While the folks at Disambiguity had something else in mind when discussing 10 Social Skills for Community Designers, this list makes me wonder what exactly school districts need to keep in mind when designing online learning communities…using Moodle, or whatever tool.
Their list seems pretty obvious but it’s 10 more things I hadn’t thought to articulate; kudos to Disambiguity for doing so:
- you need to take responsibility for the way that your community behaves
- tokenistic involvement is a waste of time
- ask for specific feedback
- give examples
- wait… wait… wait… engage!
- admit errors quickly
- don’t go dark, but don’t respond to everything
- lead by example
- assume good faith
- be a human
How do you define failure? That’s pretty straightforward. Could a lack of community simply be defined as the absence of people participating? If no one is participating, if people aren’t having conversations without you instigating them, then that’s failure, isn’t it? I think of long hallways in an empty castle, reminiscent of online games on servers where no one shows up to play. The place is plumb empty and you’re left to wander the halls. What makes one online community more engaging than others?
Some ideas–adapted from If You Build It, They Will Come with my apologies for mangling the original intent–that may be worth trying out include the following:
- Facilitate engaging and ongoing interaction between community organizer but more importantly between the community members themselves.
- Facilitate sharing of real-world contributions–for which they retain ownership–by community members that are relevant to what they need to know or do. New tools for creating and collaborating are available that make this possible. The problem is, getting people to recognize the value in joining a sharing community.
- Communicate and enable the evolution of the goals of the online community to and with the community members.
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Hi Miguel, From a higher education perspective, indications are that students are very pragmatic about online communities. See http://e-ako.blogspot.com/2009/03/4-student-sense-of-online-community-red.html. Studies are emerging that challenge the importance of online community for the purposes of formal learning. Your list of ten things, by the way, is strikingly consistent with a literature review I recently completed… nice one. Cheers, Mark.
Hi Miguel, From a higher education perspective, indications are that students are very pragmatic about online communities. See http://e-ako.blogspot.com/2009/03/4-student-sense-of-online-community-red.html. Studies are emerging that challenge the importance of online community for the purposes of formal learning. Your list of ten things, by the way, is strikingly consistent with a literature review I recently completed… nice one. Cheers, Mark.
Nichthus, I will definitely check that out!To clarify, that list of ten belongs to Disambiguity blog, not me. I provide the link to the full blog post–worth reading–in the intro paragraph.Will you be sharing your lit review online?Thanks,Miguel
Nichthus, I will definitely check that out!To clarify, that list of ten belongs to Disambiguity blog, not me. I provide the link to the full blog post–worth reading–in the intro paragraph.Will you be sharing your lit review online?Thanks,Miguel
Thanks Miguel, I had misread the ten points as yours… …yes, the lit review is a part of a five part series available under Creative Commons license at http://akoaotearoa.ac.nz/projects/eprimer-series. The fourth (relating to online discourse) should be released end April. It’s currently undergoing editing. Cheers, Mark.
Thanks Miguel, I had misread the ten points as yours… …yes, the lit review is a part of a five part series available under Creative Commons license at http://akoaotearoa.ac.nz/projects/eprimer-series. The fourth (relating to online discourse) should be released end April. It’s currently undergoing editing. Cheers, Mark.