Communities of Practice as Agents of Future Faculty Development

The need for faculty development continues to increase despite the limited resources of many developers to serve growing demands. To address this conundrum, we explore existing literature about communities of practice (CoPs) in higher education and case studies of CoPs at our institution as an avenue to extend and supplement future professional development for faculty. The accompanying analysis leads us to propose that faculty developers should leverage faculty expertise using the communities of practice framework, distinct from faculty learning communities, in future faculty development.