Early Beginnings: Global Educators’ Network

The Global Educators’ Network (GEN) was founded by Linda Harasim in 1999 as a way to bring together researchers participating in Canada’s TeleLearning Network of Centres of Excellence (TLNCE*). From the beginning, scheduled and facilitated asynchronous discussions that focused on particular topics of interest to telelearning educators and researchers was the core activity and structure of the network, a format that lives on in the SCoPE online community. The network began with a bang, and some surprises!

Virtual-U software (L. Harasim, Calvert, T., & Groeneboer, C., 1996), developed at Simon Fraser University,  was the platform used for GEN discussions. As a password-protected course management system, one of our first challenges in launching the Global Educators’ Network was to manage the registration with the site. With the realization that it would be too labour-intensive to identify all TLNCE researchers and to process requests manually, a simple public registration page was developed by the Virtual-U Research project staff. The first seminar, “The Virtual Professor: What is it really like to teach online?” (L. Harasim, 1999)  was announced through an existing TLNCE mailing list, and we waited to see who would show up.

Figure 1 Excerpt from GEN Update: December 1999

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The Virtual Professor: What is it really like to teach online?

Our first GEN seminar, launched on November 1, 1999 and moderated by Dr. Linda Harasim, was very successful. It was scheduled to wrap up at the end of December. However, members are still actively participating! All GEN members will continue to have access to this conference.

(Currie, 1999)

The news of the launch of GEN spread quickly, and to our surprise, many people were finding their way in to participate and read along. While some of the participants were TLNCE researchers, most were not. Over time, by word of mouth, GEN continued to attract many new participants from all over the world. At the time the network hosted its final seminar discussion in 2003, GEN had grown to over 2,500 members from over 50 countries.

During my term as coordinator with Global Educators’ Network I began to take notice of how the design of the community environment – the tools that supported our activities – influenced participation. The case of the open registration process is an example of how introducing a tool, simple and rushed in its design, can cause you to revisit original goals and expectations. To our delight, GEN became a large, vibrant community.

During the 4 years that GEN was active I observed how members were using the tools available to them in the Virtual-U. I paid attention to both what was happening, and what wasn’t happening. I noticed what supported community activities well, and predicted features and changes in practice that might improve the experience. Some of this information was collected through surveys and answers posted to specific questions about GEN in forum discussions. But much of the feedback was unsolicited; it emerged, sometimes in subtle ways, through participation in community discussions. Some of members’ needs were addressed, but others were more complex, requiring extra resources for Virtual-U research and development. Terry Anderson (2002) describes the discourse and archives from TLNCE’s Global Educators’ Network  as “perhaps the greatest legacy of the project”. However, he suggests that the lack of tools to support a “push mechanism or RSS style dissemination” or “searching and filtering of discussion, announcements, results, or questions” was a major drawback (p.124).

The experience participating in the Global Educators’ Network provided a good foundation for understanding how the design of an online community environment can influence participation.

Continued enthusiasm but no place to go

When funding for the TeleLearning Network of Centres of Excellence ended, we reluctantly discontinued the GEN seminar discussions. However, my communication with participants did not stop. GEN members missed the opportunity for dialogue they had become accustomed to, especially the format of asynchronous discussions on topics related to teaching and learning online. In reflecting on what we shared in GEN, Linda Harasim posed the question: “What makes GEN a successful community?” This was my summary:

• GEN provides an environment for exploration and sharing of ideas, where learning is a collective and participatory process. GEN is unlike traditional teacher professional development which focuses on individual learning. Rather, individual learning is implied, and necessary, for the advancement of knowledge as a group.
• GEN offers new opportunities for dialogue across disciplines, geographical borders, professions, levels of expertise, and education sectors.
• GEN provides a connection to the everyday realities, current thinking, and practices of education professionals.
• Participation in GEN is flexible and inclusive. As a web-based and platform-independent environment, members are able to log on from any location, and from shared computers. VGroups conferencing system is easy to use, allowing participants to focus on the discussion rather than the technology. There are no costs associated with membership and asynchronous discussion allows for members to participate according to their own schedule. There is no obligation to participate according to a set structure. Reading along is acceptable, and members are encouraged to join a discussion at any time that they have time, feel compelled, or feel comfortable. As such, there is an opportunity to become acculturated, and ease in gradually if that suits the individual.
• GEN operates on a basis of shared goals and experiences. Facilitators volunteer their time because they are committed to the advancement of both online education and the GEN community itself.
• The community has evolved according the needs of its members. GEN began as a means for researchers involved in TeleLearning NCE theme projects to share their progress and findings. However, gradually more and more educators, researchers, administrators, software developers, consultants, and students began to appreciate the value of engaging in timely discussions, and GEN quickly evolved into an international learning community. New events are scheduled by topic, so there is always something new and fresh to build expectations.

Many of the proposed seminar topics emerge through former discussions, and many participants take on new roles as leaders and facilitators.

Indeed, it appeared we had succeeded in developing a rich community. We were in alignment with the popular checklists of what makes a community tick. Early in 2004 I was contacted by Cindy Xin, a program director at Simon Fraser University’s eLearning Innovation Centre (eLINC). Cindy had been an active member of GEN and TLNCE research, and was aware of GEN’s success and also the ongoing requests to revive it. Cindy invited me to an eLINC department meeting to talk about GEN in hopes that there may be interest in funding and involving me in a future community project. By June of that year I was contracted to proceed with planning for a new online community. The yet-to-be-named SCoPE project began out of an interest to rekindle the popular discussions of GEN days.

notes

*The TLNCE was founded in November 1995 as a part of the Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) program funded by Canada's three research granting councils.