The fuzziness of phased planning

The previos sections outline a very busy year of planning. The activities I engaged in were sometimes repetitive, but involved different stakeholder groups. The early planning and research provided reassurance that we were on the right track. We developed a project plan that followed a traditional model phased approach, the first being research. An advisory committee, typical of university projects, was established to guide our work. While the input from the committee was valuable, the meetings were few and far between, and became more of an opportunity to report on progress and to test our ideas than to seek guidance for next steps. Concerns about the lengthy research and design phases were expressed early on. However, the process of selecting a platform proved to be very involved and one year after drafting the original project plan we still had not launched the community.

This SCoPE community process began with the goal to fill an obvious void left by the closing of GEN, a popular community which was unable to sustain itself past the end of funding from Canada's TeleLearning Network of Centres of Excellence. With the pilot of the new community approaching, we reflected on the issues that emerged during the community research and design phase. Key areas include selecting appropriate technologies, the pre-launch design process, defining the community purpose (i.e. whether or not to focus on elearning and how much the SFU community is included in the main purpose), and creating a bridge from an inactive community. After a lengthy planning process we were ready to launch.

The phased planning provided an anchor for our work and enabled us to chart progress. However, we found ourselves editing the plan to match the reality of design work. The project plan had undergone several revisions, each with adjustments to the milestones and redefining the notion of a pilot. The revision process also highlighted the overlap of the phases. Even the phases themselves had been renamed and items within the phases shuffled around. For example, the “Marketing and Implementation” phase became “Launch and Development”. It was clear that design does not simply occur as a section of a plan! The research phase was very much about design. A pilot allows for evaluation of the preliminary design, but so does full implementation. We learned that design is constant, and it is also about many things.

This messy notion of the community design is reflected in the vocabulary and metaphors used to describe this process. Some prefer language that suggests communities are grown, nurtured, and cultivated rather than developed, created, or built (Kim, 2000; Stuckey, 2004; Wenger et al., 2002). The separation of the early stages of development (planning and launching) from mature stages of development (growing and sustaining) provides a manageable framework, and situates design as an ongoing process (Wenger et al., 2002). Stuckey (2004) proposes a new framework for developing internet-based communities that, like SCoPE, do not have organizational affiliations . She refers to “waves of influence and action” as developers design, implement, and sustain community, and although chronology and developmental stages are still necessary, the waves are interrelated (para. 24).

What is clear from our experiences and from the literature, community work requires ongoing engagement in the design process. As Stuckey advises: “Sustenance of the community begins the day it opens” (Stuckey, 2004, para. 27).  Attention to continued observation, reflection, and engagement of members shaping the community is essential. How have we done that?