Webinars
Most communities of practice use interactive webinars to deliver specific content that community members are interested in learning more about. Generally a webinar is a real-time event (typically a 60-minute session) that combines a teleconference with web collaboration tools. There may be information shared ahead of time with reflection questions and research links, as well as follow-up opportunities for more reflection and additional reading.
During the interactive webinars one or more speakers, accompanied by slides, will present new information. Depending on the conferencing software used, there may be different kinds of opportunities for participants to interact throughout the presentation, including brainstorming, voting, posing questions, and contributing to discussion. An archived version of the webinar and the accompanying slides is typically made available for participants who were unable to attend the real-time webinar.
Archived webinars can be repurposed and made available for educators beyond the immediate community. This may involve editing content, organizing content into shorter chunks, making format changes and/or re-recording the narration. View an example here.
The slide presentations used for a webinar can sometimes be repurposed as a stand-alone reference.
For more information on developing interactive webinars to grow knowledge, see: Designing for online participation.