Skule Nite: Developing Transferable Skills through an Extracurricular Community of Practice

Abstract

This paper shares findings from a close observational study of Skule Nite, a student-led revue, by: 1) describing how the characteristics of a community of practice create a space to support both shared and personal identity construction; 2) analyzing how this space contributes to individual identity construction as well as the development of complementary skills that may be loosely supported in core engineering instruction; and 3) considering how this community building is facilitated through the extracurricular experience as distinct from a core curricular experience. Insights from this discussion can be adapted to classroom contexts, suggesting new approaches for community development and student engagement as we work to foster the development of future workplace competencies in our student engineers.