Ongoing participation and community pulse checks

 

The organized activities described above are a useful way to engage interested parties in focused discussions that generate concrete recommendations. It is interesting to note that to date we have not conducted surveys, which may seem like an obvious method of soliciting feedback from SCoPE members.  However, Kim cautions that “people are notoriously inaccurate at self-reporting” (Kim, 2000). She suggests listening to conversational feedback and relying on behavioural feedback such as page hits, time spent on the site, and statistics.

The logging and observations Kim refers to can only be done by paying close attention to the day-to-day activity on the site. This is time-consuming, but without a doubt the most fruitful method of understanding ongoing needs.  

Successful community building is a constant balancing act between the efforts of management (that's you) to plan, organize and run the space, and the ideas, suggestions and needs of your members. To manage this co-evolution, you'll need to keep your finger on the community pulse -- and you'll do this by creating and maintaining feedback loops between members and management. These loops will keep you in touch with what your members are saying and doing, and give you the information you need to evolve and update your features and platform. (Kim, 2000)

I realize now after nearly two years have passed since launching the community, that maintaining a journal of these pulse checks would have been a very valuable practice. So much of what I do as community coordinator is difficult to explain; it’s simply a matter of noticing things. But how do I explain the process I use as I sift through hundreds of forum posts and email messages each month? What causes me to pay attention to certain clues buried in posts that there may be user interface issues? Why would I choose to review a certain user’s activity report to understand patterns of interaction?  That is a project for the future, but here I can offer some examples.

Table 3 shows a selection of annotations I have publicly made using Marginalia (Marginalia Web Annotation). (Marginalia is discussed further NEED LINK). Occasionally, there are indicators within the context of seminar discussions that people are having difficulties interacting with the SCoPE site. Some of these indicators are more subtle than others. In some cases participants may not be aware of a feature available to them, and the solution is to draw attention to it. For example, questions posted to forums about formatting text, navigation, and managing forum subscriptions have become topics in the “Tips to improve your SCoPE experience” section in the MicroSCoPE, a newsletter to advise members of current and upcoming activities in and around the community. In other cases, suggestions may lead to changes to the site. Other examples in Table 3 are comments I have flagged for follow up, such as request to continue a discussion past a seminar end date. There are also expressions of appreciation, and indicators that our format is indeed working. Marginalia as a tool has obvious benefits for someone in my role who is needs to be mindful of the development needs of the community (Kim, 2000; Wenger et al., 2002).

(insert Marginalia table here)

 

Log files are another way to discover trends and possible issues with the community environment design. At the beginning of a new seminar I usually do random checks on members that have logged into SCoPE but not contributed. From the log files I can see if they subscribe or unsubscribe to the forum, select RSS, check the facilitator’s profile, and so on. If I notice a member logging in to unsubscribe at the beginning of each seminar, I might email that person to outline some other options for managing interactions with the site, such as switching to forum digests.

Equally as important as what is observed within the community is what hasn’t occurred. Feenberg and Bakardjieva (2004) refer to the virtues of community: loyalty, respect, self-control, fairness, civility, sincerity, truthfulness, and tolerance, and question how realistic it is to “expect these virtues to manifest themselves in cyberspace” (p.5). The SCoPE environment certainly lends itself to possible misuse. However, in two years there have been no instances of inappropriate behaviour – no instances of spam, flaming, domination, or even posts that are off-topic. In fact, despite the advice repeated in most guidelines for developing online community, we have yet to create community guidelines that outline a process for dealing with inappropriate behaviour. Such guidelines should be created through discussions with members. However, we would need to invent possible instances of inappropriate behaviour to get a conversation started.

Other noteworthy examples are that there have only been 3 requests for passwords, 2 requests for assistance in creating an account, and 1 request to have an account deleted. And most astonishing, despite the fact that SCoPE’s seminar discussions are open to the public, the number of active participants in each seminar seems to adjust itself. There has never been a need to introduce a registration system to cap the numbers of participants.

These sections provide an overview of progress since launching the community in fall, 2005 and activities that have enhanced our understanding of what contributes to a successful community and how to monitor needs and anticipate next steps. The next section is a snapshop on evolution as of July 2007– where we are  and how are we doing.

These sections provide an overview of progress since launching the community in fall, 2005 and activities that have enhanced our understanding of what contributes to a successful community and how to monitor needs and anticipate next steps. The next section is a snapshop on evolution as of July 2007 – where we are and how are we doing.