it collaboration across institutions
Rapidly increasing demand for technology support services, and often shrinking budgetary and staff resources, create enormous challenges for information technology (IT) departments in public sector higher education. To address these difficult circumstances, the author helped develop a network of IT professionals from schools in a community college system and a research university in the same geographic region into a community of practice (CoP) that spanned the boundaries of their organizations. This collaboration allowed members from participating institutions to share knowledge and ideas relating to shared technical problems. The author also collected data about the extent to which the community developed the factors that contributed to its development and the perceived value that the other leaders and participants attributed to the endeavor. The results indicated that the group did coalesce into a CoP. The author also identified two crucial roles that aided this development: community coordinator and technology steward. Furthermore, the IT professionals who participated and the leaders from their organizations reported that developing the community was a worthwhile venture. They also reported that while the technical collaboration component was very valuable, the non-technical topics and interactions were also very beneficial. Finally, indicators also suggest that the community made progress toward self-sustainability and is likely to continue. These findings suggest that other higher education IT organizations faced with similar circumstances may be able to follow this model and achieve positive results.
collaboration community of practice management