorganic but mainly teaching general chemistry), I love how the ViPER community is so accessible and welcoming to all. This is a great project! I might not use most of the materials but I have found some of them useful for general chemistry.

Hi, Cynthia,

We love our lurkers! But hopefully you have lurked enough to be request faculty privileges? When you're elevated to faculty on the site, you can access content that non-faculty cannot.

And your comment highlights an important point...many inorganic faculty teach general chemistry as well. As a consequence, we do have general chemistry-specific learning objects on the site. You are invited to share some of your own activities and teaching materials when you have a chance or make comments about the LOs you've used on the site. All the interaction is what makes VIPEr really useful.

Hi Renee! It’s so nice to see you Here. It would be nicer to see you in person, maybe at BCCE ,but I guess that’s not to be this year. 

I totally understand what you’re saying. I was not a member originally a member of the leadership of this project and when I joined I was amazed how well it worked. I think it in the beginning that there was a little bit of “cult of personality”, But I’m really proud of the work that the group has done to bring on new leadership. In fact we are currently training  up our replacements.

 

I do think that the inorganic community has an advantage since it’s already such a smaller community than say general chemistry or organic chemistry.

 

we probably also been helped a little by the fact that no one in inorganic chemistry really feels like they know what they’re doing. All of us are teaching something that’s outside of our wheelhouse. We need this community of practice.

Which makes it easier to make time to participate and to contribute.

Michael, I think you've hit on a few of the features that help our community. IONiC is a Community of Practice in a very focused domain. We are all able to bond around teaching a very specific course; we have something in common from the get go. When we get together - be it in workshops, meetings, or socials - we are focused on the same materials so all of the examples we use are things that apply directly to our course.

One of the other benefits to the community is being able to work closely with people at other institutions. I have a much better idea of the how things are done at different institutions which broadens my perceptions of my course (and the higher education landscape). Also, when I'm talking with people at other schools, I'm not as worried about asking 'off-the-wall' or 'silly' questions, making mistakes, and putting things out there because my inorganic chemistry colleagues at other institutions are not part of my institutional structure. 

 

Thanks for this idea, Kristin! We send out a newsletter several times each year and it has a decent click through rate. I really like that you call it a partner update because the name highlights that everyone is a part of the community.  

That's a great question, Wendy! I've found that everyone is in a different place on their teaching journey and at some institutions, the reward structure isn't set up to reward the time spent on reflecting on and improving teaching. That said, everyone can usually identify a point of dissatisfaction in their course, especially one related to wishing their students had a deeper understanding of X, were more proficient with Y, or had a greater pass rate on program assessment Z.

We are educators because we want our students to learn. Small conversations about  dissatisfactions can be a gateway to larger conversations about improving teaching. It's easy to make small changes.

Another conversation starter that I've used is to invite colleagues to my class to ask specific advice on my teaching. (Some programs use this as part of their teaching evaluations.) By asking for advice, I can create space for a conversation about teaching. Often this leads to a two way conversation about teaching.

Neither of these approaches are going to lead to wholesale change, but change is hard and takes time. Lots of little things get the ball rolling and can prepare a department for eventual change.

Thanks for the question, Wendy. To be honest, even the IONiC leadership faces reluctant peers and department chairs, and they are part of the reason the group formed in the first place! But I can tell you a few things we suggest. 1) Summer workshop attendees walk away as published VIPER authors, and VIPEr Learning Objects (LOs) are reviewed so they go on my CV, albeit in their own category. 2) VIPEr is a global resource, so contributing to the site is a sign of national/global leadership in the inorganic community. 3) LOs are given Creative Commons licenses, so when others adopt/adapt your LO, your name and institution remain with it, thus spreading the recognition of the contribution. 4) The IONiC community does a lot of mentoring, so if you have a particularly challenging colleague, we’re here to give advice, write a letter, or recommend you for an award! That really works! I hope other community members will weigh in with additional ideas. 

Thanks for sharing with your faculty!

Hi Shirley, thanks for sharing these details. The within-group pre-post difference design would give you the ability to interpret the correlational relationship between the treatment/intervention under investigation and outcomes to be affected. If feasible, adding a matched comparison group would increase the rigor of the study.