2009 Gathering: Before and After

The Formation of Scholars: Rethinking Doctoral Education for the Twenty-First Century (2007) by George Walker, Chris M. Golde, Laura Jones, Andrea Conklin Bueschel, Pat Hutchings. http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/publications/pub.asp?key=43&subkey=678 studied 78 institutions. looked at students and faculty together. (Cindy: you should read this the 2nd year in grad school)

Margaret Riehl example of a wiki with assignments to individuals, to the cohort and to "the program". negotiation of meaning.

Force-fitting educational practice into available tools. HOw take digital identity forward from grad school to work? Lack of a priori vocabularies and protocols.

Graduates should be able to leave with intact networks.

Example of Royal Roads course that "contained" CPsquare's Foundations of Communities of Practice workshop as a way of changing the educational model.

Holland, Dorothy C. & Lave, Jean., History in person: enduring struggles, contentious practice, intimate identities (Santa Fe, N.M.: School of American Research Press, 2001) ISBN: 9781930618008; History in Person: An Introduction. by dorothy Holland and Jean Lave.

Searching for cases of success:

* Initiated by students themselves: Patricia Arnold dissertation.
* Initiated by an institution: Linda Polin cohort designs at Masters & Phd levels at Pepperdine.

This session explored the question of centralized facilitation vs. distributed leadership in a particular British Columbia-wide online space for higher education.

Four spectrums framed our conversations:

• the degree to which members want stored information vs. dynamic conversation. We talked about Onefish as an example of the former (where leadership involves expert moderation, for example). Alice's recent research with the CRTI network of communities was an example of more distributed and dynamic leadership (more later)
• when to have people dispersed and when to pull tight small groups together
• whether to have a more scalable network model or more explictly supported centrally facilitated approach and
• whether to be closed/exclusive or open/inclusive.

All have leadership implications.

The CRTI work was--in part--based on a community of practice "leadership model" called C4P presented by Pete Kilner at E-Learn 2004 in DC. It is online (look for SIG paper by Hoadley and Kilner). It has since been tested in empirical research by Alice (see IGI book in publications section of www.4KM.net, which cites the Hoadley paper).

Where do you start? How to make decisions about community spaces / tools?

Core Questions

* How do you work with rhythm of what EVERYBODY is already doing?
* How to keep people motivated when there are technical issues?
* How can you show examples of communities and provide enough context?
* How will people know about possibilities if they stick with what they know? Need to experience the possibilities to know about possibilities. How do you balance what you know with exploring possibilities?
* How do create a participatory culture in making these decisions?

Possible Solutions

Give examples -- show and tell

Start with what people are already using

Use cases -- document typical scenarios of what people will DO
Really have to understand the practice

Create different ways for people to talk about what they envisions for the community. Newsletter -- one year later

Explore together
- field trip
- ongoing conversations
- way to share resources and findings

Start with activities
THEN talk about how that looks using different tools:
Here's how these activities will look using an email list
Here's how these activities will look using...x and y

Recognize that there are developmental stages
- Use the technology but not all at once
- Technology should not dominate the conversation early on. It changes the subject. Instead talk about what community members want to talk about USING the technology. -- something purposeful like Need to find ways for everybody to do the work. Create a charter, and use different tools to do that. Create a responsibility to contribute early on.

Sandboxes
- But be careful not to put technology too soon, and too much at the centre
- Think of it as an environments with training wheels. Richness can be explored in the comfort of others.
- Need to know that things will change. "We're not here for life" approach. Temporary landing place.
- You can't make assumptions that everybody wants to use the tools you decide on. i.e. common -- Get something set up then people keep using email.
- Rather than focus on what a specific tool does, talk about how to use these tools in a community. don't get so hung up on features
- Recognize that each technology has its own limitations. We discover them as we work and can get frustrated by it. Move on! Create a culture where it is okay to abandon earlier decisions and move on.

BIGGEST THEME
Need to understand that the it takes PEOPLE to work through this process. You need a facilitator.

Here are a few jotty notes. Tracy did a great report on this session so might have more to add!

Multimembership

• No easy solutions
  
• We all struggle with it
• Individual ways of working don't necessarily work for groups
  
• There was a SCoPE seminar on this topic
  

Issues

• People get turned off when...
  • see password required
  • complicated account creation
• Afraid to over commit. If "sign up" feel need to stick with it.
• How do you balance expectations to contribute with flexibility?

Some Solutions: Community activities (participation)

• Flexibility -- no obligations to contribute
• Lurking okay
• Casual conversation okay because that might be all some can manage "twitter tone"
• Multiple passwords -- openid or have your browser (or service) manage it
• Make contributions to communities part of your usual personal workflow
  

Trends

• Find out about community activities though twitter, etc. Not as inclined to plan ahead, block off time, add events to person calendars
• People appreciate "just in time"
• Spontaneity is good
• Rhythm, expectations, regular schedule can be helpful
  

Questions

• How much do you want to customize your visits to communities?
• What is it about Facebook that makes it appealing?
• How do you deal with guilt?
• PLE - Community: How much can you expect people to think "oh this group would like to know about this resource" or to build on personal workflows as much as possible.
  

The Viral Topic

What's the appeal of viral nuggets? (like Susan Boyle singing on Idol)

• unexpected
• quality
• curiosity
• lure
• invitation by someone you trust

Questions

• How do you spread the word about the community and events / resources?
• How to keep members coming back to the site? To discussions?
• How do you balance push and pull?
  

A few solutions

• Community Badge -- people would rather come across information about memberships from people they trust rather than receive information directly from a community site
  
• Use automatic invitations from sites with caution -- can be annoying!
• Always need human element - someone you trust

In a twitter note, I wrote:
Listing people we wanted to teleport to #oce2009. @Downes @gsiemens @suethomas exs on my list. Let us know if you wish you'd been there.

Since then, Erin Kreeger and Randy Fisher are the only ones not on that list who have replied. Erin's twitter ID is ekreeger.

I can think of lots of others, but hopefully this is a springboard for additions.

Someone (I think Tracey) asked about ways to create clonable start pages/webtops. I mentioned there were likely a dozen ways to do this. This article (http://unescochair.blogs.uoc.edu/05032009/my-uocs-main-page-design-your-own-learning-experience/) describes UOC's experience doing this and is a very good starting point (and yes, it seems to indicate that iGoogle offers a 'clonable' option).

My $0.02 - the issue isn't so much the container (iGoogle vs Netvibes vs. Pageflakes vs ....) as making sure that the various 'things' you plug into them are as interoperable as possible. So look for 'widgets' based on emerging cross-platform standards as well as basic things like RSS. If the whole idea is "personal" starting spaces, then choosing widget formats that work across multiple platforms will allow people to truly make those choices *personal*.

Cheers, Scott

Synposized Notes (after group discussion)

• community are people not places
• two real benefits of comunities ove r networks might be are that the boundaries can help people otherwise reluctant to jump in, and the offer more opportunities for "bumping into each other", ability to achieve a specified goal, they tap into a natural desire to belong
• rather than "look at what you can get" flip it around to "hey, you could help give"
• rather than "online community" "online spaces to support communities
• a size issue - after a certain point, you need "communities" not "community""
• networks may envcourage echoes whereas communities may encourage encountering diversity
• communities don't necessarily scale, networks do; networks can augment communities

Raw Notes - Our Space vs My Space(s)

• digital identity (harvesting)
• personal brand management / lifestreams
• portable identity
• value in having different identities
• role instead of identity
• facets
• "networks in spaces you go to" -
• communities can conceivably be consensually defined instead of centrally defined
• project with a real aim that united us
• projects can get funding, networks have a harder time
• individual campus communities want to retain their individual identities
• "go beyond" - go beyond initial committments, go beyond initial community, helps them be a part of a larger collective
• network can be less focused and longer duration
• showing that we are all united, the "movement" that unites these individual actions
• anecdote - allowing people to attach a personal photo to individual news stories helped increase sharing aross Go Beyond community
• "we are interested in sustainability, what's your major" based on response, enlist them in that particular role
• rather than "look at what you can get" flip it around to "hey, you could help give"
• affinity, learn from others
• collective identity that is lost
• part of something bigger than yourself; belonging, fundamental to huma nature
• community is much bigger committment
• "online community" is a terrible phrase; rather "online spaces to support community"
• a size issue - after a certain point, you need "communities" not "community"
• bumping into each other - multiple casual interactions; hallway conversations
• increased diversity of interactions in communities
• what is a measure of success? not sheer number; effectiveness towards a common goal
• bounding an event in time or space can actually enable people to go further