Sample Community Memorandum of Agreement (MOA)

This agreement is intended to document and to facilitate a shared understanding of the role that a community of practice plays in DAU’s learning ecosystem. Critically thinking about what value the community brings to the target audience is the first step in launching a successful community. Through the perspective of the community leader, the agreement articulates the community’s primary audience, purpose and objectives, measures of success, and roles along with the associated time commitment required to build and sustain an engaging and successful community. As part of the standup of a new community, the community leader must address each of the items below and sign the document.

Background: Role of Communities of Practice in the DAU Learning Ecosystem

A Community of Practice is a place where people can connect with other people, learn from each other, engage in discussions, collaborate, and share ideas. It is not meant to serve only as a repository where people can locate documents. Tools, ACQuipedia articles, and policy resources live on the DAU, and anyone can search on Google or the DAU.edu and find these resources on a specific topic. If the intention is just to provide content, a community of practice is not the venue. Although communities do have curated content and links to tools and policies that draw members to the community, that is not its main purpose. Via communities, we are seeking to extend the reach of DAU and to stay connected to the workforce beyond the classroom through community interaction and engagement.

Successful communities have dedicated community managers who spend time weekly cultivating a sense of community, and fostering member engagement by continuously keeping the community dialed into important announcements, and policy changes, as well as encouraging the exchange of ideas via discussions and webinars and creating linkages to and from other learning content, such as courses, articles, and videos.

DAU’s communities of practice represent the DAU brand. A community with no activity, low membership, and no engagement looks bad for the university and hurts the DAU brand.

Given the role of DAU’s communities, if you are interested in developing a new community of practice, please complete the information below, and sign.

Community Name: Identify the name of the community (e.g., Logistics CoP).

Community Membership/Audience: Identify the audience that the community is targeting/trying to attract (e.g., DoD logistics workforce, industry partners working logistics, other individuals working related logistics areas).

What is the estimated size of the target membership/audience?

Community Purpose/Intent: Identify the purpose/intent of the community (e.g., what challenges or pain points are you trying to address? What value does the community bring to the membership?).

Community Objectives: List the community objectives (e.g., specific areas or issues that the community is interested in addressing).

Leading Indicators: Identify what short-term observations/measurements will be used as leading indicators in meeting your stated objectives. (Sample indicators: xx% of target audience is a member of the community, increase in engagement levels during first x months, customer satisfaction.)

Community Metrics: Identify the metrics that you will use to determine whether you are meeting your stated objectives. (Sample metrics: # of members, engagement levels, # of engagement activities, frequency of engagement activities, # of sessions/month, # returning users.)

Community Engagement Activities: Identify activities that you intend to employ to support community engagement. What is your intended battle rhythm? (Sample activities: Welcome emails to new members/as members join, Newsletters/weekly, Announcements/bi-weekly, Webinars/monthly, Recruitment/bi-monthly.)

Community Roles: Successful communities have critical roles that must be filled by dedicated individuals willing to devote time to the management of the community. Please identify the names and email addresses of the individuals who will be filling the key roles, as well as the estimated weekly time commitment in hours. Community roles are defined in more detail at the following link Community Roles and Responsibilities.

• Leader(s) – Each community has a designated Community Leader(s) who is generally an expert in the domain or discipline associated with the respective community. In many cases, leaders do not have to be DAU faculty or staff. They provide strategic direction, participate in community facilitation, and support content management.
• Moderators – The strategic goal of the Community Moderator is to maintain an environment where community members share and exchange ideas, questions, and concerns and contribute resources that benefit both the community and the acquisition workforce as a whole. As such, the Moderator has three primary roles: community facilitation and engagement, content management and governance, and site management.
• SMEs – Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are knowledgeable and experienced members of a community who use their knowledge of the discipline to judge what is important, groundbreaking, and useful. SMEs may be non-DAU staff, but only the Community Leader or Moderator may designate these members as SMEs.

As the <fill in community of practice name> Community Leader, I acknowledge my understanding of the role that communities play in the DAU learning ecosystem, and I am committed to devoting <fill in # of hours> per week in the management of this community. In addition, I have corresponded with and have commitments from the above people identified in the roles matrix. They understand the purpose and goal of the new community and have agreed to the time commitment noted above.

Signature__________________________