Online Educa, Berlin, 5 December 2008

What gives life to our community?

Aims for this session

share lessons learned in facilitating the emergence of a community of practice around User Engagement

introduce asset-based community development (ABCD) & appreciative inquiry as an approach for guiding community development and discovering group needs

experience, first-hand, "affective recall" in a brief session of appreciative inquiry

Emerge is an innovative, 28 month, user-centred, investigation-led, consortium-based project, funded by the JISC and guided by the principles of appreciative inquiry. There have been about 28 institutions, 45 project teams and 210 individual participants.

The aim is to support the formation of an "effective and sustainable community of practice” around the Users and Innovation Development Model, using Web2.0 technologies (def 1, def 2).

Emerge is the support project for the JISC Capital Programme, Users and Innovation strand

Other-centred approachesJe est un autre

• Student centred learning• Community-centred economic

development

Traditionally JISC projects have, despite intentional rhetoric, been developer centred, not user centred

Developers as a user communityWe talk the talk. Do we walk the chalk?

– Atavism: we revert to our own reflection

– Transference: put developers in a position of being the users of their support community

– Emulation: enact and exemplify user-centred development approaches

The act of research has a transforming effect on the subject of research. The aim of research is to bring about change.

Appreciative Inquiry attempts to get beyond the essentialism, ethical foundationalism and hierarchies of identity politics to embrace a more radical constructionism in relational theory. (Gergen, 1999)

By applying a rigorous, anti-essentialist, critical theory-led approach, appreciative inquiry can provide a firm foundation as a research method and evaluation methodology.

Appreciative inquiry

Applying appreciative inquiry in a

community of Practice

– Needs-based approaches to community development tend to reinforce the circumstances of need

– Much of what works is already there (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987)

– explicitly avoids the discourse of problems allowing people to articulate an empowered discourse of their own identity as individuals in community

Let’s try Part 1

“Affective recall”

• Guided discussion in pairs (5 min)

– Think of one successful project that you were associated with at any time in the past

– What did it feel like for you?

– Tell your partner.

– Switch

“Affective recall”

• Feedback (5 min)

– Capture

“Affective recall”

• Feedback (previous sessions)– Exciting– Not a lot of baggage– Enthusiastic about the vision– Ownership– Exposed to failure– Frightening– Fun– Rewarding

Part 2

“Critical Success”

• Guided discussion in pairs (5 min)

– one person interviews the other

“When your project has gone right you know it because...”

– Elicit the other person’s key success criterion

“Critical Success”

• Feedback- Capture

“Critical Success”

• Feedback (previous sessions)- Your customer is pleased- They give you feedback- Lots of people you never met claim credit for it- Your customer MIGHT be pleased, but are the users pleased…

did the product sell or were you patted on the back?- Spontaneous sustainability: people approach you- 80% use uptake even though didn’t tell- Reports in on time- People are still using it 3 years on

Communities cannot be magicked into being

We do not know how to make a CoP

see, e.g.: http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/neilw/weblog/109.html

It has to be enquiry-led

It has to be fun

The opening stance

Was, in part, a stance …

• Team active in many communities

• Typology of communities

• Experience with community of practice, theory and practice

• User-centred development model (UIDM) and user trials

experience

• Open source software community model

• Appreciative inquiry evaluation from the start

• Working hypotheses

• Understanding of actor networks

• A site model based on aggregation

• A software platform

• Deep events experience & unconferencing approach

Emerge has a position

Communities of Practice and PurposeCommunities share learning, interests, goals, tasks, values, adversity, place, identity …

A model of software development

Explicitly adapted to community development

Developing projects in a context where there is

awareness of the wider activity in a field and an

understanding of the alignments and gaps in that field

will lead to better projects being developed.

By using community development processes and social

networking the general quality of educational (learning)

technology development projects may be improved,

bringing benefits not just to the JISC but more widely to

all sectoral funding agencies and stakeholders.

Working hypotheses

Activities• London Launch, April 07

• Online Activity Days, June 07

• Manchester Community Consolidation, July 07

• Nottingham Project Development (Dragon’s Den), Sept 07

• York Programme Launch, Jan 08

• Digital Communities & Digital Identities, April 2008

• Exploring User 2.0: the shape of future users, June 08

• Live at Leeds, ALT-C Sept 08

• Altered States, Nov 08

• Benefits Realisation events

• Emerging Sounds of the Bazaar internet radio shows

• Second Life conference socials

supported by a Moodle and Elluminate…

and… (here)

Conditions for success

• Bounded openness• Heterogeneous homophily• Mutable stability• Sustainable development• Adaptable model• Shared repertoire • Structured freedom• Multimodal identity• Serious fun

Criteria

• Multiple• Contextualised• Relative

• Real users involved in development teams

• Projects have real impact in institutions

• Ongoing, reflexively self-aware, purposeful community of collaborators

• User interfaces are considered as important as data models, control programs and work flows

• Affectionate recollection

• Wider adoption - and adaptation - of the model

• Positive return on investment indicators

In the future, Emerge (or its successor/inheritor) will be a community of – and a front-end for – people working on cutting-edge educational technology systems integration and development, realising the potential of academically-focused social-networking with a light-weight personal profiling system, community map and address book, which becomes an international resource, anticipating standards.

• Thank youThank you

George RobertsProject Directorgroberts@brookes.ac.uk

http://jiscemerge.org.uk

Josie FraserSteve WarburtonMarion SamlerRhona SharpePatsy ClarkeJoe RosaChris FowlerIsobel FalconerMitul ShuklaNik BessisGraham AttwellBrian Kelly

and all the JISC U&I people, projects, partners, steering groups and teams