FOC09 - Online Communities discussion

It has been an interesting couple of weeks coming to terms with what online communities are. I really wanted to find an online community in hospitality or hotel (but the ones I looked at were more blogs or were inactive). As an avid reader, I then decided to look at forums relating to book lovers – I found one that seemed to have a good following, were very active, however, I still await my invite to be accepted! Very frustrating. So I finally decided to look at Networked Learning which describes it self as “people in Otago investigating Networked learning”. There are 71 members in the group but not all from the Otago region. Many of the members have photos and brief profiles about themselves which makes it feel more of a community.

In my search of forum’s I also wanted to consider the features of an online community based on people’s blogs in the course and also the discussions we have had within class meetings, some of which are as follows:

• communicating towards a common goal
• bringing people together that have the same interest
• like minded people sharing information
• level of contribution is dependent on individual choice
• shared knowledge (through shared experiences, question/answers

Despite these, there is also the sense of how long it takes for an online community to build trust with each other (this is can be debated, some people will like the anonymity of this type of forum, where as others will feel that trust takes time when you are not f2f). I also need to gain a better understanding of the forums and the role of facilitators and moderators.

Howard Reingold lists sensible, practical techniques with the following topics:

• What an online host wants to achieve
• Good online discussions
• What a host does, what a host tries to grow
• Host behaviour

An article by Nancy White identifies the four frameworks for online facilitation, group processes, applications, key skills, and links to relevant articles. I found her comments relating to facilitators as role models interesting as she stated ‘they are often the first members to be challenged” and then went on to say that “integrity, patience, a good sense of humour and a love of other people will be valued in any host”. The key skills she identified included:

• Group facilitation skills
• Cybrarianship
• Passion for community
• Ability to facilitate facilitative behaviours within the community

She also went on to say that the facilitator may also act as a ‘referee’, and would also need further skills such as a “thick skin and slow fuse, internet experiences, familiarity with common netiquette”.

As I know some of the members of the group, I decided to contact someone that I did not know to pose the question of whether they felt the forum required a facilitator. The person I contacted suggested that for them they did not feel that this particular forum required facilitation. They said “the conversations all seem to occur on email and participants respond to items of interest to them”. They went on to say as they responded on Gmail email, all of these discussions are connected in one thread and so they did not need them pulled together in any other way. However, for others it may be useful. They did say that this could be a fairly time consuming job and would require quite a commitment from someone. They said that the use of facilitation is where a person assists in coordinating the forum to help focus people around a particular issue, or the writing of a summary to close a thread in the forum.

After our class meeting last night, I have also been thinking about the time involved in such a job and as was mentioned many of these forums are ‘interest’ groups and therefore there would be no funding for this role.

I look forward to comments and suggestions.