Nowadays, communities of practice applies to digital communication through networks, not only in physical classrooms. The development of ideas through social media is becoming more and more usual and efficient.

According to the website Innovatielearning.com, The idea of communities of practice (CoP) is that learning occurs in social contexts that emerge and evolve when people who have common goals interact as they strive towards those goals. The concept of communities of practice is commonly credited to Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger who originated the construct legitimate peripheral participation in their studies of apprenticeship situations. From their development of legitimate peripheral participation, they created the term "community of practice" to refer to the communities of practitioners into which newcomers would enter and attempt to learn the sociocultural practices of the community.

It describes a learning theory with a strong relationship to the social construction of knowledge. The community of practice (sometimes incorrectly referred to as "communities of practices") consists of members who interact with each other for their pursuit of a common practice. It is therefore this collective social practice that links individuals together across official organizational boundaries and departments, and makes up the community.

It is important to note that these are not teams. A community of practice can be defined as "a group of professionals informally bound to one another through exposure to a common class of problems, common pursuit of solutions, and thereby themselves embodying a store of knowledge" (Stewart 2001 in Botha et al 2008).

Garfield (2018) presents a number of principles concerning communities in organizations, including:

They must be independent of organizational structure.
They are not teams, sites, blogs, etc; they are people who interact and they are based on topics.
Community membership cannot be forced; it must be voluntary.
Communities should span organizational, functional and geographic boundaries.
Communities require a "critical mass" of members.
Communities must be nurtured.

The following videos guide some examples for us to understand better this idea

More information: https://www.knowledge-management-tools.net/communities-of-practice.html