My take on Communities

I’m a little tired.  Two nights out with the kids, Music with Mark at Burnside High School (where we made over $90 in the 15 minute interval selling drink and chips) and Drama/dance with Anna.  I was so tired last night I probablyu could have fallen asleep.  And my wrists are playing up a little.  But I did drift away in my thoughts last night and decided I do have a little to say about community.

Homework

The homework for this week: «Write a post to your blog with your thoughts about the meaning of an online community and its uses. Include a list of identifying features that YOU would look for when assessing an online group or network for features which make it a community»

Community is about people.  With a cause.  [eg Educational designer, Clinicalhealth education, Media studies teachers, Non-hodgekinsone lymphona sufferers, waste water engineers] Dare I say some passion and care.  Care for the cause and for other people.  They need some level of shared experience, history, trust and/or understanding.

Here it immmediatley becomes complex.  Poor understanding can be balanced by some good shared experieince – understanding emerges, or can emerge.  A high level of understanding can make up for lack of shared experieinces and help trust grow.

I think there needs to be some sort of core group: formally or informally recognised.  I often prefer the word leadership rather than facilitation.  But a particular type of leadership: frunction (ie what they do) rather than status (ie it’s Not a power thing).  Leadership by influence.  Greenleafs Servant Leadership one model I warm to.  Or the notion of distributed leadership.  On the other hand a strong individual with the right habits and attitudes can also have the nurturing emergent effect needed in a community – as opposed to a team (with it’s boundedness and task oriented nature.

Again it is complex: weak leadership can be made up for with other factors – like shared care.  leadership trying to come in from outside and shape direction for external agendas can kill off a budding wannabe community.

Merrolee Penman coined the term “Community with Amnesia” in her peripheral participation in an online workshop in 2004.  ‘They have the seeds of community, but don’t know it’.  I remember raising the existential question with her: Is a coward a coward before they do a cowardly act?  Is a community a community before they do a community act?  Mere potential is not enough for me.

Dysfunction can set in when levels of trust + shared experieince + caring + passion + care + focus + vision (etc) add up to less than a critical mass.  [But a level of tension and debate is also needed to prevent communities from atrophying, imploding, withering.]

This is my cylinder theory, I’ve never put on the net: the cylinder of function can be filled up with lots of different inputs – - – I may come back to this.

I have seen a teacher switch schools and see a difference in community feel that is like night and day.

Here is recent news (headline news here yesterday) of the funding body/sponsor for one community I have been involved with:

From Aug 4th 2008:  The West Coast Development Trust is so dysfunctional and divided that it can not be trusted to do its job in delivering economic benefits to the region, the auditor-general said today.

The trust was set up to administer $92 million of $120 million funding package given to the West Coast in compensation after it banned the logging of native forests.

The auditor-general’s report released today paints a picture of trustees infighting with allegations of corruption being thrown around and counter-allegations of leaking confidential information.

The auditor-general said the situation was so serious that trustees should sort it out immediately or just stand down.

“Unlike other public entities with elected board, there is no other ready mechanism for resolving this level of dysfunction,” the report said.

“Until we see evidence that the group of trustees is able to take effective collective responsibility for the governance of the trust, we are unable to provide assurance that the trust is able to deliver fully on its purpose of generating sustainable employment opportunities and economic benefits for the people of the West Coast.”

National Business Review

Lastly (for now) there is the concept of membership and identity.  Who can join?  If I show up will I be accepted?  If I bring in screwy ideas, what will happen?  If I turn up with an agenda, ditto?

I have tremedously benefitted from community like entities over my entire professional life.  I have had a lot of fun.  I have seen (unfortunately) more than my share of bullying, manipulation and crassness.  But: I have not given up yet.

The online/virtual bit?

Communities exist [or not] and the online supports them.  How, tech problems etc is a whole other matter.  Someone else can write on this.

How do we recognise a [healthy] community?

I think from the people, that they have some sense of identity that they carry with them that allows them to be better stronger as individuals than if they were on their own.  Both a sense of their own identity and their identity as part of a group.  Are they better in their cause for being part of the group?  Is there nurture and care, both of the person and the cause.

Robert Greenleaf said this: “Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?” (You can Google to find the ref)

How do we recognise a dysfunctional/dying withering comunity?

You get the idea.  I’ll only write on this if I really need to.

Refs: you will recognise elements of Etienne’s forumlation here (Domain, Community, Practice, CoP), and Amy Kim, and Nancy White etc etc.

August 8th, 2008 | Tags: | Category: Communities, Community of Practice, Events 08, Facilitation | Leave a comment

FOC08: the meaning of online community (1)

The homework for this week: “Write a post to your blog with your thoughts about the meaning of an online community and its uses. Include a list of identifying features that YOU would look for when assessing an online group or network for features which make it a community”

I’ve said in another post “I know it when I see it”

I’ve found this quite a hard thing to do.  Got very distracted with the blogs.

1. Bron talked about where we started (F2F initially or some other path?) and said

Although I was a teacher I found this new facilitation role freed me from much of what constrained me in teaching.

Can school/learning migrate into learning community?  Yes.   I woujld give up If I thought otherwise.  Community (online or not) includes the aspects of learning . .  not formal, didactice.  Other kinds.

2. Bron (the other one) said:

I am having a hard time keeping my fingers off the keyboard and not participating

This is a displacement activity for Bron – what she does when she should be somewhere else (writing in this case).  She is supposed to be studying.  Online community/networking is slightly seductive.

3. Do communities need a facilitator?  Vida says this:

It is continuous communication which is the key to being a successful online Facilitator, perhaps not the method of communication.

Hmm.

4. Sylvia introduces a special word:

Since the conversation space opened we have been going through the ritual of introducing ourselves

Ritual.  Communities have rituals.

Thats enough warmup

I may post some more tomorrow.  I have very little that is original.  But I will post on my cylinder theory.  If things work out.

Random Postings . . .

A few random blogs I have posted on:Bruna’s Blog (with a quote from Elwwod) | Wayne Thinks (Multitasking and Karate Kid) |

August 8th, 2008 | Tags: | Category: Facilitation, Whimsey | Leave a comment

Some of the questions

Wednesday’s post

[I'm sorry to my three regular readers to divert a little into Facilitating Online Communities course comment]

The questions – some of the big and some of the small

Blogs or forums?

Do I go back into facebook?

From Peter: I have no experience with Diigo rooms,  and I don’t know how many do. I was wondering earlier about setting up a FOC08 group on Facebook, but again, don’t know if anyone is on there, and if Diigo is fine then I don’t see any reason to clutter the space and fragment the info.

I think for me the answer is no.

Todays antisocial networking posts via e-mint :  I called but I don’t want to speak | The antisocial network

Are we in any shape or form a community?

One of the things I find fascinating, especially as we go into this next week of study, is the ambiguity or “play” between us as a group of people doing an online course on facilitating online community, and us as a potential (some might say budding) online community ourselves. I certainly find a close relationship in my own work between facilitating and nurturing/developing/“building” online community and for me this question gives context to all the others that have come up for us so far. Amy

Quoting . .  and managing the flow of information.

Netvibes. What a cool job Joao has done. When I saw this page I knew: the tsunami of ideas and thought (and thoughtlets) has hit.

Who am I?

The official question

What is community? This is of course the question of the week.  It’s like the judge said when asked to define Porn: “I know it when I see it”

One response that says a lot: http://knowmansland.com/learningpath/?p=126 Well done Cristina Costa

August 6th, 2008 | Tags: | Category: Communities, Events 08, Facilitation | 2 comments

Facilitating online communities (week 1)

The tasks for week one include:

Post to your blog what you hope to get out of this course. Include any concerns or questions you may have.

My expectations

Here, I’m just a dabbler.  I enjoy meeting others online, and in fact find the stimulus of others in something like this is quite invigorating.  I will tinker along, probably making a post every couple of days.

Others are setting up blogs: I’ll try to post some comments.  No concerns or questions.  I know it has been a busy ride for some people.  I have some questions about facilitation and moderation and teaching as intersecting and diverging roles.  I think about this sometimes and posted last month.

For some it is just too distributed.

  1. Course outline and activities (On wikieducator)
  2. Discussion page (in the WE page as well)
  3. There is a course blog.
  4. And a Google Groups list.

This is the key thread on the list . . Newbies and Experts

The from the post that started it off:

Having had a very similar experience in a recent workshop I was a leading, I am am concerned. This group has the experts and novices of a mature community but not the advantage of the slow development of shared expertise that a mature community would build. We have all jumped in together on day 1 and started to make associations in the ways we know how to. Some of us know how well served we can be by the tools and are excited to share that. The difficult thing here is that some of us who are more expert with the technologies forget what it was like to be a novice/newbie.  Already three days here the predominant discussions include blogs (Blogger, WordPress, Edublogs), Pageflakes, Netvibes, iGoogle, del.icio.us, GoogleReader, RSS, OPML, Moodle, NING, subscriptions, tags etc etc etc. More expert members of the group have set up sites for the group like Google Reader and Diigo as other environments for the group to consider beyond the workshop Googlegroup, wiki and 24/7 meeting room.

I also note how readily the technology has  seduced the conversation. we are not talking about the kinds of communities we all belong to and the reasons we are interested in this course (yes I know that is our blog task – perhaps lost or buried in all the verbiage) – technical infrastructure is dominating the Google group discussion.

And a short quote from another post:

I am one of those lost ones and am encouraged by your post. I am lost not so much because of the ‘noise’ but because I am so busy with other face to  face activities I am currently involved in. <snip> I was wondering whether there are any guides as to when and how the Facilitator should come in and play those roles. Of course, as it is happening here, the community itself can take it up – unless of course most members are more on the ‘you sink or swim’ mindset.

Leigh has done a sort of a summary (on the blog and copied to the list)

So the question arises: where do you dip in?  The answer probably is your own blog and the blogs of others.

There have been a few comments about people feeling they may miss out.  My opinion: get rid of this worry, just face the fact you cannot keep up with 63 people.  Just go with the flow.

My questions are like this: in this kind of event (a course, workshop etc) How can we quickly establish a sense of group, togetherness and functionality sufficient to generate a learning trajectory for individuals as they wish and the group in general?

I differ from Leigh a bit: I like having a private home base, like a kitchen/dining room/snug from which to leap out.  Is this a compromise?  Yes, of course, for some, but does it really inhibit their learning?  For others, it provides a nice jumping off point for forays into free range learning.  With too much public too quick my experience is that we loose some quick.  A walled garden maybe.

In our Blogwatch events in the past we have taken things slower: read blogs, comment on blogs.  To go from nought to blog in 7 days is tough.  Leigh says in the blog: “It has been quite a week! The email forum has been going berserk with enthusiasm, confusion, chaos and insights” and in the wiki “A week spent orientating yourself into the course, the commitment required, the assignments and what else is involved. For those new to this way of learning online, this week will seem daunting. Get through it and the rest of the course will flow for you nicely.”

Another question: What are people doing with their blended/online lives in so far as teaching and group activity (even community wannabe’s go) is concerned?  I work with lecturers mainly at a university.  How can we help them improve the quality of their online lives?

August 6th, 2008 | Tags: | Category: Events 08, Facilitation, Web 2.0 | Leave a comment

Facilitatior or Teacher?? (Part One)

The debate still unresolved.

Probably won’t ever be. From Leigh:

As I teach and facilitate various online courses this year, a lot of the theories and concepts I subscribe to are getting some hard testing. The biggest challenge I am finding is the expectation for a teacher or instructor while everyone talks about a facilitator. I don’t think someone can be both, primarily because a teacher inherits a significant amount of power and traditional roles that counter act the more neutral and passive presence of a facilitator. This post will be a series of thoughts about this tension, and some ideas on how I can better manage my attempts at online learning community facilitation.

There’s a teacher at the party

I find it is all too easy to assume the role of a teacher if you are an expert in your field, but very difficult to adopt and maintain the role of facilitator to a group studying your field.

There is this fascinating thread in the list supporting the Facilitate Online Communities course

Two extracts:

Bron: this is our test of the group email. can you please tell the group about
your idea of a good time. This is a warm up so everyone can see how this
group email works.

Leigh: can you tell me/us how me telling everyone what I think makes up
a good time is going to help me/us understand how to facilitate online
learning communities better and quickly?

And from Bron’s Blog: [facilitatingonlinecommunities.blogspot.com]

Some questions: Why is this course called facilitate online learning communities and not teach online learning communities? Is teaching and facilitation really interchangeable? Is facilitation simply one of many techniques that a teacher employs in their work? Or is teaching just one of many 3rd party services that a facilitator might call on in their work? Is it possible to be both a teacher and a facilitator within the same group of people? What are the differences in the roles and what are the social dynamics in play when they function?

Follow on thoughts . . .

Sometimes I think it’s nearly impossible for me to think three thoughts in a linear function.  I often wonder if my degree of ‘success’ such as it was in the classroom was largely due to the ability of my students to sort out the stuff they needed from the rambling and shambolic sessions.  But I also gave every class a book.  And I re-wrote the book every year, set up to print from a pile of masters through the night before the first class.

Day one: “Here is the target: test samples, glossaries, quirky and whimiscal readings and problems, data sets, cartoons, advice (Like do some study), poetry and philosophy”  If I droned on or died they could still pick up enough to ‘pass’ (and notice I did not say ‘learn’ – this only happened sometime)

Rogers and facilitation

I have been fascinated by Carl Rogers. Facilitator extrordinaire.  Here is a quote from the wonderful infed site: (Probably better than wikipedia and citizendium in it’s field.)

Freedom to Learn brought together a number of existing papers along with new material – including a fascinating account of ‘My way of facilitating a class’. Significantly, this exploration brings out the significant degree of preparation that Rogers involved himself in (including setting out aims, reading, workshop structure etc.) (Barrett-Lennard 1998: 186).
Carl Rogers was a gifted teacher.

His approach grew from his orientation in one-to-one professional encounters. He saw himself as a facilitator – one who created the environment for engagement. This he might do through making a short (often provocative, input). However, what he was also to emphasize was the attitude of the facilitator. There were ‘ways of being’ with others that foster exploration and encounter – and these are more significant than the methods employed. His paper ‘The interpersonal relationship in the facilitation of learning’ is an important statement of this orientation (included in Hirschenbaum and Henderson’s [1990] collection and in Freedom to Learn).

The danger in this is, of course, of underestimating the contribution of ‘teaching’. There is a role for information transmission. Here Carl Rogers could be charged with misrepresenting, or overlooking, his own considerable abilities as a teacher. His apparent emphasis on facilitation and non-directiveness has to put alongside the guru-like status that he was accorded in teaching encounters. What appears on the page as a question or an invitation to explore something can be experienced as the giving of insight by participants in his classes.

Having someone in your class of guru like status changes things.  In light of the teaching/facilitation dialogue, this is important.  Sometimes reputation, your first sentence or your first post establishes something – a place to dialogue or not.  Etienne Wenger is superb at this: creating a space to move into.  But he is not just a facilitator.  More sometime.

I hear Leigh tomorrow. And Etienne in two weeks.  Cool

June 17th, 2008 | Tags: , | Category: Facilitation, Leadership, Learning, Storytelling, Teaching and Learning | 3 comments