INFOhio ICoach

Read Key Questions for Community Designers in the document from the United States Department of Education linked above to learn more about how you can create a community of practice in your school or district. Consider the INFOhio resources, web tools, and initiatives you have learned about in this training. Reflect on what you have learned in this class about providing training and professional development for your peers. Using this information, write a short summary that answers these questions:

• What Is the Community’s Purpose? What problem is it trying to solve? What opportunity is it intended to take advantage of? Why is this significant?
• Who Is the Core Audience? Which educators will need to become active in the community for it to achieve its purpose? Will the focus be on a role-alike group or a more heterogeneous collection of educators?
• How Will Users Participate? What kinds of activities and interactions do you envision? Where, when, and by what means will members connect with each other?
• What Value Does Your Community Add to Educators’ Practices? What will motivate educators to participate actively in the community? What areas of their practices that they are motivated to improve will it address and how?
• Who Are the Community’s Leaders? Will staff of the sponsoring organization lead the community? Will members of the community itself serve as leaders?
• What Role Will Resources Play in Your Community? Are they a means for members to learn from each other or is access to or the production of resources an end in itself?
• How Will Resources Align With Your Community’s Focus? What kinds of resources align with the community’s objectives and values? Which are likely to be useful to the community’s intended audience? What genres and media are likely to be most accessible?
• How Can Technology Be Leveraged to Support Your Vision? What needs for communication, resource exchange, collaboration, and relationship building can technology help fulfill?
• How Do You Encourage Members to Participate? What kinds of communication will you continue beyond initial recruitment? What incentives for participation can you offer? 
• How Do You Sustain Engagement? What will motivate members to participate regularly across time? How can activities be designed to encourage regular and substantive contributions from members?
• How Do You Support Members in Achieving the Community’s Goals? What tools and services do you need to provide to members to enable their collaborations to bear fruit? How will you work to clarify and modify the community’s purpose across time?
• How Do You Engage Users Who Vary Widely in the Time Available to Commit? What are reasonable expectations about how often and for how long members will be able to participate? How do you ensure a high-value-to-time ratio for that participation