Title Pending 2637

Abstract

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.We share insights from a phenomenological study to describe the experience of educational developers participating in a community of practice. This community of practice emerged among educational developers serving as facilitators of a hybrid, across-institutional, seven-week workshop series on course design for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. The community of practice consisted of 19 leaders at eight institutions who represent various professional roles and career stages. From results of a survey examining the functional and sustaining features of the community, we illustrate two factors that contributed to the community’s role in supporting members’ collective activities: 1) the effectiveness/productiveness of facilitator collaborations, and 2) a sense of satisfaction/personal fulfillment among facilitators. Furthermore, we compared responses about their across- and within-institution experiences to: 1) identify necessary functional/sustaining features of our community of practice, and 2) isolate functional/sustaining features that a specifically across-institution design brings. Participants experienced domain-, practice- and community-related benefits at both the within-institution and across-institution levels. While the within-institution responses tended to focus on domain- and practice-related benefits, the across-institution responses focused more on community-related benefits. The practice of designing weekly workshops was an effective/productive outcome unique to participants’ within-institution experiences. On the other hand, a mutual sense of care and belonging in the community of practice was unique to participants’ across-institution experiences. We demonstrate the importance of community, specifically across-institutions, for members’ overall professional development and well-being during the pandemic.