Variations in Online Communiities

Social media is all the buzz, but it may be useful to look at the variations in the types of online teams and communities because this may influence the design and development of these efforts.

In virtual teams and communities Pat Sobrero presents a typology that distinguishes between work teams, communities of interest and communities of practice. She then notes the differences of each type in terms of focus, membership, trust, motivation and so forth.

The differences between communities of interest and practice is particularly useful in regards to thinking about whether people are focused on the content or problem or on the social process or community. In short, a community of interest may be more interested in getting more information about a topic than participating in a social learning or networking process. These differences in the focus, motivation and trust in these types of communities suggest that educators who are interested in developing a community of interest should create ways for people to stay up to date about the topic, new information on the topic, create methods of obtaining deeper, richer and more complex information the the topic.

In developing a community of practice, the focus should be more on the "social" aspects of learning and developing relationships between participants. Learning tools would involve group engagement and group problem solving. Many of the roles described by Aaron Ebata in Essential Roles for Communities of Practice would need to be considered in order to develop an effective community.

Sobrero doesn't comment on whether "communities of interest" can grow into "communities of practice" and/or whether there is a developmental relationship between these two types of communities.

Tranformational Education for Engaged Universities

"Transformational Education is the conceptual model that Wisconsin's Cooperative Extension Service (CES) uses to work with communities tackling complex issues in ways that transform these same communities in powerful and long-lasting ways," write Blewett, Keim, Leser & Jones in a recent article in the Journal of Extension.

They state, "educational programs that exhibit both high content transmission and a high level of process are the most effective in helping people and communities to solve problems or address issues." They argue that the major issues and problems of society require transformational education which they suggest includes:

1. Engaging people who are interested in the issue, developing trust-based relationships and developing a group vision and plan for resolving a problem.
   
2. Empowering people to develop knowledge and skills including "group leadership" to address an issue or problem.
3. Creating feedback processes by using data and other monitoring methods to determine whether progress is being made in regards to putting knowledge and skills into action.
   

These ideas are similar to my own thinking in regards to engaged universities and my suggestions for how to create a global campus at the University of Illinois.

However, to create "transformational education" in 2008 and beyond we have to talk about how we are using the web, Web 2.0 tools (blogs, social networking, wikis, etc.) and linking this to laboratories, classrooms and outreach activities. This is the "transformative" aspect of an "engaged" university.

Here are the questions that we should be asking ourselves:

1. How do universities open their laboratories, experiments, data collection instruments, data, and data analysis tools to others (including the public)?

2. How do universities open their classrooms, lectures, discussions, forums, homework assignments, etc. to others (including the public)?

3. How do we create learning communities that span scientists, students, practicing professionals, and interested amateurs in solving problems and addressing issues?

Developing structures, tools and processes that address these questions will create the foundation for new educational opportunities that expand knowledge.

Learning about your online clientele

One of the challenges of online delivery of information is that you seldom know who is "hitting" your website. A variety of techniques have been tried for feedback involving monitoring web logs and using brief "did you find what you wanted" surveys, but these techniques have limited value.

At Oregon State, Pat Herring and her colleagues developed an "ask the expert" system in which people who had questions about agriculture, horticulture and family and consumer issues could ask specific questions. In addition to answering the questions, they recorded information about the topics people asked about and their email addresses. Later they sent surveys to these individuals to find out more about their experience. Their survey was short and did not ask very intrusive questions. They asked the following questions:

• age group,


• size and location of their community,


• How familiar they were with Extension before they contacted us online,


• How satisfied they were with the information they received online, and


• If they would recommend Extension's online resources to others.

They obtained a 40% return rate with their follow-up survey. This is a very respectable return rate for an online survey. Another recent paper reported a mean return rate across numerous surveys of about 50%.

This several aspects of this strategy that are notable. First, it reminds us to use data and information that we already obtain in the normal course of conducting online activities to create new information. Second, they developed a short, non-intrusive survey. This is a reminder that a little bit of information is better than none at all which might be the case with a longer survey. A series of repeated surveys with randomly selected users may be a better strategy that a long survey. Third, this work reminds about why interaction with users rather than passive participation may lead us forward. Had this group not developed an "ask the expert" system it is quite likely they would have never gotten the email addresses in the first place. Interactivity is at the heart of engaging online clientele.