Building a Community of Practice: Educators Collaborative

Podcast Transcript

Dr. James K. Stoller:

Hello, and welcome to MedEd Thread, a Cleveland Clinic Education Institute podcast that explores the latest innovations in medical education and amplifies the tremendous work of our educators across the enterprise.

Dr. Cecile Foshee:

Hi. Welcome to today's episode of MedEd Thread, I am your host, Dr. Cecile Foshee, Director of the Office of Intrapersonal Learning, and Director of the Master of Education in Health Professions Education, here at Cleveland Clinic, in Cleveland, Ohio. Today, I'm very pleased to have Dr. Stephen Kawczak here to join us. Dr. Kawczak is the Medical Director of the Center for Continuing Education, and Director of the Educator's Collaborative at Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Kawczak, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Stephen Kawczak:

Thank you.

Dr. Cecile Foshee:

So, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself.

Dr. Stephen Kawczak:

Sure. So, I'm actually a born and raised Clevelander, and I stayed here, it's been home, and I've had a fantastic time building my career here at Cleveland Clinic. I've been an educator here for a little over 20 years, now.

Dr. Cecile Foshee:

We're here today to talk about building a community of practice, and since you're the director of the Educator's Collaborative, do you want to tell us a little bit about what that is?

Dr. Stephen Kawczak:

Sure. Happy to. So, the Educator's Collaborative, it's a community of educators in the health professions at Cleveland Clinic. We formed it in 2020, and it's a membership organization across the entire health system. I say membership, but there's no cost involved. We ask individuals to commit to being part of the community. We want to stimulate some engagement, so we ask them to actually commit to being involved and showing up, and participating. And the membership is interprofessional and multi-professional, so it's very wide-ranging, we have from Education Coordinators and Designers to doctoral level educators and education researchers, physician educators, teaching across the entire continuum of the health professions. And we're offering education sessions to the community, but we've also formed special interest groups around different areas in which individuals want to huddle up throughout the year, to learn from, and- and with each other. We offer some spotlight sessions where we showcase the educational work going on in our enterprise, and we also act as a repository for resources that can help educators do their jobs better.

Dr. Cecile Foshee:

Wow, that sounds like a wonderful opportunity for our educators, and it actually calls to mind, really the components of a community of practice, right? You have a domain, which are, you know educators, you have a community, and then, everybody is coming together to share best practices, solve problems, and all of those things are actually what define a community of practice, so this is- this is wonderful to hear that we have this, you know, within our doors, right? So, can you really tell us some examples of how people have taking advantage of this, how it is exemplifies this community of practice?

Dr. Stephen Kawczak:

Sure. And thanks for noting that the definition of a community of practice, because we really did base it on what that is, which is a group that shares a passion or concern and then they get together to learn and grow. So, the idea here, by being very welcoming, and having a kind of a- a big tent model is, we wanted those that have been educators for a long time, leaders in their field, have expertise, to connect to those that were novices, just entering the education space, or maybe, experienced in the health professions, but not experienced in education. And they were doing that like an- as an add-on to their job.

So, we wanted to connect individuals so they could support the education going on, and we also wanted to create a spotlight of this community of education. Education's interwoven in- in the fabric of what we do at Cleveland Clinic, but a lot of times it's invisible. So, we thought, let's create a community, so that can give life and spotlight to this important work that's going on.

Dr. Cecile Foshee:

That's great. It kind of elevates that, right? I think sometimes we take for granted the educators and the things that they do, and you know, this idea of having the novices learning from people that have been doing it and going through the work, and you know, become experts, even sometimes even just by accident, you know, without any formal education, so it's great that we can formalize that. You said it was established in 2020. So, have you had opportunities to actually have any lessons learned, any things that people have shared? I mean, can you tell us a little bit more about events that have taken place?

Dr. Stephen Kawczak:

Well, our first lesson learned is that creating a community that's purely virtual is very hard. So, our intention was to have this community gather, kind of like a professional home, where you have an annual meeting, where everyone in this profession gets together, physically, to just rub shoulders. Well, that was taken away for obvious reasons, because of the pandemic, so we had to switch to offering educational sessions only virtually, and it's very hard to have add-ons to that that are socially oriented. We haven't really had any social gatherings since we've started, and that's something we'd like to change. And by next year, we hope to have in-person social events, where we can just network and get to know each other.

Regardless of that, we have had many educational sessions that have been very valuable. Whether it's to help increase knowledge of fundamentals of education research, or how to apply those, or to increase awareness of resources that exist. So, one thing we noticed is educators were creating education in their different clinical areas, but they didn't necessarily know who they could consult with to get feedback on, well, am I designing something effective? And so, we did form at least those connections and awareness of the Center for Educational Resources that we have in our Education Institute that specializes in helping educators improve.

There's also been good sessions where we've given feedback on aspiring education researchers, where they had ideas or works in progress, and that's enabled them to actually take that feedback, apply it to their initiatives, which has helped them advance things and get things published.

Another success story has come from simply spotlighting educational sessions. So, one thing in a virtual environment, is it's very easy to create virtual sessions, with- people can sync up, you kind of have lunch and learn series. So, we've done numerous virtual poster sessions, where educators can put together a work in progress. So, maybe it's not a completed project or study, to where they could present the results, but they could present the work so far. They can get feedback from colleagues, and they could also practice presentation skills.

One thing we noticed is, novice educators are a little hesitant to just get out there and start talking about their education work, because they feel a little bit like a fish out of water. It's not maybe what they were trained in, or they're new to the field, so they were a little uneasy to present to others. Well, this- this was an easy thing to do, and the virtual environment actually took the pressure off, and it gave people practice, and enabled them to get some feedback, so then they could go to then, their professional societies and present that work later.

Dr. Cecile Foshee:

That's fabulous, and, you know, I think by giving people the opportunity to get feedback on the work, it brings the value that is the hallmark of a community of practice, right? So even though you mentioned earlier that doing a virtual environment was difficult, I think having that opportunity to get feedback is probably the most important component that you could have integrated into this collaborative, right?

Dr. Stephen Kawczak:

Yeah. I think the idea there is to, you know, in a community you want to share something you're concerned about, in this case, how's my education initiative going? Right? And then you have an opportunity to leverage the wisdom of the group, or the community, to learn from that. Say, okay, yeah, this is how I could make it better. And that helps everybody, because then education as a whole is improving through these interactions.

Dr. Cecile Foshee:

That's great, yeah. So, this is a very wonderful example of how this collaborative really exemplifies a community of practice. You also mentioned social gatherings, earlier, I think that would also be an important piece to highlight, and how you're gonna create that momentum, and engage people, and kind of pull them back in, because you know, you're absolutely right, virtual environment might be a good practice platform, but not necessarily a connected platform.

Dr. Stephen Kawczak:

I think when you have an existing community, and then you convert to virtual, and then you might join an education session, and you see, oh, I see an old colleague I haven't seen in a while. You might chat with that individual, but it's really hard to start that from scratch, completely virtually.

Dr. Cecile Foshee:

Yeah. So, given these experiences, what has surprised you the most about this?

Dr. Stephen Kawczak:

Well, actually, I think maybe a surprise is a bit of a challenge that I'm seeing. So, anytime you have a community, I've noticed that a small percentage of individuals raise their hands to volunteer and help implement things. We have fantastic special interest group leaders; we've had people eager to present. But in some, it's just, you know, five or 10 percent of the individuals. So, I worry about the majority, it's coined in the community of practice world, lurkers that they might be in the background, sideline, you know, they're on an education session with the camera off, and don't interact. You kind of wonder where they're at.

And so, it surprised me that people had volunteered to join, they signed up, they committed to participating, but then they haven't quite engaged, yet. So, it's been a challenge to think of ways to encourage interaction. And I think my hope is that when we do get together in person, it's easier when you're at a roundtable, physically, to talk to somebody who's quiet, and just interact, and maybe get them to move from being a lurker, to a- to an active participant.

Dr. Cecile Foshee:

Yeah, you can definitely invite that participation a little bit easier, right? But I don't know that I would worry too much about the percentage of people that are lurkers, because that is consistent with the literature and the behavior that tends to happen in a community of practice, right? I think there is this overall misconception that if you create it, people are gonna come. But the reality is, people are just going to consume, you know, as for calling them the- the lurkers, not in a bad way, it's like- e- they're still learning, they're getting something out of it. But I think the challenge, as you highlight is, how do you engage them, so that they become active participants?

And there's always going to be a small percent that are going to be, you know, the- the real contributors. But I think they will come and go, right? So, how can our listeners become engaged with this community? How can they- they take advantage of it?

Dr. Stephen Kawczak:

Well, so the Educator's Collaborative, this is for the Cleveland Clinic enterprise, so anyone who's connected to the Cleveland Clinic, it just takes, simply, sign up. You know, we want to know a bit about the scope of practice that people have, or the type of work they're doing, experience, expertise they have, because eventually we would like to choreograph some mentor/mentee relationships, or tap people on the shoulder when we want to curate some educational sessions that we think people have. And so, it's a simple, easy process.

But beyond the Cleveland Clinic, I think this speaks to us as educators in the health professions. We can't operate and work on an island, right? We need to have connections. So, my encouragement to the listeners in general is, find a way to get connected. It just takes calling people who do what you do. I mean, even if you don't have a formal internal community to practice, or externally, there's many health professions education communities, associations, societies, and I think that's a great way to help you advance your profession, or help others. We all want to see education be effective and the only way we can do that is doing it together. So, that would be my encouragement to the- the listener, is get connected.

Dr. Cecile Foshee:

Right. And- and it sounds like this is really the- the space to be at, right? You're gonna be able to connect with people that have lots of experience and people that are at the same level as you are, however novice you might be. So, this is wonderful. Are there any other things that you think are important for our listeners to know, about this community of practice?

Dr. Stephen Kawczak:

I would close with not just what I mentioned about the call to get involved, but that this is an ongoing need, and it's work sort of never done. So, I think that a community to be alive and well, it takes people to volunteer, to participate, and to look for ways to help those that want to get better. So, that would be my encouragement, is to get involved, and then to stay involved.

Dr. Cecile Foshee:

Move yourself away from that lurker state, right?

Dr. Stephen Kawczak:

Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Cecile Foshee:

That takes a lot of courage, sometimes. Well, thank you so much, Dr Kawczak. This has been a great podcast.

Dr. Stephen Kawczak:

Thank you.

Dr. Cecile Foshee:

To our listeners, thank you very much, and we will see you soon, in our next podcast, and have a wonderful day.

Dr. James K. Stoller:

This concludes this episode of MedEd Thread, a Cleveland Clinic Education Institute podcast. Be sure to subscribe to hear new episodes via iTunes, Google Play, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, thanks for listening to MedEd Thread, and please join us again, soon.