Community

Online communities are potentially complex and dynamic structures:

The communications system has to work effectively

They have to provide users with a reason to participate, often this is a shared common purpose

Opportunities for social discourse promote a sense of belonging

A moderation system must be in place and administrators should be able to remove unsuitable contributions and if necessary remove access should a participant behave unsuitably

 

In an online community there is often a shared common purpose, or more often interlocking networks of people with shared common purposes. As with physical communities they have available to them a range of communication opportunities - despite broadband there is still a dominance of text based communications in most online environments. Archiving synchronous video or audio generates huge files so is rarely saved as a community resource. It is time consuming to watch a lot of video - much faster to read text - misses out the pauses that naturally occur in conversation and allows the user to scan or flick back and re-read far more efficiently than video.

A significant proportion of participants will become actively involved in information exchange, some may prefer to observe the discussions without contributing, others naturally take on moderation or commentator roles, some will use their sense of humour or their expertise to add vibrancy to discussions. Some may not engage at all if the community does not meet their needs.

Some communities members may prefer to remain visually anonymous. Most communities physical or virtual will have amongst their members, a a fair cross section people who see themselves as too tall, too short, too fat, too thin, or just not looking right in some way. For them the chance to be a visually anonymous member of a community safe from the risks of criticism of their appearance can provide an often much needed boost to self confidence.

Notschool introduce their new young researchers to their computer and the on-line community on induction days attended by a maximum of 6 young researchers, it is not unusual for two or three of the six to be fairly timid with low self image. In an online environment they are under no pressure to show images of themselves and often lose their timidity and enjoy an active participatory role in the online social scene. Talking Heads also provided the opportunity to display personal icons - here too a proportion of users chose to remain visually anonymous and put up a picture of a pet, or other favourite/representational/humorous image.

Preece showed the integration and balance between usability and sociability in online communities in a balanced yin and yang diagram.

The two key dimensions of online communities (Preece 2000)

You will find an intimate relationship between these elements -software has to meet user's purpose, tasks have to be interesting and purposeful to sustain user engagement. Above all there has to be a purpose, a reason to be there.

Technical barriers been cited again and again as a major impediment to starting and maintaining online communities.

Community members will expect a smooth running, fast and reliable infrastructure, they will expect to be informed of forthcoming server downtime and will still find it an inconvenience if the service is interrupted for any significant period. They will expect the computers they use to be up to the job and the connection speed to be broadband unless they are in an area with no broadband access. Frustration caused by technical problems or slow connections is a major disincentive to early and sustained engagement.

Content and Community

Multimedia is no longer restricted to web sites.

A few years ago when we talked about e-mail we thought of a text driven messaging system and the www as the place to go for content. Today email has become increasingly sophisticated allowing incorporation of graphics and audio files. Some systems enable users to construct e-mail that resembles basic web pages including graphics and audio files, page backgrounds, embedded hyperlinks to other mail and web resources.

Over the last few years we have seen an increase in broadband access and server technology/capacity; a lot of community ware now provides tools and opportunities for users to create their own html based web sites within the community. Content can now easily be created by the participants as well as the experts and can help engender feelings of community. Encouraging participants to use this ability to provide information as to "Who I am" gives other users the opportunity to browse and find others with shared social and work related interests, this can help develop relationships within a community. Using the interface to provide information about "What I can do/am learning" can be very valuable, it gives the opportunity for self expression - "This is how I see that knowledge", "This is what I have created with my knowledge". Where the opportunity for peer annotation is available it allows others to enter into dialog, we find this is usually supportive - "Hey that's good, how did you do it?" or "I've done that too, check out what I did; its at xxxxxx." or "I have that problem too; how can we solve it together?"or just a simple : -)

Content and community are intimately entwined, they should compliment each other; content can stimulate participants and help drive the community forward, individual and community activities can also generate valuable content. In Notschool we encourage young researchers who discover how to do something to write a "How to do it" guide, often these are related to web design, animation, operating system and software procedures. They post the guide online and if it is good news soon gets around and you see scrolling text or bouncing letters, audio stickies, spreading across the site as the knowledge spreads. Sometimes they discover things the software manufacturers didn't know were possible.

Dialog between community members can be a valuable resource to others too. In talking heads Hotseat guests included people like Michael Barber and Pat Collarbone, the number of heads visiting the site once the contributory phase had closed far exceeded the number who were able to participate in the event. Even a year later heads new to the system were visiting the archived hot seats and reading the dialog or summaries of the dialog. One to many communication over a few weeks was of value to many more participants over several years as a reference archive and stimulation for ongoing discussion.

The value of spontaneous interaction around the coffee machine has often been cited. When ever I was working in a hospital for the SpRITE project I would take every opportunity I could to join a queue and listen to conversations, what the doctors chose to talk about round the coffee machine wasn't the weather or sport or mutual friends it was dominated by unusual patients they were working with and medical procedure.We often find unstructured "social" online interaction includes a lot of in context dialog and peer support.

One of the successful elements of the Talking Heads Faith Community was the sharing of RE teaching resources. There was a lot of value attached to the sharing of personal innovation, this was also a characteristic of the Open University online PGCE course. In both communities information was not just obtained and used; it was often reworked and integrated into existing material or developed in different contexts. Often feedback as to how well it had been received would start further dialog. Sharing resources is often the starting point for social interactions which help participants develop a sense of community, ownership and belonging.

Chapman & Ramondt (1999) identify ownership in online communities by
the change in language use and behaviour. The participants’ references to
“we” and “us”, deepening dialogue and the voluntary initiation of community
events and activities indicates that the community stage has begun. They
also identify that this stage (stage 3) is not reached until participants are
comfortable with the navigation and use of the software (stage 1) and are
readily answering each others questions and providing information online
(stage 2).

notes to expand on......

Community - a collection of people with common purpose who communicate and collaborate ???/ Is collaboration esental to community? The members may be physicaly located or geographically seperate. Communication is a key element in community, the development of remote communication has been highly important in the sucess of disparate community - military - letters, runners, semaphore, smoke signals, drums, pidgeons telegraph, magnetic ttape, telephone, radio, TV, internet.

Online resources and environments are opften referes to as "virtual" the data and communications can be seen as virtual as it does not have a tangible existance, we can not hold it in our hands and see it without the use of a secondary interface.

The term community was not always applied to the groups of people working together via telephone lettters and radio, they were seen as networks. The concept of "virtual" was not applied to hteir communications or relatinships. The internet in providing a permenantly accesible 'container' for conmmunications and has provided a new environemnt a new space to inhabit, tin which to form a community. This new way of existing in commnunally owned space unbounded by political of cultural boundaries will take time for us to adapt and evolve to .... what a load of blether.