Informal Learning
August 25, 2008Jay Cross writes:
Corporations need to replace traditional training, knowledge management, and in-house communications with something more informal, interactive, collaborative, self-service, impromptu, and flexible. Instead of pushing content, they need to be facilitating conversation.
The new learning organisation?
August 21, 2008Edgar Tan writes a nice summary of a recent presentation he attended on the successful use of web2.0 tools in the organisation. He says:
They opened themselves up to question and scrutiny, but by doing so they achieved transparency, alignment, openness and trust … What kind of leaders would open themselves up to such vulnerability in order to see hierarchical structure (ie power) crumble away?
He cites Bonny Cheuk listing the qualities of what she termed Leardership 2.0:
- employee-centric
- listen and value every staff’s inputs
- ready to be surprised
- tolerate mistakes
- hear what you may not like to hear
- genuine dialogues with employees
- willingness to let go of leader’s authority
- leaders have to participate, not delegate
Fantastic! This is the kind of stuff that gets me really excited – the intersection between technology and human potential!
What is an online community? – Wrap up and summary
August 19, 2008Prompted by this morning’s foc08 conference call discussion, I feel that it would be helpful to try and summarise my thoughts on the topic ‘What is an online community?’, so I can put it to bed and move on to the next intellectual challenge.
So here goes–a wrap up and summary of my take on the meaning of community:
Not long after my first post, where I was trying to grapple with semantics and definitions, Bron told a story of a personal experience of community, reminding me of the futility of my own approach. Having spent the best part of the last 12 months working with narrative approaches, I should have known better!
I really liked Bee’s play on Wenger’s model of three interrelated components; domain, community and practice.
… to define all other types of community, just change the 3rd component.
a) domain + community + interest = community of interest
b) domain + community + learning = community of learning
c) domain + community + practice = community of practice
In this model community is not a function of the content (domain) or the outcome (practice, interest, learning), which also implicitly means that community is the personal; the interaction; the binding element.
It was Greg’s illuminating post that hit the nail on the head for me:
“while all communities are networks, groups and teams, not all networks, groups and teams are communities. In the same manner that while all teams are groups and networks, not all networks and groups are teams. And while all groups are networks, not all networks are groups.”
No offence intended, but this paragraph reminds me of the poetry of Donald Rumfeld: see ‘The Unknown‘. It’s difficult to grasp, but what he says makes perfect sense to me. Thankfully, he’s also included a diagram.
This morning, I had some further thoughts and a bit of an ‘Aha!’ moment, which has helped cement my thinking on this topic. This thought was related to the traditional distinction made between the activities necessary for groups to effectively operate – group tasks — what the group was set up to do — and maintenance — keeping the group going in order to do it.
I have not been able to trace the origins of this work around task–maintenance, but the following samples are adapted from “Resource Manual for a Living Revolution”, New Society Publishers, 1985.
Task Activities: those activities that assist to achieve it purpose and goals.
- providing direction towards goals
- initiating ideas and tasks
- information collecting and sharing
- consultation
- clarifying and summarising
- co-ordinating
- time management
- practical issues and logistics
Maintenance functions: those activities and behaviours which are needed to build a group and keep it going:
- creating and maintaining an atmosphere of safety
- encourage participation
- equalising participation
- listening
- relieving tension
- social interaction
- creating group ownership
- valuing and highlighting diversity
It occurred to me that the extent to which maintenance functions are performed (and are performed well) are directly related to the sense of community or cohesiveness of the group.
Often there is a tendency to concentrate on the formal task activities and ignore the maintenance activities. Community builders should pay more attention to the less tangible maintenance functions and behaviours.
Phew, that’s out of the way. I feel like this now provides me with a really good sedge way into looking at the differences between teaching, moderating and facilitating. Looking forward to that–and to the weeks ahead.
Features of an online community
August 11, 2008Okay, I’ve relented. I want to spend a little more time on the definition of Community to try and get to the bottom of what it means in this context.
I looked at M. Scott Peck’s [1] meaning of true community (the final stage of a four-stage community building process):
Having worked through emptiness, the people in community are in complete empathy with one another. There is a great level of tacit understanding. People are able to relate to each other’s feelings. Discussions, even when heated, never get sour, and motives are not questioned.
I’m not sure that there is evidence of this in too many online communities. I certainly haven’t seen it. But perhaps that is a reflection of where we are at with our understanding of the tools and methods online? We’ve had at least 100 years of deliberate community building in a face-to-face context, and we still don’t necessarily always get it right there either.
The nearest I’ve come to resolving this in my own mind, is through Peck’s three essential ingredients of community:
- Inclusivity
- Commitment
- Consensus
Simplistic, but I think it’s a useful framwork. And there are certainly many online communites that have these!
Definitions aside, here’s a list of identifying features that I would look for when assessing an online group or network for features which make it a community:
- shared passion or interest
- conversation - and not just about ‘content’
- connectedness
- strong sense of identity and belonging
- longevity
- interaction
- mutual relationships
- inclusive
- structure/leadership
- technology component (obvious)
- shared stories, anecdotes
- shared language (jargonm, acronyms, in-jokes etc)
- artifacts
What have I missed? There’s bound to be something obvious.
1. Peck, M. Scott (1987). The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace. Simon & Schuster.
Meaning of Community
August 10, 2008This week’s homework for the FOC08 course is to write a post on my thoughts about the meaning of an online community and its uses.
Dave Pollard was riffing the other day about Intentional Communities [1], which posed a question for me: if people deliberately set out to form an Intentional Community, does that mean that other types of Community are unintentional? Perhaps. Wenger argues that communities of practice are fundamentally self-organizing systems and that it is the nature of groups to be emergent [2].
Or perhaps, as Dave suggests in his post, the meaning of the word ‘Community’ has ‘been debased to mean just about any agglomeration of people with something “in common”‘. I think it is the latter.
Defining Community is difficult. There is certainly ambiguity. What originally meant ‘a place shared equally’ (or something to that effect) has evolved and been enlarged to mean ‘individuals who share characteristics, regardless of their location or type of interaction’ [3].
This past week, I’ve been involved in a number of community consultations or community forums. The definition of community in this sense, is again quite different. In this instance, it is closer to the original meaning - people sharing a geographical space (i.e. the local community).
Adding to the confusion, what we also have to try and decypher is the difference between a community and groups; and communities and networks. And additionally we have to grapple with what Stephen Downes points to as fundamental differences between groups and newtorks [4].
I feel like the character Phaedrus from the novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance who tries to deconstruct the meaning of quality using logic, which in the ends proves to be futile. And before you ask — no, I’m not going to try and construct a metaphysical view of Community either!
So, that’s it for now. I don’t think I’ve resolved anything by trying to define the meaning of Community. It’s been fun trying though. I’ll try and put together some more coherent thoughts on some of the features of an online community in another post.
1. Cohousing, Housing Cooperatives, and Intentional Communities
2. Communities of Practice: Learning as a Social System
3. Wikipedia
4. Groups and Networks video of Stephen Downes
