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 Directorgroberts@brookes.ac.uk

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