Response to Julie December 21, 2005
Posted by Andy Roberts in : General , trackbackAnother response to some of the feedback kindly left on my online pilot exhibition recently.
Julie wrote:
My research project is about engagement within Talking Heads
OK, I’ve read some of the ultralab papers about the first years of that project.
Talking Heads is now part of a much bigger amalgamation of Online communities called talk2learn.
To be a member, you either have to be a headteacher, on a college programme, or have some other “worthy” educational objective. Even then, you’ll only get membership of certain communities, e.g. Talking Heads is exclusive to headteachers.
Thanks, I’ve applied to join the Innovation Unit community which seems to be the open one.
Interestingly, we’re now looking at the sort of sites you are developing to see how we can improve engagement within the talk2learn communities. The College commissioned some research which made the following suggestions:
*Put what’s on the inside outside to draw people in
That’s an interesting one which I’d like to contemplate better myself. Some examples would help.
*Let users organise the site more, develop a sense of “ownership”
I think that’s crucial, but the ownership has to some real extent be actual, and not just a sense. That’s a difficult balancing act to get right, and it’s all too easy to tell people their ideas and suggestions are all valued and considered while making them feel totally powerless in the situation whenever conflicting ideas or values turn up.
Indicators of a community which genuinely owns itself might be things like:
*They don’t feel the need to ask permission before taking actions
*ordinary members host and maintain the FAQ or other community documents
*Technical opportunity to change some aspects of the structure without having recourse to an external technical controller.
*Access to each others contact details so that the entire community could feasibly choose to migrate to another platform should they wish to.
*Less formal dialogue - “encourage small talk and the big ideas will emerge”.
If a culture has built up which makes people feel that only a formal style of dialogue is acceptable then modelling some ’small talk’ might well be a relief which allows a freer flow of communication. But if they interpret it as over-familiar and feel uncomfortable with that then it should be abandoned immediately. I’d imagine that time spent online is of the essence and if people feel they have to wade through too much ‘noise’ to get to the ’signal’ then they won’t bother.
I am going to try some of these suggestions in my research,
but I see you are already doing it!I think a strength of the sort of communities you are developing, i.e. UK Cider, is that it is relatively easy to join, it gives participants a sense of empowerment and enables them to find a voice. They can overcome shyness by using a pseudonym if they wish, so there’s an element of anonymity.
On the ukcider wiki it’s true that many edits are made by people who don’t bother to log in, but they are just adding information, not holding conversations. On the mailing list however, even though it’s all archived on the public internet via googlegroups with no registration required, nearly everybody uses their real names and the odd one who doesn’t, attracts the occasional comment to the effect that their opinions are less valuable because of it.
Thanks again and best wishes for 2006.
Andy R
“The average Eskimo family consists of 1 female, 1 male, 2.4
children, 1.3 dogs, and 0.8 anthropologists”
Technorati Tags: distributedactionresearch, community_indicators,
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
No comments yet.