We welcome Mr Gopinathan as a part-time lecturer for Semester 2, AY2009-2010.

Mr Gopi is a Principal Consultant (KM) with the Civil Service College (CSC). He has developed and delivered KM training workshops for the CSC, and has co-facilitated workshops on Communities of Practice (CoP) with Dr Etienne Wenger, a globally recognised thought leader in the field of CoP. Mr Gopi has helped to launch a few CoPs in Singapore and has recently completed a study on CoP adoption among organisations in the Singapore Public Service. He is also experienced in developing and implementing information and KM systems for Private and Public Service organisations. His recent achievements include the development of a KM roadmap for the Singapore Public Service. A speaker at several KM conferences and seminars, Mr Gopi is often called upon as a resource person for KM within the Singapore Public Service.

This semester, Mr Gopi is teaching a new course K6233 Communities of Practice. This is what Mr Gopi says about the course:

Leading organizations in the private and public sectors have discovered that Communities of Practice (CoPs) are the ideal vehicle for engaging practitioners directly in the development of strategic capabilities. These leading organizations are finding that there is much they can do to cultivate communities intentionally and integrate them in the organization. But they have also learnt the importance of doing so in a way that honors the integrity of communities as structures of personal engagement, in which practitioners connect their sense of professional identity with strategic aspirations. In the 21st century, successful organizations will be the ones that achieve such a productive integration of the formal and the informal. This is the new challenge of the knowledge economy.

This course aims to equip students with the knowledge and competencies for cultivating CoPs in organizations. Topics include basic concepts and models of community elements, types and lifecycle of CoP, review design principles, success factors and organizational factors, and community-building techniques. Students will engage in case studies, gain practical experience in selected knowledge sharing techniques and in preparing for the launch of pilot communites, walk through various dimensions of the design of pilot CoPs and outline a launch process for the CoPs.