The City learning and teaching community was set up on the Microsoft Teams platform, and was part of a broader offering aimed at providing support during the emergency online teaching in 2020. This presented a key opportunity to foster a collaborative approach and build a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1998). Professional staff and teaching practitioners could come together to share their experiences by participating in informal online group sessions called LEaD Light Lunch and discuss the digital tools and approaches they used.
After 4 years, and with 500 members, we are asking those who have joined the community to give some feedback about its future. Should it carry on as it is? What can we do together to make it better?
The survey has been running for a couple of weeks now and will run until mid-May. So far, the few responses that have been received have been full of the benefits that people have gained from being part of this space. This includes:
Contents
Networking and Connecting:
- Connecting with others who have similar interests.
- Meeting people they then interact with in real life.
- Sharing relevant information/resources
Learning from Peers:
- Sharing problems and solutions with peers
- Hearing about good practices and research from experts
- Folding learnings from peers into their own teaching practices
Staying Current:
- Keeping up to date on different approaches used around City
- Following conversations and events relevant to their areas of interest
- Learning how technology is being used innovatively.
Actionable Takeaways:
- Specific sessions, like the session that focused on AI in March 2024, provided actionable takeaways to apply in their own practice.
- Helping explore challenging topics, like AI, that some may be wary of initially.
Suggestions, by survey respondents, on how we can all be encouraged to benefit from the community:
- Peer mentoring/coaching opportunities led by subject matter experts.
- Incentives like funding for projects, prizes, or workload allocation for participation
- Optimized scheduling to avoid conflicts (e.g. before/after lunch, Fridays)
- Automatic enrolment and promotion through line managers/newsletters
- Tailored content aligned with specific school/discipline interests
- A recognition by City to create more capacity for professional development activities
If you have not had the chance to fill out the survey, even if you have not joined the community, then do tell us what you think
