The Search for Online Community (FOC08)

How time flies!

Week 6 of the online class I am taking, Facilitating Online Communities, is just finishing, and our assignment is to search out an online community and identify the features of why it is one. To be fair, the assignment is a little more involved, but this is the part I am planning to focus upon.

SCoPE arrows SCoPE jumps to mind. Sylvia Currie, one of my colleagues at a distance who is also taking this class and with whom I have participated in several online events, is the community organizer of this wonderful online association.

When I started attending professional development workshops at this online community, with the by-line “SCoPE brings together individuals who share an interest in educational research and practice,” I really was rather new to the concept of online community. In fact, the only reason I attended after all is because I did not have any other available professional education and development opportunities at the time. I had no concept of it as a community, nor was that something I would have sought out even had I recognized it as one. At the time, I saw education and professional development as something that one (me) does independently to improve one’s own classroom experiences. I had no idea about the collaborative and connected power of getting people together who have some common interests and experiences to share and develop together. That is something that came about from attending a number of the SCoPE sessions where I gradually experienced these benefits.

I have learned and reflected a lot on online communities over the past couple of years, and am finally trying to put into words what identifying features I now think I am looking for in an online community:

  1. Similar Interests — I am looking for people who have some similar interests, whether professional interests, academic interests, hobbies, or the like. I find it easier to work with people I meet in SCoPE who have similar interests in online learning, qualitative research, and educational technology for adult education. That many of these people also are interested in professional development opportunities and gladly share what they have learned to help others (me) not re-invent the wheel is an added bonus.
  2. Passion for Work — A number of the people who I have met along the way and with whom I am always happy to share continued online opportunities and sessions are those who are not afraid to work for something they want. They have a passion for going above and beyond the minimum in order to have (and share) the best experiences they can toward similar and related goals.
  3. Active Communication — Good communication is one of those hidden factors that supports or dooms communities. Maintaining connections online, with the variety of social media and communication media available, can be a challenge at times, and those who communicate in ways that their listeners and colleagues can best hear their messages and reply are those who are most effective at building and supporting communities.

There indeed may be other factors to consider, and for them and for other perspectives on this topic I will in turn look at my own community in this class, such as Illya Arnet-Clark, Mike Bogle, Nellie Deutsch, Barbara Dieu, and Amy Lenzo. What better resources than colleagues considering some of the same issues?

To end this thinking here, I suppose facilitating these factors involves the similar interests, passion, and communication that I listed above. Of course, organization and time management and project planning and staying current are also important. This reminds me of the Technology Stewardship discussions that other colleagues, John Smith, Nancy White, and Etienne Wenger, have been building and sharing with the larger community.

I think I have a lot of good examples to continue to learn from!

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Email vs. Blog Postings for FOC08

FOC08 Google Group

Seems some people (myself includes) have been using the Facilitating Online Communities email list from the Google Group for our class more than blog posting and threaded commenting.

I will quote my reply about this from earlier today:

One of the reasons I think this may be happening is because emails are immediate. I am able to reply to your email question while sitting in a train waiting for it to leave via my BlackBerry. Though underground, this response will get sent as soon as I go above ground again.

I cannot blog from here, and as I want to reply immediately, this seems the best option.

That GoogleGroups archives and makes all this searchable only seems to increase its use.

So, now I am blogging about my email response. Perhaps they can be used concurrently?

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CIDER and FOC08 Live Online Sessions Today

There are two wonderful professional development opportunities today that I am hoping to attend:

  1. Gale Parchoma of Lancaster University will be speaking live online via CIDER (Canadian Institute of Distance Education Research) at 11:00 MDT (time conversion here). Her topic is “Adoption of Technology Enhanced Learning in Higher Education.”
  2. Leigh Blackall will have the first of two conference calls for his Facilitating Online Communities sessions this evening at UTC 9:00 PM (time conversion here).

Both of these promise to be wonderful free learning events for those of us who work with online learning, communities of practice, and educational technology.

Facilitating Online Communities Global Call

I just attended the Facilitating Online Communities online course conference call. We were from Peru, Vancouver, New Zealand, Texas, Argentina, New York, Brunei, and elsewhere. Wow! What a global perspective to discuss some of the issues around communities. This was the first time I was able to attend one of our calls,

I am increasingly interested in the issues in and around technology, especially how the technological capacity, abilities, costs, and limitations can tend to direct how online communities communicate and develop.

There was some discussion about the mini online conference during weeks 12 and 13. Leigh Blackall mentioned some options for online community development, facilitation, and almost anything interesting around the idea of facilitating online communities. We should begin to consider topics of various interest, and it was suggested we group up and do a variety of online events:

In these two weeks you will focus on your event that you are facilitating as part of the course mini conference. The idea is for you to organize something for the conference, such as a guest speaker or a discussion panel through web conference; a discussion forum on a social networking platform; or assisting with the preparation and promotion of the mini conference generally. This will be your chance to facilitate real events and communication online, and explore more dimensions to facilitating online communities. 

I wonder if Sylvia Currie has an idea for us to work on? More about that soon enough . . .

Online Communities and the Removal of Distance

I think online communities of practice and even online classes are changing the ways we think about distance. It almost seems, from the perspective of community, that distance no longer exists. Does it matter if I email colleagues who are spread across the globe? Speak with them via Skype whenever and wherever they may be, as long as I get the timezones correct? Has this flattening of our world changed the way we think about people in other cultural contexts, within national identities, and exotic (and not so exotic) locales?

As my work and research begins to more formally be online, do I  have to be concerned with distance at all?

Further to my point here, what does all this mean for where and how communities form and interact? Leigh asked us to consider what online communities are in our FOC08 class, and I have managed to say exactly what they are not–they are not separated by distance.

I started this post before and finished after having a delightful conversation with a colleague in Brazil, Barbara Dieu. We started speaking (via skype text, which is speaking with the fingers) about Second Life and the FOC08 Course, and the next thing I knew is that Bee asked me what interests me and what I want to learn more about. I gushed about Lyotard’s “incredulity toward metanarrative, Mezirow’s transformative learning, Denzin / Lincoln / Guba’s work in qualitative research, Freire, Brookfield, pugs, cities, theories, technology, and Madame Butterfly.

I think that community is in there someplace. Something about openness to ideas and encouragement to grow and learn and become more present. Something about being with others who share a space next to us along the journey, whatever and wherever it may lead.

This conversation would never have happened without the community focus of this course, and how our different interests and experiences helps to inform and realize them. To all this, community adds and supports, and it has an amazing capacity to do all this without regard to distance.

Perhaps communities of practice help realize the Internet’s claim to make the world a smaller place, though one with more individual possibilities?