Online communities: designing them, building them and being there

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Online communities designing them, building them
and being there

• Penny Collings
• School of Computing
• University of Canberra
• Asian Women ICT Trainers Workshop
• Sookmyung Womens University
• Seoul, Nov 2001

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Online communities for everyone

• This presentation focuses on online communities
  to support teaching and learning.
• The lessons apply more broadly, so please
  consider them that way.
• The slides reference various places and subjects
  in Australia please just insert the places or
  subjects or groups or communities in which you
  are interested!

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Supporting online communities approaches to
designing, participating and sustaining
communities

• Identify community and its purpose.
• Agree to work together.
• Develop shared goals.
• Design IT support.
• Meet and collaborate in hyperspace (and f-f?)
• (group and sub-groups).
• Share outcomes, reuse and redevelop workplaces,
  workspaces, work practices and new communities.

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Multimedia conversations - 1

• Choosing appropriate media community members
  decide how to integrate face-to-face and
  computer-mediated communication (c-m-c).
• Importance of
• individual preferences about working (f-f or
  c-m-c)
• individual situation (access, social preferences)
• problems in moving between media and places
• Value of permanent, shared information.

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Multimedia conversations - 2

• Using the online community as the context
• What are the appropriate technologies for
  particular tasks?
• Long term versus short term, defined versus open
  tasks?
• Use of structure to guide work processes?

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Creating an online community learning usability
testing

• Students at Melbourne University and the
  University of Canberra develop web sites.
• Students agree on evaluation criteria.
• Students evaluate each others web sites.
• Valuable way of learning usability testing.
• Pedagogically creative.

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Learning usability testing the online community

• Identify community (2 communities staff design
  students UT)
• Identify purpose (staff collaborate, low risk in
  relation to subject and assessment students
  have real users experience user and developer
  role in UT learn about CSCW experientially)
• Agree to work together (students assessable
  meet in chat room get to know each other)
• Develop shared goals (students understand
  purpose thru classes design evaluation criteria
  discuss project in chat area)
• Design IT support (all online - needs structure
  to make roles and tasks clear enable discussion
  make access easy - no access control)
• Meet and collaborate (timing set by staff work
  managed by students)
• Group and sub-groups (Group 2 whole classes SG
  1 design team - 1 or more evaluation teams links
  are weak)
• Share outcomes (all UT work available to all
  feedback on design redevelop CSCW / CSCL UT web
  site)
• Develop new communities.

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Creating an online community TIG(Teaching
Internship Group)

• Teacher interns, Uni of Canberra supervisors,
  school-based supervisors and coordinators in a
  pilot study of forming an online community to
  support the TI process.
• 46 people in three schools over 4 months.
• Exchange ideas and teaching/learning resources.
• Learn how to work collaboratively using the
  internet - as a model for other teaching /
  learning activities.

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Creating the online community the TIG

• Identify community (people involved in the
  teaching internship program in three schools)
• Identify purpose (learn new ways of working and
  learning share experiences and resources to
  support the TI process)
• Agree to work together (this was a continuing
  issue - initial training and enthusiasm but there
  was considerable risk, low motivation and low
  rewards)
• Develop shared goals (as a pilot study,
  participants could see subgroups of the whole
  community who would have shared goals - this was
  an important issue to resolve)
• Design IT support (shared workspace / resource
  space, listservers and email - hence private and
  public communication)
• Meet and collaborate (infrastructure and training
  issues)
• Group and sub-groups (nothing for the whole
  group)
• Share outcomes (proposal for a real community of
  400, better critical mass, better subgroups,
  built-in rewards)

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More examples of online communities

• TLC - Teaching and learning community in the IS
  discipline.
• Subject groups as communities.
• Learning groups as communities.
• On-line lecture and discussion (between several
  campuses).
• Multi-campus usability testing (eg MU-UC,
  UC-UMIST).
• Virtual organisation - the Cultural Heritage
  Authority.
• Off-shore student groups, and related staff
  (HCMC-UNS, HK MBA).

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Usability issues for online communities - 1

• Creating, designing, participating in and
  sustaining an online community - levels of
  usability.
• Creating (if these dont happen, the OC will not
  be usable)
• Valuable to identify a group as a community.
• There must be an overall purpose.
• Members need to agree to work together (in
  education, where community membership may not be
  truly voluntary, assessment issues are
  important).
• Develop shared goals.

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Usability issues for online communities - 2

• Designing
• design the workspace so users dont get lost,
  they can find the threads, work or documents they
  are interested in encourage the use of multiple
  communication channels to keep the community
  active
• the online community space is more usable if
  the structure matches / supports the tasks
• have a consistent user interface for as many
  spaces / places / activities as possible
• have access control that matches the community
  needs
• have some signal that the workspace is active (or
  not)
• have ways of supporting facilitation and project
  management (different views)
• must be easy to design and develop the community
  workspace (so people can create their own
  community spaces)
• hence there must be support for the
  infrastructure
• infrastructure software must be integrated into
  the work environment

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Usability issues for online communities - 3

• Participating
• participants need a shared understanding of CSCW
• public versus private
• ways of categorising contributions to make them
  accessible
• participants need to know and agree on
• how to contribute here
• rules of behaviour and
• ways of making the collaboration work
• offer training to participants, before they join
  and through the workspace and interface - then
  the online community is usable
• support user control of their work practices -
  enable them to create new community workspaces

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Usability issues for online communities - 4

• Sustaining
• timescale of community
• knowing when somethings going on
• why bother participating?
• what are the risks associated with participating?
• privacy
• reuse of material, knowledge building
• roles or task responsibilities
• how are they established?
• whats important?

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Usability evaluation TIG

• If a system is not usable do you change the
  interface, change the training or change the user
  population? Major suggestions from this
  prototype system
• access
• skills of users
• user population too small
• no material offered to draw together the whole
  population
• risks of exposing lack of knowledge to peers
• users liked the idea of community and liked the
  interface
• participation needs to be rewarded through
  assessment procedures
• participants learnt new skills and have design
  ideas for the next occasion
• its important to get all users to an adequate
  skill level
• email and listservers are valuable and offer a
  range of private communication to compliment
  public communication

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Usability evaluation MU-UC

• http//simnotes.canberra.edu.au/MUCeval.nsf?OpenDa
  tabase
• If a system is not usable do you change the
  interface, change the training or change the user
  population? How did this system go?
• Structure made it easy to coordinate work and see
  related work.
• Students met in a discussion area and learnt how
  to hold discussions.
• Students met in AussieMOO and played up, they
  discovered the issues of MOO behaviour.
• Students did not use the MOO to do work.
• This was a community with a short, focussed life.
  The community worked because its purpose was
  clear and the rewards were considerable!

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Collaborating in online communities evaluation

• Do online communities add something? Achieve more
  than only face-to-face work?
• For the subject? e.g.
• Participate more fully
• An extra place to meet, share ideas and store and
  share resources
• Benefit from a constructivist approach
• In developing generic skills?
• New perspectives on work, learning and communities

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Change Process in an education environment - 1

• Provide computer support for group work.
• Facilitate student design of systems to support
  their own work and learning.
• Emphasise situated learning and constructivism as
  guidelines for pedagogy.
• Emphasise process as well as technical skills.

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Change Process in an education environment - 2

• Learn to mix face-to-face and computer-mediated
  communication or solely c-m-c.
• Lotus Notes as infrastructure for CSCW/CSCL.
• Develop training materials.
• http//simnotes.canberra.edu.au/cscwcse.nsf?OpenDa
  tabase

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Whats the infrastructure? Whats the cost? Who
does the work? - 1

• Infrastructure
• Makes use of available computer resources on and
  off campus - evolves.
• Requires servers, Lotus Notes, someone to design,
  manage and support the environment and student
  and staff users.
• Tailored training materials access management.

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Whats the infrastructure? Whats the cost? Who
does the work? - 2

• Cost
• Licences - site licence?
• Servers - 2, expandable and scalable.
• One person full time (for a faculty in our case).
• Overall access control and management.
• (Depends on the scale - innovation or production
  or both.)

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Whats the infrastructure? Whats the cost? Who
does the work? - 3

• Who does the work?
• Students
• create and manage their own electronic
  workspaces.
• adapt their work style to the resource
  constraints of group members.
• use computer-mediated communication to support
  project work and engage in the construction of
  knowledge.
• moderate their own work.
• Staff
• provide resource materials, reply to questions.

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Reference material and examples

• Introduction to CSCW and CSCL
• http//simnotes.canberra.edu.au/cscwcse.nsf?OpenDa
  tabase
• Synchronous IT Support for Group Work
• http//simnotes.canberra.edu.au/synch.nsf?OpenData
  base
• Web evaluation site (Uni of Melbourne, Uni of
  Canberra)
• http//simnotes.canberra.edu.au/MUCeval.nsf?OpenDa
  tabase
• Online lecture
• http//simnotes.canberra.edu.au/STAFF/PENNY/userma
  nl.nsf/c2cda88ed2fb77dd4a2562d1003a0877/f7f3d87532
  9948c84a2565f50020c80f?OpenDocument
• Reference text
• Preece, J. (2000) Online Communities, Designing
  Usability, Supporting Sociability, John Wiley

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