Plan for technology and access

The community website will provide access to a collection of tools to carry out proposed activities, with the vision that this collection will be expanded. Also, on occasion, certain activities may take place at other venues, or using prototype tools. Given that a primary interest of the community members will be elearning  tools and best practices, the community should be open to experimenting with a variety of tools to carry out its activities. Also, it is in the interest of the SFU community to use tools that are currently available and supported for carrying out work related to teaching and learning online.

Some essential components in order to launch the community are:

Website / Community Environment

An obvious goal for the website is that it will be easy and efficient to navigate and maintain. The initial design can be very simple, but with the intention of introducing more sophisticated features to support members and sustain interest.

Asynchronous Communication

Various conferencing tools will be explored and evaluated. An open source system is desirable because it will allow for customization. The PHP-nuke site recently developed for the Co-op program at SFU will be reviewed as a viable option.

Synchronous  Communication

As with tools to support asynchronous communication, various synchronous tools will be explored. Tools currently available to the SFU community will be explored, for example SFU currently leases Elluminate Live (eLive) (Elluminate).

Member registration

Individuals will be able to create their own members accounts. This will give them access to contribute to discussions, to upload files, to edit information about themselves, and to personalize their access. All free activities and archives on the site should be available to the public without logging in.

Eventually there may be a need to differentiate between different levels of membership. For example, if there are certain activities that are fee-based, but at a reduced rate or free to the SFU community, then we need to plan in that direction during the design phase.

Automated password reminders are essential, as well as the ability to control duplicate registrations. Automatic notification of any registration difficulties that members are experiencing should be enabled so that the community coordinator can provide immediate and personalized assistance.

Members should have access to edit a personal profile that contains biographical and demographic information. There should be an option to publish or keep private each field in the profile database. Certain fields should be mandatory so that we can track members. Also, while being able to see who is online will promote one-on-one networking, there should be preference setting to remain invisible to others while visiting the site. This is especially important for encouraging newcomers to visit the site to become acculturated and to participate at their own comfort level.

Systematic organization of resources

There are many types of resources that will be made available to supplement community events and activities, as well as those contributed by participants in these activities. In the site design thought should be given to how we will organize resources so they can be easily retrieved, and the context in which they were generated known.

Information about Participation

In order to monitor participation, connect individual members and their contributions, and identify access and navigation issues, it is important to have access to participation data.