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What is an open working group?
Open working groups are a great way to conduct advocacy and build momentum for open education in an institution. They bring together the people on campus that are interested in or already engaged in open educational practices (OEP). These groups are oriented towards particular tasks for a certain length of time. Some may revolve around a project like developing a Zed Cred or an Open Educational Resource (OER) strategy, and others may include cross-functional members in charge of distributing OER grants.
The term “working group” is often used to distinguish a group from something more formal, such as a committee or steering group. Many institutions purposefully choose the term “working group” to signify ideological driven action, with members working in partnership towards a common goal. You may choose to name your group something even less formal—perhaps, “[School Name]’s Open Champions,” or more formal like, “Open Education Committee.” The range of projects or initiatives your group is involved in may inform the name.
Define a working group
The term “working group” is used broadly in this guide and includes community-learning groups such as communities of practice (CoPs) and institutional-based working groups or project groups. In this section, we will consider approaches and frameworks for developing a working group/CoP/learning network. Let’s begin by exploring a the “community of practice” model.
A community of practice is a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.[1]
Etienne Wenger
There are three characteristics of a community of practice that sets it apart from other communities:
- Domain. CoPs are “defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people.”[2] Establishing a shared domain allows you to
- identify other practitioners in this domain,
- include the many institutional roles connoted by domain and practice, and
- discuss and share shared competence involved in open practice.
- Community. “In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other; they care about their standing with each other.”[3] Establishing a community allows you to
- create meaningful and purposeful activities and
- adopt informal or formal leadership that steps up and steps back.
- Practice. “Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short, a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction.”[4] As practitioners, you can
- create purposeful resources and tools together and
- establish regular meetings for sustaining these interactions.
Design