Engaging with a Community of Practice

Task Discussion

• 
  Jennifer Claro   May 21, 2012, 4:08 p.m.

  Hi Everyone,

  It seems like we are back on track as far as reading and commenting go. Great! But I am thinking that we might want to try to increase our numbers in here. I wonder if we could try to spread around news of our group and invite people to join? We seem to have a core committed group but I think we could stand to grow a little...

  What do you think? Should we have a membership drive? Bring A Friend/Colleague to RH (Researcher's Homestead) Week, or something similar? Advertise on Google Plus and wherever else we have lots of connections? Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook, etc? Start right away or set a specific time frame (next week)?

  Thanks so much for your ideas. Let's grow! :)

• 
  Jessy Kate Schingler   May 26, 2012, 10 p.m.
  In Reply To:   Jennifer Claro   May 21, 2012, 4:08 p.m.

  i like the idea of a membership drive! i was thinking that when we read a paper that's particularly cool i could share with the p2pu community list and/or weekly call (under the "research" category of the call, when there's time).

  but i wonder if there are other things we could do that would make it easier for people to participate. i mean, at the end of the day there's still the work of reading the papers!

  i do think spreading the word on our social networks, respective uni labs, etc. would be great too.

  (if any of the more silent people on this course have any thoughts please do chime in!)

• 
  Jennifer Claro   May 30, 2012, 3:49 p.m.
  In Reply To:   Jessy Kate Schingler   May 26, 2012, 10 p.m.

  Me too, I think we need to talk about how to improve our own online space. What makes online groups work well, or not? Maybe we could read a paper or two on this topic? 

  By the way, I'm not getting e-mail alerts anymore when someone posts in here. I haven't changed my settings, it's all set up so that if someone posts something, I should get an e-mail. It's been about 2 weeks since I noticed I wasn't getting them.

  Anyone know how to fix this?

  Thanks,

  Jennifer

• 
  Jessy Kate Schingler   May 30, 2012, 4:48 p.m.
  In Reply To:   Jennifer Claro   May 30, 2012, 3:49 p.m.

  yeah i JUST noticed that too!! i will contact the dev list.

• 
  Jennifer Claro   May 31, 2012, 4:10 p.m.
  In Reply To:   Jessy Kate Schingler   May 30, 2012, 4:48 p.m.

  Thanks Jessy, I got a pile of lost e-mails from P2PU this morning so it looks like the problem has been fixed.

  Thanks again,

  Jen

• 
  Jennifer Claro   May 15, 2012, 4:36 p.m.

  Hi, Jennifer here. I think we need to discuss engagement in a community of practice. Specifically, are we a CoP? I had hoped that we would become one, with more people joining over the weeks and months, until we were a real community with core members, newer members, all learning from each other. A permanent online community, a real hub with goals and great productivity.

  But our participation has dropped off to the point that we are not discussing any paper at the moment (isn't that our prime directive? To read and discuss one paper per week, more or less?) and I'm worried about whether this brand new CoP might just fade away instead of becoming a real Researchers Homestead (great name, by the way!).

  So I wonder if we need to discuss, for example, how articles are chosen (perhaps it should be more democratic? Or should we just add interesting articles to the queue and we read them in order? In which case, should we agree to discuss Minds on Fire - The classic by John Seely Browne and Richard P Adler [Philipp]? It looks great!), whether or not we should be having weekly chats (in a P2PU course I took with Stian before, we chatted weekly, and this was the social glue that held us together, the chats were so fun and interesting!) and anything else that seems relevant at this point. Specifically, is this drop in participation a problem or not, and if it is a problem, what can we do about it?

  Thanks,

  Jennifer

• 
  Rebecca Cober   May 15, 2012, 6:46 p.m.
  In Reply To:   Jennifer Claro   May 15, 2012, 4:36 p.m.

  Hi Jennifer and Homesteaders -

  You are so right that participation has dropped off. Our Researcher's Homestead is in danger of becoming a tumbleweed! I have been meaning to post a comment about productive failure for several days now... I dilegently read the article (quite a long read, btw) but then went to a conference... well, you know how that goes.

  I don't know how we can keep momentum going. Maybe by creating a scedule for the next eight weeks (with a sign-up for each week) to at least encourage us to each take responsibility for suggesting and posting one article per week?

  My vote is to read Minds on Fire this week, since Philip suggested it. If I can figure out how to do it, I will create a task for it. And I will also post a response to productive failure.

  Thanks for the nudge, Jennifer!

  Rebecca

• 
  Jessy Kate Schingler   May 15, 2012, 7:14 p.m.
  In Reply To:   Jennifer Claro   May 15, 2012, 4:36 p.m.

  hey guys, i love the idea of being a community of practice! and i am really interested in being a standing community with members always coming in and bringing new things too! dare i call it a "MOORG?" (massively open online research group) (or reading group :)). so thank you for posting!

  being entirely virtual i think we miss the social cues and chance run-ins that might make it easier to keep going in the physical world (duh, i guess). we don't have any specific responsibilities or process either, which kind of makes things amorphous. also, if any one person was responsible for all the organizing then i think that's too much (or would be for me!).

  i could imagine specific roles being a weekly paper selector, and also a comment hearder - someone to make sure they get the comment thread going and engage discussion? i dunno, that's just an idea.  but could be especially helpful for/with new people. making them feel welcome and stuff.

  how about we create another "task" where people can sign up if they are willing to be a paper selector, and we can just keep cycling through that list of people. hopefully it will grow over time too.

  on the more conceptual aspects, some other ideas about structuring our MOORG :)

  - a way to vote on papers (eg like a "+1" if it interests you, say), so the selecting person for that week has a sense what people are excited about. and also have people put a comment as to why they think it sounds interesting, how they found it, what areas of research it touches on etc.

  - having thematic periods? eg. like a month on cognitiive or a week on motivation.

  - would also be cool if there was an easy way to rate papers so that eventually after all our reading, it would be really obvious which were the good papers or where people might start. so, our reading list would become curated over time, especially as more and more people read papers. maybe something like a simple poll on each paper.

  thanks again for starting this thread - and love to hear other peoples' thoughts on how to keep the group going and evolve into a real CoP.

• 
  Jennifer Claro   May 15, 2012, 11:48 p.m.
  In Reply To:   Rebecca Cober   May 15, 2012, 6:46 p.m.

  Thanks for taking the iniative and posting an article! Next time (if there is a next time our beloved Homestead is in danger of becoming a tumbleweed!) I'll do the same, instead of just being a squeaky wheel.

  How to keep momentum going... I think your idea is great, about the setting up a schedule ahead of time. And if we post an article, I think we have to write comments and discuss it too. That seems like a minimal requirement for posting an article, to me.

  As a general way to get more people commenting on articles, is there anything we can do about that? I guess either they are interested in the article or not, or they are busy or not... There is little we can do, I think, except try to post useful articles and hope others will want to discuss them.

  But like I said, the weekly chats we had in the CSCL course with Stian and Monica last year were very motivating, but it seems this group is not interested in chatting. Without any synchronous communication, I feel like we are missing out on some valuable (and fun!) learning experiences. What do you think? Stian tried a chat a couple weeks ago, but only I showed up. Maybe the time was not good for others? We could use WhenIsGood to choose a good time, if anyone else is interested in chats. What do you all think?

• 
  Jennifer Claro   May 16, 2012, 12:01 a.m.
  In Reply To:   Jessy Kate Schingler   May 15, 2012, 7:14 p.m.

  MOORG... cooool...  But the really massive ones tend to get a bit impersonal (and for me, less productive because of less Collective Cognitive Responsibility!), so how about OORG or NSMOORG (Not SO Massive OORG)? 

  How about if the article chooser makes it their responsibility to post at least one main post and ensure that other posts are answered? It doesn't mean they have to answer all the posts, just any main posts that don't get replies from others (it's very demotivating to have no one reply to your brilliant ideas...). It seems that the person who chooses the article has something invested in it, so maybe the same person could be like a discussion leader during that week?

  Yes, distributed organization sounds great to me. And the +1 sounds good too, but how would we set that up? The idea of rating papers sounds great too, and thematic periods sound great, as long as we get enough people interested in that particular theme.

  Thanks for so many great ideas! Me too, love to hear other people's thoughts...

• 
  Philipp   May 16, 2012, 5:02 a.m.
  In Reply To:   Rebecca Cober   May 15, 2012, 6:46 p.m.

  I'm only lurking but really enjoy reading everyone's posts. It doesn't seem like a tumbleweed to me ;-)

  I'm overwhelmed by notification emails at the moment, which makes it hard to catch the ones that I am really interested in (e.g. the ones from this group).

  Let me know if you get stuck loading minds on fire into the annotation platform. Happy to help (and even more happy to see someone else take the lead on getting this brilliant paper into the queue).

• 
  Rebecca Cober   May 16, 2012, 9:59 a.m.
  In Reply To:   Jennifer Claro   May 15, 2012, 11:48 p.m.

  I'm in favor of weekly chats... but somehow that Saturday timeslot always gets filled. Like this week I will be attending a wedding on Saturday on Toronto Island. My preference is to use the time to discuss the article (rather than talking about the platform or something).

  I agree with your suggestion that if you post an article then you should post at least one comment about the article.

  So since you think that posting a schedule is great... I'm going to post one... and put my name on for next week.

• 
  Jennifer Claro   May 18, 2012, 10:32 p.m.
  In Reply To:   Rebecca Cober   May 16, 2012, 9:59 a.m.

  How about a chat this Sunday afternoon (May 20) at 4:00? Or 5:00? I'm free at both times. We could discuss any of the papers we're reading now, either of the two Bodong suggested, or Minds on Fire. Plus get to know each other a bit better... 

  Maybe anyone who can't make it Sunday afternoon could post when they are free? And if you can come, maybe you could say which article you'd like to discuss?

  Hope to see you on Sunday!

  Cheers,

  Jennifer

• 
  Jessy Kate Schingler   May 21, 2012, 10:57 a.m.
  In Reply To:   Jennifer Claro   May 18, 2012, 10:32 p.m.

  hey jennifer! i was visiting my family this weekend, sorry!

  not sure how often i could participate on a regular basis but i think a meeting to meet each other and bring in a few more people would be great. maybe if we plan it a bit more ahead of time.

  weedays are also a bit easier than weekends for me. when are good times for others?