ALT-C 2009, Manchester, 08 Sept 2009
the use of next generation technologies to build sustainable communities of practice
a user-centred learning technology R&D support community network
http://reports.jiscemerge.org.uk/
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 in the field the general quality of educational
(learning) technology development projects may be
improved, bringing benefits not just to the JISC but more
widely to all agencies and stakeholders.
Working hypotheses
The Emerge Project used Web2.0 technologies with a user-centred, research-led approach based
on Appreciative Inquiry, which was explicitly intended to be productive of positive change.
Based on real individuals, not abstractions or learner profiles or models but actual individual
people, who kick back, re-interpret, resist, subvert, play and work in many ways, often unexpected
It is important to recognise that the community itself is multi-modal, and not conflate “community”
with any one mode, e.g. the “platform”
user-centred, Freirian approach to community
formation
activities authentic to the participants’ cultural context
… participants in the proto-projects, projects and the community of practice are themselves a user group working in a user centred environment, modelling the user engagement development cycle and applying asset-based community development processes
It is an actor network, not a software platform or an institution
Members join closed community
Groups form around shared interests
User engagement
Aggregation of communication
Benefits realisation
Synthesis and capacity building
Passing on, sustaining
Appreciative Inquiry
Platform
• pro-active IT Service Management (ITSM) methodology for the design, development and deployment of services using Web2.0 technologies to create online social spaces
Service portfolio
Benefits realisation
• Benefits Realisation (BR) activities sought to ensure that the outputs and outcomes of the Users and Innovations (U&I) projects went beyond those originally funded and reached the wider community.
For individuals and projects• professional development/capacity building
– Extrapolated to the institution/department
• Stimulated & facilitated collaboration
• Improved project planning and management
• Awareness of the relevance of projects in a wider context
An effective support system
• Visibility, connectivity and discovery? • Or… obscurity, isolation and at times wandering lost.
• The form and patterns of interaction, which develop across a community over time, cannot be predetermined
• The use of participatory social media is multi-modal • The articulation between people and software is not just a
question of interface design (though that is crucial)• The effective use of Web2.0 depends essentially on
human networks.
…unevenly distributed
Symposium
Shifting centres of control
• greater individual user autonomy and self-direction
• reduced institutional control and direction, of learning, of research and of community engagement
R&D outcomes?• Abstract, institutional, funding-body, project or
developer-centred
• Rather than learner-centred, concrete, practice-based and personal
• reports that are filed, models and demonstrators that are rarely adopted, standards, specifications and reference models which may well express best intentions but do not achieve currency
Educational R&D
• Outputs or outcomes?• Producing artefacts or building capacity?• Quantitative or qualitative measures?• Easy answers or the deep complexity of
institutional change?
Through the U&I Programme a real effort has been made to transform practice based on the needs of
individual users working in institutions
Real change starts with underlying models
Finance
Implementation
Systems
Profiles
Disciplines
Sectors
Roles
Standards
Locations
Institutions Open?
Sustainable community practice
For institutions• to what extent are they comfortable with ceding certain
amounts of control to individuals? • to what extent are they, as established communities,
willing to cede control to new communities?
For individuals• to what extent do they subordinate their autonomy and
self-direction to any community? • And, then, how much do they subordinate and to which?
Self-selected (autonomous, self-directed) individuals build networks to meet broader social objectives beyond the ‘daily-me’ ...Networked individuals can move across, undermine, and transgress boundaries of existing institutions. This provides the basis for pro-social networks: neither personal nor institutional.
These self-selected, internet enabled, networked individuals often break from existing organisational or institutional networks that are themselves being transformed in Internet space... The ability that the Internet affords individuals to network beyond institutional arenas reinforces communicative power.(Dutton 2008, 5th Estate, 5-6 my paraphrase)
A Connected Commons
Acting in British constitutional history
• There is a clear need to support emergent semi-formal and pre-formal networks to reach maturity,
– while recognising that clusters of individuals, as often as not, will start to cohere and then for any number of reasons abandon the effort.
• Only a few semi-formal networks will attain the pre-formal stage
– Few of these will cohere and formally constitute themselves
• The process of emergence is valuable and at each stage may produce useful outputs.
Emergent innovation themes
• Portals – personal, public and in-between
• Frameworks – for accreditation aligned with portals
• Skills – Digilit +
• Knowledge – new epistemologies
• Physical/Digital– Permeated space
• Semantics – standards, tax/folksonomies
• Participation – access, openness, progression, colonialism or democratisation
Institutional strategy and policy areas
• Economic recovery and public funding
• Quality, standards and reputation
• Research and development governance
• International responsiveness
• Social mobility, equality, democracy
Outcomes
Institutions need to provide
• Efficiency, effectiveness and quality
• Sustainable technological solutions
• Enhanced community networks
• Strategic leadership
• Access to strategic advice, demonstrators and detailed guidance
Conditions for success
• Bounded openness• Enough difference• Semi-stability• Adaptable model• Shared repertoire • Structured freedom• Multimodal identity• Serious fun
• Multiple• Contextualised• Relative
There had to be affective advantage to affiliation. Of course there were also those who though that if it wasn't hurting, it wasn't working.
• Thank youThank you
George RobertsProject [email protected]
http://jiscemerge.org.uk
Josie FraserSteve WarburtonPaul BaileyEmma AndersonMarion SamlerRhona SharpeJoe RosaChris FowlerIsobel FalconerNik BessisMitul ShuklaGraham AttwellBrian KellyGlenaffric
and all the jiscemerge people, projects, partners, steering groups and teams
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