Center community and use what you have: A case study in building a community of practice at a university

This session is a case study on building and sustaining a community of practice in higher ed with two guiding principles: center community and use what you have. Drawing from our ongoing work launching Drexel's Sitecore Community Hub, a central space for web author support for Drexel's current web platform, we will share a practical approach that combines two tracks of work that happen side by side:

• Use what you have: map the tools, platforms and systems your institution already provides, then choose a small set that can support communication, documentation and participation without adding new budget or new logins.
• Center community: build cross-silo relationships through regular conversations, quick check-ins and simple feedback loops so the hub and associated resources keep improving based on real needs, not assumptions.

We will walk through what we tried, what worked, what did not and what we are still figuring out as we move from more disparate support channels toward a more coordinated community. While our example comes from web author support, the principles apply to other contexts such as instructional technology, IT service communities or any campus-wide practice that depends on shared norms and shared tools. This session will be co-presented by Marina Borker and Christopher Hill, reflecting both instructional design and web product coordination perspectives.