Search People By Site Diigo
Vanity search on Diigo to see everyone who has bookmarked my blog. They call this the "user community" around the site.
Site Community for christytucker.wordpress.com,
Better view of the site community around my site, showing which pages are bookmarked, how many have been bookmarked, and who saved them.
Drape's Takes: edubloggeretiquette
Collection of posts and ideas about etiquette and expected behavior in the edublogosphere, including dealing with inappropriate comments, online reputation, and healthy debate.
A List Apart: Articles: Community: From Little Things, Big Things Grow
One of the founders of Flickr writes about building online community. One of his big points is that if you create too many hard and fast rules, people are less creative and open to conversation. It's better to build community by providing spaces for people to negotiate the guidelines for themselves as much as possible.
The sculpture demonstrated a fascinating idea: given fewer rules, people actually behaved in more creative, co-operative, and collaborative (or competitive, as the case may be) ways.
Any time you construct specific rules of engagement, they are instantly open to interpretation and circumvention, and we want our members to negotiate their place with each other, not with The Authority.
Any community—online or off—must start slowly, and be nurtured. You cannot “just add community.” It simply must happen gradually. It must be cared for, and hosted; it takes time and people with great communication skills to set the tone and tend the conversation.
We also tried to create an egalitarian playing field. At a glance, visitors can’t differentiate a professional photographer with an enormous lens from an enthusiast just getting started in photography. There is no indication of “quality” apart from the content itself.
Participate in the community you’re trying to build. Add content, make contact, show yourself as a person and have fun.
Sage Advice on Wiki Adoption: Keys to Success
Best practices for wiki adoption in organizations:
- Start with what you already do
- Don't mandate--let it grow naturally
- Invite Senior Leadership
- Find the Champions
- Practice what you preach
90-9-1 Theory - Wiki Patterns
Wiki Patterns explanation of participation in a wiki with the 90-9-1 theory. This includes some of the statistics of participation for Wikipedia and other community sites.
The 90-9-1 theory explains the percentage of a wiki's participation, breaking it down as readers being the highest percent, with minor contributors composing the 9 percent and enthusiastic and active contributors composing 1 percent of the total participants in a wiki.
While it is impossible to overcome this type of human behaviour, it is possible to change the participation distribution (i.e 80-16-4 where 80% are lurkers, 16% contribute a little and 4% contribute the most).
An Inclusive Approach to Online Learning Environments: Models and Resources (PDF)
22-page article on designing for diversity in online learning. Examines how cultural differences can affect learning and shares culturally inclusive instructional design models. Table 1 on page 6 compares high-context and low-context learning (such as how formal student-teacher relationships are).
Online Tutoring e-Book 6 - Culture and Ethics - Facilitating Online Learning
Although this is written specifically for online tutors, much of the information and advice applies to online facilitators as well. The authors examine cultural differences in the online learning environment, including how diversity affects language, written text, images, metaphors, communication style, and online presence. Appendix B is a chart comparing different linguistic groups and cultures.
<p><font face="VERDANA">Some of the key questions revolve around how culture is, or is not, experienced online:
</font></p><p></p><ul>
<font face="VERDANA"><li>Is it easier to work across cultures free from visuals cues, which tap into our prejudices?
</li><li>Is it harder without visual cues so that we miss sensitive cultural cues?
</li><li>Just how do we maximise the diversity and respect for cultures while tutoring online?
</li></font></ul>
Facilitating online communities - WikiEducator
Course from Wikieducator on communication and community for online facilitators. Offered as a formal course with a facilitator or informal participation at your own pace.
Harold Jarche » Selecting Social Network Platforms
Describes several smaller social network platforms with some pluses and minuses, including Ning, Grou.ps, Buddy Press, and Elgg.
What would Dr. Seuss Say about Online Communities?
5 minute presentation on slideshare with tips for guiding online communities
The Bamboo Project Blog: Deconstructing the Work Literacy Learning Event
Michele Martin debriefs the experience of teaching the Work Literacy online course via Ning. Several things they did were very successful. Ning was a good platform, even though it's intended as a social networking tool rather than a CMS. Explicitly saying that different levels of participation were acceptable meant that lurkers felt comfortable dipping in and out as legitimate perispheral participants. Was the course a success? It sounds like they all learned from the experience; to me, that means it's a success even if some aspects didn't work as they hoped.
YouTube - A Shared Culture
Introduction to Creative Commons explaining how CC licenses benefit content creators who want to share their work with the world. Includes an overview of the differences between licenses.
Reinventing Project-Based Learning Ning
Ning community set up by the authors of Reinventing Project-Based Learning, used for a course. The group is currently dormant, but the archived discussions still have some interest and will likely provide some inspiration for the project-based learning with multimedia course I'm revising.
The Development Of A Community Of Inquiry Over Time In An Online Course: Understanding The Progression And Integration Of Social | The Sloan Consortium
JALN article on creating a community of inquiry through online discussions, with positive results for students' perceived learning and satisfaction. Specifically, the authors found that, at least in this context, cognitive and teaching presence were correlated with both learning and satisfaction, but social presence only improved satisfaction. Registration required to download the PDF.
An absolutely riveting online course: Nine principles for excellence in web-based teaching
Not a whole lot new to me here, but a solid collection of principles to guide online facilitators. If you're looking for an introduction for facilitators or administrators who aren't familiar with online learning or don't really "get" why you can't just shovel face-to-face content into an LMS to have a great course, this would be a good way to help show what's required to go beyond the mediocrity typical of many online courses.
<h3>Principle 1: The online world is a medium unto itself. </h3>
<p>
The search for excellence begins with this principle: The online world is a medium unto itself (Carr-Chellman & Duchastel, 2000; Ellis & Hafner, 2003). It is not just another learning environment, like a separate classroom down the hall; it is a categorically different learning environment. There are vastly different dynamics in online versus on campus courses.</p>
Principle 2: In the online world content is a verb.
We are moving to a mode of learning that is less dependent on information acquisition and is more centered on a set of student tasks and assignments that make up the learning experiences that students will engage in, in order to meet the objectives of the course (Carr-Chellman & Duchastel, 2000). In the online world, content is a verb.
Principle 5: Sense of community and social presence are essential to online excellence.
Establishing a sense of community often signals movement to a deeper learning experience (Benfield, 2001). It is through sustained communication that participants construct meaning (Garrison, et al., 2000) and come to a more complete understanding of the content. Indeed it is through such interaction and through attending to the processes of learning and teaching (as opposed to attending only to content) that a deeper rather than a surface approach to learning is encouraged (Ramsden, 2003). Without this connection to the instructor and the other students, the course is little more than a series of exercises to be completed.
Principle 7: A great web interface will not save a poor course; but a poor web interface will destroy a potentially great course.
Principle 8: Excellence comes from ongoing assessment and refinement.
Using threaded comments to build a writing community in your classroom | Reflections on Teaching
A 6th grade teacher talks about the advantage of threaded blog comments for building a writing community. This encourages much more of students talking to each other and makes it easier to follow blog conversations.
One of those is threaded comments. This is rapidly bringing my blogs to the level I had always hoped to acheive–one where the students are talking to each other and not just talking to me.
Communities of practice
Introduction to communities of practice by Etienne Wenger
Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a
passion for something they do and learn how to
do it better as they interact regularly.
<p><font size="2" face="Arial">The perspective of communities of practice affects educational practices
along three dimensions:</font></p>
<ul>
<font size="2" face="Arial"> <i>
</i><li><i>Internally</i>: How to organize educational experiences that ground school
learning in practice through participation in communities around subject
matters?</li>
<i>
</i><li><i>Externally</i>: How to connect the experience of students to actual
practice through peripheral forms of participation in broader communities
beyond the walls of the school?</li>
<i>
</i><li><i>Over the lifetime of students</i>: How to serve the lifelong learning
needs of students by organizing communities of practice focused on topics of
continuing interest to students beyond the initial schooling period?</li>
</font></ul>
<p><font size="2" face="Arial">From this perspective, the school is not the privileged locus of learning. It
is not a self-contained, closed world in which students acquire knowledge to be
applied outside, but a part of a broader learning system.</font></p>
rheingold's brainstorms: The Art of Hosting Good Conversations Online
Tips for hosts of online conversations. Applies to online facilitators too.
Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media: Guest Post by Gaurav Mishra: The 4Cs Social Media Framework
A framework for principles of thinking about social media, aiming to look at the underlying purposes and benefits of the tools without getting caught up in the specific tools or buzzwords.
4Cs of social
media: Content, Collaboration, Community and Collective Intelligence
Collaboration can happen at three levels: conversation, co-creation and collective action
The third C, Community, refers to the idea that social media
facilitates sustained collaboration around a shared idea, over time and
often across space.
The great thing about collective intelligence is that it becomes
easier to extract meaning from a community as the size and strength of
the community grow.
A review of research on professional learning communities: What do we know?
Like the title says, a research review on PLCs, synthesizing results from 10 articles.
- All research supported the idea that learning communities change teaching practice, although not all articles were specific about what changes took place.
- In one study, teachers in PLCs developed more student-centered classrooms. Some other studies discussed specific teaching strategies used as a result of PLCs.
- All studies showed a change in school culture through "collaboration, focus on student learning, teacher authority, and continuous teacher learning."
- All 6 studies that looked at student achievement found that student learning improved. However, this was only seen when the focus of collaboration was student learning and not just working together.
- Their conclusion: "The focus of a PLC should be developing teachers’ “knowledge of practice” around the issue of student learning"
- "...working collaboratively is the process not the goal of a PLC. The goal is enhanced student achievement."
The Usefulness of Wenger’s Framework in Understanding a Community of Practice.
Jane Bozarth's dissertation on communities of practice, including a proposed revised framework for analyzing and understanding these communities. The revised version clarifies the difference between engagement and participation and adjusts definitions of other terms.
Language Learning with Livemocha | Learn a Language Online - Free!
Online learning for languages. Includes some free content and an online community.
21st Century Teaching and Learning: Learning in the Social Web: Online Teaching and Learning 2.0
Presentation on teaching online with VoiceThread & Ning, including survey results with learner perspectives on how these tools helped create a sense of community
Seven sexiest alternatives to Ning
Alternatives for free online groups now that Ning is shooting themselves in the foot with a paid model
Phil Bradley's weblog: Alternatives to Ning
Tools to create online communities, all probably benefiting from Ning's decision to move to exclusively paid sites
Lurking or Legitimate Peripheral Participation | weiterbildungsblog
(Auf Deutsch) Comparison of perspectives on lurking: the 90-9-1 rule, an aspect of our own personalities, an individual learning process, a challenge for community managers, or "Lurking als Lernen" (lurking as learning).
Lurking als Lernen: <em>“Lurking is not a problem, as long as lurkers are learning because enough material is created and shared by nonlurkers.”</em> <a href="http://etcjournal.com/2011/04/19/connectivism/" target="_blank">(Claude Almansi)</a>
Look, I'm lurking - The Knowledge Lens
Thoughts on lurking and what lurkers bring to a community
The problem with calling it “lurking” makes everyone think negative thoughts. Like our community is full of Peeping Tom’s or other people with nefarious intent. People who don’t talk <strong>are</strong> still participating and learning – just in some non-obvious ways.
ID and Other Reflections: Lurking is Not a Static State
Perspectives on lurking as an active act in part of the cycle of participation, pulling together quotes from multiple sources
Somehow, the word lurker has become associated with pejorative connotations of people taking from communities without giving back, of not contributing, of being selfish and feeding off the hard work of others. They are the free riders. However, is that truly the case? Would we consider silent participants in a meeting or at presentations lurkers?
A lurker might very well be giving back by performing better at their jobs, by sharing insights with others in the context of their daily work by using the learning gleaned from lurking. This is especially true of communities in enterprises. Since the give back is asymmetric and happens in a different context, this goes unnoticed.
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