Forming Community of Practice in IT department of Higher Education Institution

This paper explains the conceptual framework of forming IT Community of Practice (CoP) in IT department of Higher Education Institution. The focal point of the research is the establishment of CoP for intentional CoP where membership of the community is homogenous of job function. As of today a semantic group formation model does not exist to be adopted. The research to be undertaken selects the IT department in Universiti Teknologi MARA Malaysia as a case study to discover the semantic group formation model to enable meaningful knowledge sharing. The conceptual framework informs the group formation elements crucial for CoP formation. The value adds semantic approach proposes existing semantic models to derive an option of method in the group formation and CoP implementation. The semantic models inform a learner profile and the competency ontology as the required ontology for a semantic group formation model. This group formation and implementation of CoP enhances community based knowledge sharing by better learning experience to develop professional skills. Based on the selection of the case study, the conceptual framework shall provide the basis of a semantic model group formation for IT CoP usable throughout the government sector IT department.