Envisioning the community

Elizabeth Wallace from SFU’s eLearning Innovation Centre (eLINC*)  was assigned the role of project coordinator. Together our first task involved sketching out the vision and goals, our intended audience, roles, proposed activities, the parameters around technology and access, and a basic plan for how to proceed. These initial brainstorming sessions produced a Project Plan (Currie & Wallace, 2004).

It is interesting to note how much the earlier experiences with GEN influenced the directions we were taking with SCoPE, and also how the Project Plan we produced, with a few minor exceptions, has provided the firm foundation for the SCoPE community. The vision and goals focused on essential elements: Scheduled, asynchronous, seminar discussions were proposed as the core activity, the community coordinator role would continue, and SCoPE would provide a venue for researchers to study online communities. Also, discussions would be moderated by volunteers as a way to gain feedback from peers on draft articles, research projects, beta software, and other work in progress, and to practice facilitation skills with the support of the community coordinator. Outside of scheduled activities, the community would offer a venue for showcasing the work of members, and for ongoing and open peer exchange of questions, advice, resources, job opportunities, and anything else of relevance to elearning practitioners. Also, as an extension of GEN, the original stated goal was to bring together individuals who share an interest in elearning research and practice. This was later revised to be in line with a organizational change at SFU to broaden the focus of the eLINC division to include all teaching and learning endeavours, hence placing less emphasis on the ‘e’ in elearning.

A stated goal which was quite different from GEN was to showcase and build on SFU interests and expertise. The early stages of implementation in particular would ensure that the interests and expertise of the SFU community were incorporated into the design of the community, and that the project would take full advantage of faculty development initiatives, research projects, software licenses (referring to resources allocated to software tools already in use by the institution and centrally supported), and software development work. A need for private spaces for members of the SFU community or other practitioner groups was anticipated, and ensuring flexible and inclusive participation, combining novices and experts, and options for different levels of engagements were emphasized.

Many similarities to the Global Educators’ Network exist, but in addition to the strengths of GEN the SCoPE Project Plan also reflects the shortcomings of the Virtual-U course management system used to support community activities. For example, several essential features were listed: automated password reminders, member profiles to share information about themselves, and access to the site resources and discussions without logging in. The Project Plan included these following core sections: roles, proposed activities, plan for technology and access, and proposed phases.

 *eLINC became part of the Learning and Instructional Development Centre.