Snapshop on Evolution

Who are we?

In less than two years SCoPE membership has grown to 1,080 representing 43 countries. The account creation form only requires name, email address, and demographic information. Fields to enter additional information about place and nature of work is optional  so we are lacking comprehensive profiles of our membership. Members have declared themselves as educators in K-12 and post-secondary, corporate trainers, graduate students, teaching and learning support staff in a variety of contexts, researchers, and curriculum developers. The need to collect more comprehensive information about our members is an example of where a survey would be valuable.

Members by Country June 9, 2007 (CREATE TABLE)

Argentina    6        Malaysia    1

Austria    1        Netherlands    6

Australia    65        New Zealand    15

Belgium    2        Nigeria    1

Brazil    9        Philippines    2

Canada    662        Poland    1

China    2        Puerto Rico    1

Columbia    8        Portugal    2

Germany    4        South Africa    6

Denmark    2        Spain    6

Ethiopia    1        Sri Lanka    2

France    2        Sweden    3

Greece    2        Switzerland    1

Hong Kong    4        Thailand    1

Ireland    1        Turkey    1

Israel    2        Taiwan    2

India    4        Ukraine    1

Iran    1        UK    44

Iceland    6        US    166

Italy    2        UAE    1

Japan    1        Wales    2

Moldova    1            

As mentioned previously, these numbers only represents those who have elected to create an account on the SCoPE site. The number of participants involved in the periphery is difficult to calculate. Guest views  have exceeded 100,000 on the SCoPE main page, indicating interest in SCoPE activity by non-members. Other indicators of interest include blog posts and discussions outside of the SCoPE. For example figure 6, a sampling of blog activity where authors link to SCoPE, demonstrates the international interest, as well as appreciation for what SCoPE has to offer. Blogging activity also captures an interesting view on seminar meta-discussions; contributors are extending their reflections to their own blogs  and inviting further commentary. Individuals also choose to read SCoPE discussions using an RSS Reader. Given that SCoPE is an open access environment, and new technologies such RSS enable access in different ways, it is impossible to compare growth and popularity to the earlier GEN community which required that an account be created to enter the site.

What are we accomplishing

As of June 22, 2007 there have been over 3,700 forum posts to SCoPE discussions. This is a relatively high volume compared to other online communities reviewed in the phase 1 research. For example, the BCcampus EdTech Community (BCCampus EdTech Community, n.d.) shows 581 posts since fall 2004, and LearningTimes (Learning Times, n.d.) which has been in existence since 2002, has 15,372 members, and a proportionately small number of discussion posts at 2,400 . These comparisons are not meant to imply competition in any way, but are mentioned here to illustrate that the activity level SCoPE is relatively high. It should be noted too that both BCcampus EdTech Online community and LearningTimes offer many synchronous events and a private mailing list option, so there are other activities that these members are engaging in.

Measuring up against the 7 Principles for Cultivating Communities of Practice

Most people involved in online communities are familiar with the following 7 Principles for Cultivating Communities of Practice and how this framework is useful for guiding community design decisions (Wenger et al., 2002). It captures our progress in attracting members and in shaping our community to suit their needs. Aligning SCoPE’s evolution against the 7 principles for cultivating communities of practice provides an interesting framework for both patting yourself on the back and also for identifying areas that require further attention. Each section follows this set of principles to reveal the thinking behind the design of SCoPE and how it measures up. This elaboration demonstrates how factors other than user requirements can influence decisions about the selection of technologies and how ”communities and technologies shape each other” (Wenger et al., 2005, para. 2). Selected examples illustrate how members contribute to shaping the community and to reinforcing design decisions.

(LINK THESE TO WIKI PAGES)

1. Design for evolution.

2. Open a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives.

3. Invite different levels of participation.

4. Develop both public and private community spaces.

5. Focus on value.

6. Combine familiarity and excitement.

7. Create a rhythm for the community.

 (Wenger et al., 2002)