Welcome to the Overdose Data to Action (OD2A) Evaluation CoP

Greetings fellow evaluators,

Welcome to the Overdose Data to Action (OD2A) Evaluation Community of Practice.  Communities of practice (CoPs) are groups of people who share a passion for something they do and strive to learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.

What makes a CoP?

There are three crucial characteristics of CoPs:

• The community, which is the group of people that interact and learn together
• The domain, which is the shared purpose they have
• The practice, which is how they carry out their shared purpose

For the OD2A Eval CoP, all the evaluators in jurisdictions currently being funded by the CDC’s OD2A grant are in our community. The grant’s requirement to monitor and evaluate the implementation and impact of the OD2A strategies is our purpose.  The set of knowledge, skills, and tools necessary to efficiently and effectively carry out this purpose is our practice.

How is this community designed?

The OD2A Eval CoP is part of the overall peer-to-peer (P2) learning project funded by the OD2A grant to build the capacity necessary to address the nation’s opioid epidemic. This website will be the platform upon which an asynchronous learning community for OD2A evaluators will be created and maintained. This platform will be used to facilitate the five phases of growth associated with successful asynchronous communities (Waltonen-Moore et al, 2006).

• Introduction: First, we begin to see one another as human beings and begin to make a preliminary, emotive connection with the other members of the community.
• Identification: Then, we begin to communicate with one another by reference to our commonalities and seek to establish norms for a successful community.
• Interaction: In this phase, we will start interacting with one another in reference to the community’s established focus and begin to share information with one another.
• Introspection:  Hopefully, we will then begin to validate one another’s ideas and opinions while, at the same time, being reflective of our own.
• Inspiration: Now feeling completely comfortable within the environment, focused upon the content, and respectful of other group members’ thoughts and experiences, we will begin to not only post facts and deeply held beliefs, but will actually start to “think out loud”, allowing other group members to take part in our personal meaning-making and self-directed inquiry.

Now it’s your turn. Time to introduce yourself!

So, the first order of business is to introduce ourselves. Over the next few weeks, we hope to hear from you. We will make it incredibly easy. Could you leave us a comment here with an introduction?

It can be short, but if you need some inspiration, here are a few things we would love to know:

• First the Basics: Your name, role, and your state?
• What challenges are you facing in your current role?
• What lessons have you learned?
• Is there anything you would love to hear more about from your colleagues?
• Do you have any hopes or expectations from this community in terms of format, lessons, or tools?

As Stan Lee of the Marvel Universe would have said: Excelsior! 

Waltonen-Moore et all (2006), “From virtual strangers to a cohesive online learning community: the evolution of online group development in a professional development course”, Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 14 (2)