How can we continue to nurture online communities of practice?

By Lou Mycroft

I’m delighted to have been asked to contribute a blog to complement Emma Procter-Legg and Chloë Hynes’ latest AmplifyFE podcast. Truth to tell, I should have been on the podcast with them, but norovirus thought otherwise! So I’m very happy to provide this commentary. 

It’s only a few months since we celebrated the launch of the AmplifyFE Communities of Practice Sector Audit Report 2024. I wrote the foreword for the report and in it I suggested that AmplifyFE provides structure for FE’s online communities, without attempting control. It seems to me that this is more important than ever. There is a lot of fear out there – in post-16 education and in the world – and fear leads to panic measures, which can include reactionary attempts at control.

Everything that is coming out of the major business schools about leadership in our modern times is calling for new and relational ways of networking* to drive affirmative momentum in times of perma-change. John Kotter’s article, ‘Accelerate!’, published in the Harvard Business Review more than a dozen years ago, introduced the concept of the ‘second operating system’ in organisations, because “the old methodology simply can’t handle rapid change.” His vision was of two systems that operate in concert, traditional hierarchies that keep the cart on the wheels and an “agile, networklike structure”, galvanizing energy and action around transformational change. I’d call this changemaking, and it’s the only way I can imagine of addressing the momentum problem we have in FE, where good intentions fizzle out in the face of the day job.

And we have it! As the AmplifyFE map and Sector Audit Report shows, we already have an agile, networklike landscape in FE, a tapestry, as Chloë calls it, which we have built ourselves. A landscape of constellations, where people move in and out as their interests, enthusiasms and energy determine, where leadership shifts, where work is done. There’s a freshness about this constellation approach and it nourishes the sector, bringing changemaking energy (potentia) into the workplace. 

We could do with more of this within organisations too and maybe the concept of the ‘dual operating system’ will help shift some fixed ideas. But the days are hopefully long gone when it was considered ‘disloyal’ to have colleagues outside your own organisation.

In its fifth year, the AmplifyFE Sector Audit Report maps 3000 connections across 371 virtual communities of practice. If we think about FE as a system, our communities are very much part of that, rippling all that community changemaking energy back into organisations.

Yet much has changed. In their podcast, Emma and Chloë begin by reflecting on the original intention of AmplifyFE – ‘to network the networks’ – and how on Twitter, back in the day, a hashtag effectively became a community of practice. With so many leaving what’s now X (including AmplifyFE) they ask, “Where are those conversations going?”

It was fascinating to listen to them reminisce and reflect on memories of my own, as I was very involved in those early days, going right back to the OG #UKFEChat. It was a truism of the time that it typically took people six months to find their feet on Twitter and projects around that the time such as #APConnect and #PDNorth were able to welcome new accounts with practical help and an invitation to belong. Now, social media is a “weird space with lots of platforms” and hashtags don’t have the power they once did on platforms like LinkedIn. With this platform diffusion, new and existing communities have to try that much harder to grow. As Emma says, there’s nothing now that fits the bill for being informally professional.

Chloë wonders about the infrastructure projects (such as #APConnect, #PDNorth and AmplifyFE itself). What happens when the funding runs out? Back to that issue of control! It’s very clear that when project capacity is used to empower, facilitate and amplify, there is no dependency to recover from when funding ends. Energies may be directed elsewhere, but connections remain. (I’d love to suggest a counter example of an infrastructure project that attempted control, growing dependency rather than agency, but in fact they never work out 😌).

I would say this, being a co-founder, but #JoyFE is a great example of a hashtag community that didn’t need financial support (in fact, deliberately did not go there). Started on the day of lockdown, as a hashtag and Twitter live (broadcast) #JoyFE quickly grew a following of educators determined to find joy in challenging circumstances. Over the years it was a magazine, Ideas Room, skills exchange, writing room and much more, initiatives ebbing and flowing with different leaders. We went where the energy was. These days, #JoyFE is an idea, something embodied and immanent. When we announced that we were closing down our social media recently, people said how much #JoyFE would forever be in their heart. Will it stay on the AmplifyFE map? Certainly, for now. I only have to mention it to a stranger at a conference for faces to light up. We will never know how far that joy has rippled out. But when it’s time to go, we’ll know.

As Chloë and Emma so wisely say, the simple truth of the hashtag community on a single social media platform belongs to the past, there’s no going back there. Meta (Instagram, Threads, Facebook) is increasingly seen as compromised and BlueSky still emerging, with LinkedIn as a place for FE to hang out, currently. But whilst LinkedIn sees lots of posts, engagement is less: at best, many-to-one rather than the messily connected growth of many-to-many. It’s harder to follow the conversation, so we are seeing a resurgence in the once-moribund newsletter – the transmission of information rather than the engagement of community. There’s plenty not in the public domain via WhatsApp groups, of course (by invitation only, which is different again from the expansive public invitation of yesteryear).

So change is here for our grassroots FE communities, as it is for much else. And who is more resourceful than us? Check out #AIwithKI on LinkedIn, Digital Innovation Manager Kirsty Ingleson from Kirklees College using her reach to grow a national community around AI in FE, interspersing campaigns with live events. Or #SustainFE, combining a LinkedIn group with meet-ups around environmental sustainability. 

We’re having to work a bit harder to find one another, but – crucially – we continue to do that for ourselves. We’ve had a taste of self-directed, autonomous, empowering online communities which are open-borded, agile and courageous enough to know when to walk away. 

I look forward to AmplifyFE mirroring back to us where we’re at, at the end of another year. 

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