Virtual Communities

1. Virtual Communities NLII ANNUAL MEETING 2002

2. Panelists • Melissa Koch, Director of Product Strategy, Tapped In, Center for Technology in Learning, SRI International • Sabine Seufert, Director, MBA Program, Institute for Media and Communication Management, and Lecturer, University of St. Gallen • Vicki Suter, Director, NLII Projects

3. Overview • What is a “virtual community” • Why is this an NLII key theme? • What are the important characteristics of community? • What are principles one should use in designing a virtual community? • What are the issues associated with virtual learning communities in particular?

4. What is a “Virtual Community?” • Alternate term: “online community” • The Virtual Community: Howard Rheingold and the Well – a social experiment (1985) • 'People who use computers to communicate, form friendships that sometimes form the basis of communities, but you have to be careful to not mistake the tool for the task and think that just writing words on a screen is the same thing as real community” • http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/2.html

5. My Definition • a group of people (and the “place” that they collectively create) that relies primarily (though not necessarily exclusively) on electronic communication media to communicate and connect

6. Why is this a Key NLII Theme? • Knowledge is constructed socially. • Face to face experiences are important, AND • Bounded by space, time, and money. • How can we harness technology to provide an environment in which learners (students, faculty, staff, association members) can construct knowledge, when face to face is too expensive, or not even possible ? • Do Internet technologies overcome other barriers in the creation of broad-based, vibrant, and engaged academic communities?

7. A Different Kind of Legacy Problem • Is the computer an analytical, computational engine that extends our intellect? • Or is the computer (with network) an environment for simulation, navigation, and interaction (an “intimate machine”)?

8. A Little Survey • How many of you can’t compose documents anymore using long-hand? • How many of you don’t go to meetings any more without your laptop/PDA? • How many of you have turned your “remembering” over to a technology object (phone numbers, meetings, etc.)

9. A Little Survey, cont. • How many of you are “constantly connected” (the Internet is always on, whether you are at home or at work; your cell phone is always with you)? • How many of you participate actively in an on-line community as part of your work? (how about in your non-work life?) • How many of you have over 15 years of experience playing video games? • How many different activities can you effectively engage in at one time?

10. For “Digital Kids” . . . • “In the culture of simulation, if it works for you, it has all the reality it needs.”* • The technology has almost disappeared (it lives “as an object on the border between self and not-self”*). • There are many cognitive “windows” open at the same time (multiprocessing is almost unconscious). • Being simultaneously and continuously connected to others is part of their operating landscape. • Learning is a process of exploration, direct action, and discovery of actions’ consequences. *S. Turkle, Life on the Screen, NY: Simon & Shuster, 1995

11. Teaching & Learning Context • Learning and cognition research • Learning principles • Teaching practice • Four learning environments*: • Learner centered • Knowledge centered • Assessment centered • Community centered * J.D. Bransford, A.L. Brown, and J.W. Pellegrino, eds., How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School,” (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2000).

12. Learning in community John Seely Brown: “Once we fold action into the other dimensions, we necessarily shift our focus toward learning in situ with and from each other. Learning becomes situated in action; it becomes as much social as cognitive; it is concrete rather than abstract, and it becomes intertwined with judgment and exploration. As such, the Web becomes not only an informational and social resource but a learning medium where understandings are socially constructed and shared.*” *“Growing Up Digital: How the Web Changes Work, Education, and the Ways People Learn,” Change (March/April 2000)

13. Communities of Practice • Learning to be a physicist is not the same as learning about physics – “it requires immersion in a community of practice, enculturation in its ways of seeing, interpreting, and acting*.” • Real test of academy: what is the quality of access it provides to academic communities?

14. Reimagining the University “. . .learners need three things from an institution of higher education: • access to authentic communities of learning, exploration and knowledge creation; • resources to help them work in both distal and local communities; and • widely accepted representations for work done.”* * J.S. Brown & P. Duguid, “Universities in the Digital Age,” The Mirage of Continuity: Reconfiguring Academic Resources for the 21st Century,” Hawkins & Battin, (Washington, D.C. Council on Library and Information Resources, 1998)

15. Two Sets of Responsibilities • NLII • Leverage the collective energy and imagination of its members to provide a learning and knowledge creation environment for them (a community of practice) • Members • Creativity and imagination • “It is up to individuals to make out what the legacy of personality, history, and culture causes them to see.*” *S. Turkle, Life on the Screen