#commproj12

[pjwang]

Design Principles for Online Communities or Networks

Nowadays, community has become the "in-term" for almost any group of people who use Internet technologies to communicate with each other. Depending on whether one takes a social perspective or a technology perspective, online communities tend to be named by the activity and people they serve or the technology that supports them.

From all the experience I gained so far, I want to build a professional online community that focuses on to share and technological things. I think that there are several principles described as follow:

- A good online community should first of all have a platform where people can upload files to share their ideas.

- Front-load the community with members who are interesting, interested and engaging.

- Encourage interested community members to take leadership roles when appropriate. Outline a path by which they may do so.

- Hosting is about good hospitality – encouraging valuable, friendly, and open connections, handling disputes, answering questions, and helping find solutions to their needs within the community’s context. Remember that respect is essential to leadership.

- Owning One’s Space: Members must have the ability to change and modify their own environment. This includes bringing real-world behaviors online, such as allowing people to create private spaces. Users should still be able to connect to other peoples’ private spaces when invited.

- Diversity allows for or facilitates continuity — make the community interesting. Value the various ideas, personalities, and points of view. However, core groups (like the Dead Heads in the WELL) provide a solid base for community growth in the early phases.

- The community should facilitate flow. Those who visit the site should enjoy their stay and want to spend time in the site.

- Dissent is good as it illustrates that people care enough about the community to fight about it. Don’t be overly zealous in squashing disagreements between users.

Based on my passed experience about online communities, I think most of them are look really great but there is always something that can be further developed, improved or there is something entirely missing in them. If I was designing an online network/community I would definitely keep in mind these several things discussed above to try to build a successful one.

[pjwang]

Design Challenge

If I had a design challenge, of course I would join and participate in an online community which is closed to my design challenge, such as Facebook or Lindley. It is the main online communities I have been working with and I know in these communities, lots of people use it in the world, and I can find any kind of person from almost any age with different interests and different points of view to change experience and ideas, take an inspiration or just helpful advises and opinions.

For my design challenge, firstly I would find my target group and do some relevant research like existing/similar solutions. And then, I would upload pictures or videos about my research and ideas so I can get feedback from the people those who interested in my project. Also I would put tests and questions so I can know everyone's opinions and preferences. After collecting the results, it is going to be easier for me to be done with my design because I can make sure exactly what I should design.

In brief, by joining in the online communities, I can enrich myself with various and new things from totally different people and points of view. This might be really helpful for me and bring me different efficient results when I work on my design challenge. In some degree, it a excellent strategy for solving design problem.

[pjwang]

Monitoring & Evaluation

After one year IDE study, I have learned to work in a team, through better and worse. I have learnt that having a team leader does not mean to make someone to be the boss all the time. The communication between group members is very important which need to be kept in mind always. Reminding my last 4 different group works, actually, the roles in these group do not matter so much because everyone needs to do as much work in researching and analyzing and evaluation.

For me, my learnings so far are going all right as far as I know. I can work well with my team members and use various relevant technologies successfully. If there is any advice on what to do or how to change/improve, I think it should be communication skills because sometimes I cannot explain my ideas to others clearly based on my oral English level. It is my weakest point and I must improve always.

As a team, I believe we had learnt a lot, especially about team work and  communication skills. We can study together, work as a team, face different challenges and had gotten through them is some kind of destiny. We should learnt to cater for others needs if necessary, supporting each other with work when they need.

[pjwang]

Online Facilitation

Online facilitation, in broad terms can be described as the act of managing the learners and the learning through an online medium. In online learning this managing is usually done by a teacher or tutor. It is frequently referred to in the literature as 'online moderation', though moderating can also be a student task in some circumstances. Also, it is a pedagogical term that applies to student-centered approaches to teaching as opposed to teacher-driven-the teacher's role moving from expert to one of facilitation.

Just as the teacher manages discussions and learning activities in the traditional classroom, so it is online. However, online teaching has some special challenges: students often have not met one another or the teacher, the nature of communication is limiting and void of visual cues, and there are challenges keeping tabs on individual students' learning when they are studying remotely. The role of the online teacher or facilitator is therefore both special and crucial for effective learning outcomes and enjoyable learning experiences.

I think that the traditional teaching sometime is much more better than online teaching because the interaction between the students in not complete, and the working atmosphere is not as same as traditional class because of a distance and some mechanic working process. You may do not have a feeling to be one of a group and it increase the difficulty of experience/ideas exchanging and people get confuse you ideas sometimes.

However, there still have good things of online facilitation. The greatest trait of the facilitation is that the teacher/tutor can gives us a direction in which we should develop. It can give us significant and useful advises/support to develop ourselves even our goals in a effective way in order to achieve the result, such as Skype meeting with my tutor once a week to discuss my research project. And the interaction with other team members online is also important  because you can learn how to speak in a similar language with them by visiting their facebook or writing comments to their blogs. Although online facilitation is not good enough, it supplies a new way to develop your tolerance and enrich skills.

[bizzarebehavior-blog]

Week #8: Design of Online Communities

How do you base your community project is up to you, but of course as I mention in all my blogs, the core are the people.

For example if you want to base your community when photography is involved, of course the main topic of your community you will take on images they take or which you want to represent. But when you want to involve your community work they are the best solution although it’s not always the best decision to base your feedback on images only. But you have to choose a core.

Deviantart is a good example of community which is really complicated. It’s based on images and on text as well. In fact it’s a community based on creativity itself. It is a product of a years of work and hard dedication. And not only of staff behind it, but a huge amount of feedback and work as well was done by contribution of community. It would’ve never made without it.

Another good example I have is just to show how quickly you can exploit a market targeting privileged. Is for every one well known Facebook. First they invited students from Oxford only what made their Social network privileged. And then I don’t even need to tell how they followed. Of course it was made functional and functions like tagging in my imho made it very attractive, but marketing made a very huge role in granting first market share for the company. As in Deviantart example we can see that it was made to serve purpose and grew from it.  

[bizzarebehavior-blog]

Week #6: Monitoring & Evaluation

In order to start getting some feedback we must have an access to our target group and people who participated in the project (and hopefully is still participaing). We assume that you have made nice long standing connections which I mentioned in previous blogs and then you must have communicated about whole process in all the way. So the good start is half the job. This will make half of your questions easier to answer, because people who you work with must be passionate about the theme.

Another very important part is get good feedback from your teammates and yourselves as well. It may sound strange, but we sometimes can’t really notice the whole process as a whole. It may take some time just to obtain a ‘fresh eyes’ and in that part I suggest communicating within your team briefly. You may found some things which you didn’t like along the path and even may want to fix some of your design (we all know that design is being polished ten thousand times till its ‘good enough’) as clear mind provides with some insight in your own work. Anyway don’t haste and do careless fixes because you may cause may damage than good. That’s why your teams here for.

If you can do it, share your research and insights with your target group and research connections. The best way to do it of course to gather for a last meeting to see really how people feel like about the whole process. That should give you more ideas about your design and you may (yes, again!) redesign it!

For nice feedbacking and talking methods on various socal themes google “Compass”. Issued for NGO’s from NGO’s.

Happy feedbacking

[bizzarebehavior-blog]

Week #4: Dat Tech Guy

Today’s world have this very fast growth speed of technology. Doesn’t matter which direction you will look at, games industry or software, you will see that new versions, fixes and updates of platforms which we use are reaching us more frequently than ever. And I will tell you a fact, not a secret, phase will keep rising up.

Me personally have some software I like, but that mostly depends on how much I’ve worked with it, so whenever there’s is a need of using a different one I don’t get frustrated too much. I just do it.

Of course if you’re working on the team there may be more strict choices made by people who don’t like changing their working environment so much. Well if there is a situation that with certain people a compromise just can’t be reached then at first I wouldn’t like to work with these kind a people. They may be left in management field, but in a design process it would be extremely painful for me to work with them. Although I could, because I am flexible. Anyway, I believe these kind a people rarely get to a creative process so I believe there’s always a room for a group agreement. If still a person has a ‘crush’ on his software of choice then a group just should assign a whole task to that man and hope that he gets it right. Of course feedback and corrections afterwards are a must.

I was a quite sometimes ‘dat tech guy’ in the group who held the responsibility to gather all the knowledge in digital so we could share it easier within and outside the group. Of course I have preferences like using ‘skype’ for a messenger, but people from different background use different messengers and sometimes skype is the rare one in the group so you got to adjust and find a sweet spot for the group communication. So you take a look for other preferences and even sometimes adjust your own as soon as you find something relevant for yourself. That’s innovation, but just in your tools for working with software. I always try to find better newer software, because some of it becomes outdated and then being overtaken by more advanced technology. In other words to say to be competitive you have to follow trends all the time. Doesn’t it apply for most of today’s competiveness in our world?

[janytt-blog]