Communities of Practice: A Learning Strategy for Management Education

Teaching students self-directed learning skills provides benefits that outlast individual courses. An individual self-directed approach is insufficient, however, given the fast pace of change students encounter in their professional lives. Communities of practice combine self-directed and collaborative learning to meet the challenges of today's dynamic organizational environment. This article introduces a learning strategy based on communities of practice to help students gain in-depth knowledge about an individual passion related to the course topic that, in turn, contributes effectively to students' professional development outside of the formal classroom setting. In this article, I briefly discuss the characteristics of communities of practice in organizational environments, including their relevance and effectiveness; provide the details for implementing communities of practice as a learning strategy in a management education classroom; and present an assessment of this learning strategy.