Your staff and participants will have a range of communication and learning tools available to them in an online community environment.

one to one mail

the basic electronic letter is time consuming in that it is a one to one information exchange, the advantage is privacy and it is often the vehicle for early introductions and social exchanges while participants are gaining understanding of the system and building relationships and the confidence to participate in communal areas. Some participants may retain a preference for one to one mail particularly when discussing or progressing work.

mail list mail

popular among Notschool researchers when sharing some work that is in development - they often choose to mail to a group of friends to test the reaction prior to mailing to a communal area.

communal communications areas

There is a wide range of communal area interfaces, they all allow participants to view contributions by others and usually enable them to annotate these contributions. Some are effectivly lists of communaly visible e-mail others provide tools specificaly designed to enhance interactions for example THink.com's debate tool where patcitipants can indicate their stance by the colour of their text and once closed statistical analysis of the numbers contributing in each catagory are made available.

The ease with which participants take to communal areas depends on many factors,some find it quite stressful posting their first communally visible contribution especially in a community where they do not know any or many of the members. Others may launch themselves into the communal areas from day one confidently contributing their knowledge or settling into the social scene. Putting work on display in a communal area can also be stressful; it is rather like hanging a picture in an art gallery - you are immediately open to both praise and criticism and it may take some time before participants have the confidence to do this.

hot seats

Generally these allow community members to engage with guest speakers or specialists, a guest would provide some background information along with an article or paper. Community members are then able to post assynchronous questions or sometimes enter into synchronous dialog for a time limited period. Talking Heads and NPQH (National Professional Qualification for Headteachers) both provided online guests from the DfES and other educational specialists. Participants were able to gain insights from policy makers and exemplar educators. These events were largely asynchronous as all parties involved were busy professionals who appreciated being able to participate at convenient times. The dialog from the hot seats stimulated ongoing discussions and became a valuable long term resource when archived.

synchronous chat rooms

In an online context a 'chat environment' indicates an interface designed to host synchronous communication, it does not indicate a place dedicated to social discourse. In my experience synchronous communications has generally been looked on more favourably by younger users who often leave chat windows open virtually all of the time they are online. Adults often use it for specific activities - virtual meetings and conferences although this division seems to be blurring as time goes on. Teams of Talking Heads facilitators leave synchronous chat running most of the time they are online, they find this helps increase the perception of being 'together' and being a team.

private chat

Unlike chat rooms you have to be invited into a private chat, privacy can be very useful if you are working with a group of participants on specific tasks or focused discussions, unlike open chat rooms you don't get people dropping in to see what is going on.