What is an online community? – Wrap up and summary

August 19, 2008

Prompted 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.

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