Building Communities – ROI Continued
As we begin to design our learning communities I search for evidence of “experts” who are building and advising on community design. As I am a visual learner I like these two graphs from Passionate – Creating Passionate Users which have relevance for community building. Previously I have looked at ROI and found this interesting graph on Community ROI which explains that there still needs to be investment but the community will provide pretty sound ROI with additional activities which are usually beyond the original investment.
“Think about all the things a strong user community can do for you: tech support, user training, marketing (evangelism, word of mouth), third-party add-ons, even new product ideas”……”Yes, there’s still a budget… but we’ve all seen third-party fan/user groups that got no support at all from “the mother ship” and yet thrived and gave users a level of support and training the company didn’t provide” (Creating Passionate Users).
The second image relates to user needs and I notice at the top of the hierachy is flow and engagement. From my readings and experience I would support flow and engagement being at the top of my list – we have all experienced the concept of “internet time”…..and we often wonder where has the time gone as we sit online day after day……mmm I must have been engaged or in Csikszentmihalyi moment of flow.
Csikszentmihalyi defines flow as ‘the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.’
CoPs, Reflections | Comment (0)Workshop on Building Social Networks/Growing Communities
Thought this might be of interest to fellow EMLT1 students - social networking blogger Laurel Papworth is holding a workshop on June 20 in Sydney on the following:
“A one day seminar with a workshop component designed to get you thinking on your feet and engaging with the latest techniques to build and manage fast growing social networks.
This course is focussed on how business needs can be met by supporting an online social network and is ideal for those with a reasonable grasp of user applications such as blogs, wikis, and tagging – even if you are currently a forum or community leader, you may not have thought of all the insights this course presents on running a community.
Attending LAMP Insight Seminars are a great opportunity for participants to:
- Identify the strengths and weaknesses of existing social networks
- Explore the emerging opportunities of online media to enrich creative projects
- Evaluate tools and techniques for building online communities
- Stay up to date with the latest cutting edge work in web 2.0, mobile media, advanced TV, games and virtual worlds
- A light lunch is provided “
The link above will direct you to how to apply. Places are limited…..
Ramblings | Comment (0)Users beware ….No dumb answers here…..
From a blog by Kathy Sierra called “Passionate – Creating Passionate Users”
There are some great graphs and pics on her blog and lots of relevance for learning theories and tips for desiging and maintaining interest in learning communites. This article focus is on user communities however there is relevance for learning communities….
“Most user communities take a typical path–the newbies ask questions, and a select group of more advanced users answer them. But that’s a slow path to building the community, and it leaves a huge gaping hole in the middle where most users drop out”
So how do we encourage people not to drop out, to keep being active and support a culture which encourages newbies and supports learning and participation. Kathy lists the following tips and the creation of “there are no dumb answers policy instead of there are no dumb questions policy”:
1) Encourage newer users–especially those who’ve been active askers–to start trying to answer questions
One way to help is by making sure that the moderators are not always the Ones Who Know All. Sometimes you have to hold back the experts to give others a chance to step in and give it a try.
2) Give tips on how to answer questions
Post articles and tips on how to answer questions, which also helps people learn to communicate better. You can include tips on how to write articles, teach a tough topic, etc.
3) Tell them it’s OK to guess a little, as long as they ADMIT they’re guessing
4) Adopt a near-zero-tolerance “Be Nice” policy when people answer questions
Don’t allow other participants (especially the more advanced users) to slam anyone’s answer. A lot of technical forums especially are extremely harsh, and have a culture where the regulars say things like, “If you think that, you have no business answering a question. In fact, you have no business even DREAMING about being a programmer. Better keep your paper hat day job, loser.”
5) Teach and encourage the more advanced users (including moderators) how to correct a wrong answer while maintaining the original answerer’s dignity.
And again, zero-tolerance for a**holes. All it takes is one jerk to stop someone from ever trying it again.
6) Re-examine your reward/levels strategy for your community
Is there a clear way for new users to move up the ranks? Are there achievable, meaningful “levels”?
Wenger is way cool
Wenger is way cool ………………..
The body of work on communities of practice by Etienne Wenger is starting to make a few ELMT1 students heads spin. Check out Prue’s summaries – a truly brillant summary which we are all grateful for.
In my research for both ELMT1 and ELMT2 wherever I turn his name pops up again and again……does Wenger ever sleep I wonder? His website is a great resource for e-learning students with links to various papers and reports that you can download – you can find it at www.ewenger.com.
Does anyone know that song “Jesus is Way Cool”……start humming a few bars while I amuse myself or click on the link if you haven’t heard it
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGz3wO1zxao&feature=related).
“Wenger is way cool. ELMT students liked Wenger. Everybody wanted to hang out with him. Anything he wanted to write, he did.He turned community into practice…..
OK you got the gist…maybe you would like to add to it whilst I amuse myself….. think this is the long awaited distraction from focusing on my current two assignments.
CoPs, Ramblings | Comment (0)ROI through communites of practice
My colleague John prompted me to include this as a post to my blog. As part of my research for Assignment 2 and work on the wiki it got me thinking about training and ROI from a business perspective. Having recently been involved in budget cuts at work it is often the training budget which is the first to go… So how do we as trainers or learning professionals convince the corporates that training cuts are a short term strategy (particularly in an era of skills shortage, buoyant labour market and employee mobility).
One solution is to look at investment in human capital as a sound investment strategy that has measurable business outcomes. Another solution is to redefine learning and training initiatives and set up communities of practice within organisations.
(COP – a group whose members regularly engage in sharing and learning based on their common interests).
An article by Lesser and Storck 2001 discusses some links to business outcomes and organisational performance which could be used in justifying the worth of establishing communities of practice as learning vehicles within organisations. Lesser and Storck (2001) argue that the “social capital resident in communities of practice leads to behavioural changes that result in greater knowledge sharing which has a positive influence on business performance’ (p833).
Business often look for ROI and increases in productivity from training and learning initiatives. In addition the loss of product knowledge and social capital which an employee takes when they leave an organisation costs organisations thousands of dollars as does the cost of training a new employee and bringing them up to speed.
So a justification could be that the knowledge that has been captured in perpetuity within this global virtual space during e-learning activities remains the property of the organisation and a resource which new employees can access and get quickly up to speed with an organisations goals, practices and networks.
This study looked at seven local and global organisations which had implemented communities of practice with the following key outcomes:
- maintaining and developing an organisations long term memory
- sharing knowledge outside traditional organisation hierarchical boundaries and within and across departments
- enriched learning opportunities for individual members of the community
- higher motivation to apply what people have learned
- decreasing the learning curve for new employees
- responding more rapidly to customer needs and inquiries through improved knowledge
- reducing rework and preventing “reinvention of the wheel”
- generation of new ideas for products and services (Lessor and Storck 2001)
Content is King (and trust must be Queen)
For those of us in the corporate sphere who are having their social networking options shut down by overzealous IT professional and firewalls – an article by Paul Pedruzzi “Why Social Networks don’t work for businesses” stress the importance of trust and content within social networks to make them functional and identifies organisational issues and barriers which impact on the usefulness of social networking sites within the work context. I like this quote….
“Once you have the people you trust, all you need is content”.
In observing our online communities, I suspect that for an online community to function effectively it will require these two elements – trust and content. Trust comes from the relationships between community members which are built up over time and from people having shared values and interests. In addition, Web gurus will always tell us that content is king, and this is also true for online communities. For example if there is no relevant content on the site or useful dialogue in the way of learning conversations within the community, the community will not flourish and will become of less relevance to community members. Conversely, a content rich and stimulating environment which supports learning conversations and engages community members has more chance of succeeding. The community I am observing has been established online for nearly ten years – they must be doing something right. I have been observing that trust is an integral part of why members join, participate and continue to follow the advice and recommendations of fellow community members.
Gapingvoid.com
The Zen of Blogging – was Budda a social learning theorist?
In my pursuit to learn all things Zen about blogging – my work colleague and Digital Manager Tim, gave me a link to a great blog called copyblogger by Brian Clark. It covers the importance of copywriting skills for making great blogs.
In the post Zen and the Art of Remarkable Blogging, Brian Clark lists the four noble truths of blogging. I like truth four with its application to learning with a social constructionist bent:
“Zen encourages practitioners to learn from teachers and other students to better understand how to attain truth through direct experience. The blogging community offers a similar environment, but the final breakthrough will always occur in your own mind and be the result of your own actions. You’ve got to accept responsibility for your own success.”
OK I am still waiting on the success bit…but sure that will come in time…. patience my dear grasshopper.
Ramblings | Comment (0)Testing the authenticity of a travel blog
Came accross an article in the International Herald Tribune Frequent Traveller: Testing Travel Blogs with Caution (by Roger Collis Sept 2006) which warned travellers to:
“Beware of bogus blogs is the watchword for travelers seeking unbiased information. There is something seductive about the immediacy of the personal blog, a community of fellow travelers sharing that authentic feeling, until you detect the powers behind it ”.
Caught my interest due to my previous posts and investigations into the world of “flogging”. Collis lists a proliferation of travel blogs which under the surface may not entirely be what they seem.
So how do you check the authenticity of a blog?
Collis goes on to say that
“The only way to check the authenticity of a blog is to measure it against what you already know of a place or to do more research yourself”.
Personally, I would go one step further and
1) Take a good look at the level of advertising on the blog – who is advertising – how much space is dedicated to advertising.
2) Investigate the owner, writers and contributors of the blog. Do a google search on their names and see if any commercial links become apparent.
3) Be wary of travel blogs with direct links to online booking site or travel consultants.
4) If the site has a moderated forum – check out who is doing the moderating and also the terms and conditions of joining the forum (what you can and can not post).
Be even more suspicious if you suddenly start receiving great holiday specials spammed to your email!
Ramblings, Tourism | Comments (2)
Which one are you? Social Networking Profiles…
OK it is UK based but always have to love the attempts for demographic/psychographic profiles………..marketing professionals will love it and can add the below to their expanding repertoire of target market labels.
”Types of social networkers
Alpha Socialisers – mostly male, under 25s, who use sites in intense short bursts to flirt, meet new people and be entertained.
Attention Seekers – mostly female, who crave attention and comments from others, often by posting photos and customising their profiles.
Followers – males and females of all ages who join sites to keep up with what their peers are doing.
Faithfuls – older males and females generally aged over 20, who typically use social networking sites to rekindle old friendships, often from school or university.
Functionals – mostly older males who tend to be single-minded in using sites for a particular purpose.
The qualitative research also suggests three distinct groups of people who do not use social networking sites:
- Concerned about safety – often older people and parents concerned about safety online, in particular making personal details available online.
- Technically inexperienced– often people over 30 years old who lack confidence in using the internet and computers.
- Intellectual rejecters – often older teens and young adults who have no interest in social networking sites and see them as a waste of time. “
