Abstract:

According to Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002), a community of practice, CP, is "a group of people who share a concern, a set of problems or a common interest about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area through continued interaction.

According to these authors, the three premises or dimensions in which the CP must be settled is the mutual commitment, the existence of a joint enterprise and shared repertoire, differentiating these communities from other forms of equipment that dominates the self-regulation and CP self-management within an informal ecosystem.

In this sense, it has been established at the University of Murcia a Teaching Innovation Group in Economics and Business,IDÉE, with the specific aim of exchanging experiences between members and the knowledge on the implementation of the teaching methodology Cooperative Learning in the studies conducted by the departments embedded in the Faculty of Economics and Business, fully adapting the defining characteristics of this group to the definition of CP.

Our experience shows that is necessary to set up some kind of internal regime regulation in order to achieve a correct way of functioning, even when the CP is an informal group. The proposed regulation has to establish the requirements to be member and to loose the group membership. Another important point is the rules of both implementation of teaching innovation and academic production of the group.

The present communication is aimed at exposing the experience of the implementation of a CP, the group Innovation and Teaching in Economics and Business, University of Murcia, IDEÉ, on the three premises identified, "the mutual commitment, the existence of a joint enterprise and shared repertoire - in order to identify the terms of the constitution of the group, the difficulties that have arisen and the solutions adopted and their achievements.

Keywords:

community of practice, cooperative learning, teaching innovation.