Good news: Learning webs paper is accepted for Web-based communities 2004. The evaluations are very positive, but there are things suggested for an improvement:
Even though the authors’ account and discussion of blogs as stand alone tools is satisfactory, I find that an explicit discussion of how blogs can be used to support CoP is missing in the manuscript. Thus, I would suggest that the authors write a paragraph discussing the following two points:
(a) how in their view blogs can be used in more systematic ways by educators and web designers to support spontaneously formed CoP which are somewhat losely coupled as the authors rightly note
(b) how they think that blogs can be integrated into current environments supporting the formation of CoP either in their existing format or in possibly new ones (such as e.g. a formal learning log or learning journal)
I wonder how far we will address these issues in the paper given that we are already over the page limit :)
My “quick and dirty” strategy for introducing weblogs to support communities in more or less formal settings:
- provide weblog technology infrastructure with “social” features enabled by default: RSS, comments, trackbacks, e-mail subscriptions, personal RSS readers and community aggregators (ideally with topic-based aggregation like k-collector)
- find a group of early adopters (ideally boundary spanners that send around e-mails with ideas and links :) and help them to start with writing and reading weblogs
- make starting a weblog easy and have someone to encourage newcomers and connect them with existing weblogs (e.g. by annoucing their weblogs or by commenting on their posts)
I assume that the rest will follow (please, note that I know that starting to write a weblog is not easy, but this is not a “community” question :)
Integration with an existing community infrastructure is another issue. I’m trying to formulate my suggestions for adding “weblog flavour” to the Knowledge Board, so will use it as an example for an upcoming post.
Tags: blogs and learning, communitiesArchived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/01/18.html#a907; comments are here.
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