Some Discussion via Email about Technology and Community: Background for the L3D Meeting on April 12, 2000

Hypothesis:

"Digital technologies are adept at maintaining communities already formed. They are less good at making them!"

from Gerhard:

Any comments about this?

               - what does your experience say about this?

               - what does our L3D experience say about this?

               - what does our experience say about our attempts to create more a community sense

                              among the classes we are teaching?

a few more observations to think about:

a) use of GIMMe (Stefanie's group memory project) in a local class a couple years ago was no success, because of "media competition" --> the class members talked to each other and did not see the need  to send emails about the same topics

b) we wanted to use GIMMe for the collaboration between Daimler research in Ulm, and L3D (no media competition here), but it also did not work! I believe this failed because people did not know each other!

to address the issue that people get to know each other better, we started to develop the "personae project", and we tried to use it in the TAM-2000 class, but it was no big success either (or do you see it differently, Rogerio?) why?

personae project -->  have a look, go to: http://Seed.cs.colorado.edu/dynaClass.Persona.fcgi$doc=Atlas2000&DisplayCommunity=TRUE

David: any insights from Knowledge Depot about these issues?

From: L. Palen

Hi Gerhard,

I think this hypothesis needs a little tempering and qualification. It's one of those statements where I can think of enough exceptions that it seriously tests the rule.

For starters, you cited an example where GIMMe was not used in a classroom situation, in part because of "media competition." There's a situation where a community of sorts already exists, but the IT was not particularly adept at supporting the existing community. This nullifies the first part of the statement. Additionally, is it only "media competition" that caused GIMMe to fail in this situation? It was very likely a major reason for it. But I would argue that the media competition was present *because* of the *needs of the community*. That particular community had a certain threshold for coordination that had to be met. If existing means of interaction met that threshold, then media competition arose when GIMMe was introduced. However, one could imagine other communities with different and greater needs for coordination, where the threshold for media competition is much higher.

Secondly, I can think of lots of communities that exist simply because of IT. For example, I'm able to talk with women across the country (and several parts of the world) who are all expecting babies in June! What a great resource! It would be so difficult to build a community like that locally, and have enough people with enough interest in talking to actually create a community.

A NEW HYPOTHESIS: The saliency of the role of IT in supporting and even creating community is dependent on the existing opportunities possessed by enough people with like interests to communicate and coordinate in an elective, on-going, fashion.

I think in trying to formulate rules-of-thumb like this, we have to think about the saliency of the role of IT in social coordination, and particular dimensions of "community." "Nicheness" might be one characteristic of a community that might serve as predictor of it's survival, and the prominence of IT in that survival. "Autonomy of participants" in the community might be another dimension. By this I mean "the degree to which people have a choice to participate in the community, and can control the degree to which they participate." I am sure there are others. (By the way, I am grounding these ideas/labels in my own observations; I am not pulling these terms from social theory particularly.)

A classroom setting doesn't have much in the way of "nicheness," or at least it is not niche for very long, and it doesn't feel like a group with niche interests to enough of the students to make it be a community. Classes come and go (even good and interesting ones), one in a succession of many, and, for many, they are a means to end and not the end itself.

A classroom setting also doesn't support lots of individual autonomy in terms of participation. Sure, we could argue that more advanced classes might try to support this, and that some instructors are really good at rewarding this kind of behavior. But ultimately, even these classes sit in a cultural context of a curriculum that requires students to check off the right classes in the right order so they can graduate. Even the most progressive classes still have to deal with the temporal boundaries that occur on a regular and frequent basis, but for a short duration of time overall. It's part of a social contract that makes a class a class, and they have to attend the class to get the credit so that they can graduate. Students HAVE to participate in this elaborate formal structure. If students can mostly fulfill their commitments through this existing structure, and knowing that their time is limited because they have multiple classes, it's not clear to me why enough of them would elect to participate in some other IT-supported way to make that IT medium useful. I'd love to explore how mandatory commitment affects degrees elective participation. I'm sure there's an interesting correlation.

Finally, I don't think IT itself can create a community. But if there's a "community waiting to happen," a group of people with like interests or like minds who have no other way of getting together, that I think IT can be the very reason those people find each other.

But if there's no reason for *enough* people to find each other, or if they've already found each other and existing mechanisms support interaction adequately, then the role of IT is less salient.

From: Gerry Stahl

I think the barriers to building virtual communities and strengthening F2F (face-to-face) communities with digital media are quite clear to us by now. The issue of motivation and benefit is obviously crucial and media competition is also an important factor. It is harder to say how to overcome these barriers.

The literature on this matter (L3D is not the only place this has been investigated) suggests that it helps a lot for people to know each other non-digitally (for one thing, so that they can interpret digital messages as expressions of real people with specific known perspectives). It is also clear that people much prefer F2F interaction if given a choice, and therefore will ignore digital media in favor of class discussion.

Nevertheless, we see impressive examples of virtual communities (outside of L3D) formed with relatively very primitive media like email and FTP. Think of the Linux developer community or various newsgroups. Also, CSILE has been an important and successful part of classrooms, even with quite young children sitting in the same room and typing away to each other.

It is hard to say how much of the resistance to CMC (computer-mediated communication) is due to habit or clunky interfaces and will be outgrown in future generations. It is not clear, for instance if speech interfaces would make a big difference. Text-based chat rooms are apparently successful for many people. In Finland, it seems that cell phones are even replacing much F2F contact among teens. Sure, a tremendous amount of non-verbal communication takes place in F2F communication -- but how important and irreplaceable is that for certain communication tasks like building scholarly knowledge.

I think there are powerful advantages to computational media. They can be available anywhere, any time, so one can continue conversations beyond the severe time constraints of F2F meetings. The conversational constraints like turn-taking and coherence-maintenance are relaxed. You can look back over the exact transcript of past messages and be as reflective as you want. You can reference other texts and websites or incorporate simulations. . . .

Motivation is key. Perhaps students are a skewed experimental population. They are so used to doing only what will help them impress a teacher and get good grades that they are unmotivated to engage in on-line activities that are not part of that game. They have to show up in class and look interested, but they are not used to getting involved in constructing knowledge outside of that context, on-line.

I have tried, with limited success, to design learning situations that incorporate digital media. Perhaps an assortment of technical problems interfered and these experiments would work better under more favorable conditions. Based on my experience, I would say that important design criteria are:

1.      The participants are highly motivated to engage in knowledge-building on some specific topic.

2.      A collaborative task is well-defined and requires working together.

3.      The participants have met each other.

4.      The opportunities to do the work F2F are extremely limited or non-existent.

5.      The participants have access to digital media that are well-designed for supporting the task or the communication, and the media is not frustrating for the participants to access and use.

I do not think that the kinds of digital media we develop at L3D are of use in all situations. They may be useful in carefully chosen learning niches. I do not think that a teacher can just make such tools available to a class and expect them to use them for general discussion. The class must be very carefully designed around these tools -- in terms of class assignments, classroom practices, time scheduling, motivation, rewards, interactions, etc.

If we just make tools available but do not design the social and organizational

practices of their use, we will surely fail to see the tools used. To then conclude that the tools are failures would be a shortsighted mistake. It took the printed word centuries to catch on in a widespread way (and even today many people resist reading and writing). Let's not expect digital media to be accepted without a learning curve.

From: Alexander Repenning

>>"Digital technologies are adept at maintaining communities already formed. They are less good at making them!"

This is not really true: Two examples:

- The Sims Exchange: http://www.thesims.com/us/ click "The Sims Exchange", people seem to be quite prolific with this. Maybe be related to the fact that "The Sims" is the #1 game sold in the US. People using the Sims exchange on average do NOT know each other

- Virtual Chess partner: I don't play chess but according to a recent article in Time Magazine this is quite a hit with addition-like level of popularity. Many people seem to prefer using the virtual version over the "join your local chess club" scenario.

>I do not think that the kinds of digital media we develop at L3D are of use in all situations. They may be useful in carefully chosen learning niches. I do not think that a teacher can just make such tools available to a class and expect them to use them for general discussion. The class must be very carefully designed around these tools -- in terms of class assignments, classroom practices, time scheduling, motivation, rewards, interactions, etc.

>

>If we just make tools available but do not design the social and organizational

>practices of their use, we will surely fail to see the tools used. To then conclude that the tools are failures would be a shortsighted mistake. It took the printed word centuries to catch on in a widespread way (and even today many people resist reading and writing). Let's not expect digital media to be accepted without a learning curve.

That's true on one hand but on the other it's amazing too see how quickly some communication IT tools such as ICQ http://www.ICQ.com/ (calling itself the "World's Largest Internet Online Communication Network") are spreading. These systems are so successful that at least at the level of text-centered IT tools there is little reason left to spend time to build competing tools as part of research. Instead maybe research should study WHY ICQ is such a great success and HOW it could be used in schools (if at all) to support and extend teaching practice.

From: Yunwen YE

>This is not really true: Two examples:

I can add another example which I experienced. Before I moved to Boulder, I lived in Tokyo. There were many other Chinese like me who were working in Japan. A guy set up an email list and advertised it in a couple of newsgroups. I joined the email list without knowing any people personally in that list. We chatted a lot about issues that interest us. A couple

of months passed; a sense of community started to form. And we decided to meet offline. After that we had irregular offline meetings, and the participants

were not always fixed and only a very small portion joined each time. Even several sub-communities, such as soccer team, fund-raising team for sponsoring the education of poor kids in China, have been formed and still very active since.

In this example, digital technology (as a matter of fact, email only), is the driving force in both creating and maintaining the community.

From: Taro Adachi

Another example would be mobile phone in Japan. Now 5 million people using mobile phones with network access (this does not include regular mobile phone users without the services). When I visited Japan last year, it was amazing to see that many teenagers typing e-mail messages in train. They use the phone keypad with a thumb (no extra interface is added) and can type texts quite fast (imagine kids using video game controllers).

It seems very difficult to predict what will be accepted by many and what will not.

From: John R. Dunn

We are finding similar acceptance in online courses, with some anecdotal evidence of community persistence after the course is over.

From: David Redmiles

Knowledge Depot is being used now to keep people aware of information but we have not verified that it stimulates communication between people who do not know one another already.

Re: building communities. We decided not to do an elaborate experiment to see if Knowledge Depot or the concept of awareness helped build communities because so many communities have already grown using electronic media, that such an experiment would be redundant.

Example: The Apache Server was developed via e-communication, as are many Web standards.

Example: I claimed that I did not answer emails from anyone I didn't already know. My student pointed out that that was false. When I organized the ASE 98 conference, at least half of the people on the program committee were not direct acquaintances of mine. I initiated on-line introductions and communicated over email. For ASE 99, I even shepherded the revision of a paper by authors in Brazil. I still haven't met them.

It's the old issues of motivation and cost-benefit tradeoffs that affect whether communities will form.

Use of research tools like Knowledge Depot or even a specific emailer like Outlook vs. Eudora still need to be "legislated" by management or other authority. Ubiquity affects this too. That a tool becomes popular has a degree of randomness to it. But, once it's popular, then peer pressure prevails. E.g., I'm using Wintel platforms now :-(

From: Jonathan Grudin

I am drawn in by Gerry's reflections, most of which I agree with. One addition and requests for clarification of two tangential comments.

Nowhere was "trust" raised. There is some evidence (and strong belief) that trust is as important as motivation in building groups, and F2F is credited with building trust better. But I've seen virtual groups thrive in situations where trust exists because no one has a motive to behave badly. Interesting in this regard are the various devices for building up online reputations (eg on ebay); studies show that people are willing to pay more for goods sold by someone with a good reputation rating. Many examples of these are coming along; they may form a foundation on which virtual communities or enterprises form.

Clarification: about the printed word taking a long time to catch on widely, my understanding was that where social conditions made the printed word particularly useful, it caught on pretty quickly. Where these conditions did not exist, it didn't. In Europe, within 50 years of Gutenburg the network of content-starved (sound familiar?) printers had sprung up that Martin Luther used to launch the Reformation.

Also, about students, they seem to have a lot of time and energy and many of the first web sites were built by students. Maybe I don't understand the context for this remark.

From: Lecia J. Barker

John -- I am not sure how to/if I should enter into the conversation with the people whose original message you forwarded. But I would like to point out a couple of things:

1) There is a large literature on both virtual community and computer-mediated communication; my dissertation, finished 1 1/2 years ago, focused on the discursive construction of a particular virtual community (LambdaMOO, supported by PARC Xerox, the original MOO on which most others are modeled/copied [the central core of code is usually copied]). I observed the community go from a few characters to a democratic "society" over the six-year period of data collection. That LambdaMOO members usually never meet each other beyond their text-based world is not considered problematic. Members get to know each other pretty well, hanging out with groups of friends discussing whatever is interesting. One "MOOer" I interviewed pointed out that online, you can get to know each other from the inside out, rather than from the outside in. And to those who will argue "it's not real community" or "people are pretending to be someone they're not online," I will disagree very strongly. Focusing exclusively on the medium within which interaction occurs ignores the ways in which people construct meaning for their interaction and their values for it.

Generally speaking, most virtual communities are attended by members voluntarily and/or with a central, shared interest. A classroom -- virtual or otherwise -- is often populated by students who just want to graduate, just want a grade, etc. In spite of a professor's best efforts at making the material meaningful and rewarding to students, some will always be uninterested or, for various reasons, unable to become motivated, involved, etc. I think Gerry's right that students are a different population from many other online communities.

2) To claim that "most people prefer face-to-face communication" reinforces a cultural myth which holds ftf communication as an ideal. Ftf communication is idealized as being characterized by continuous feedback, multiple channels, spontaneity, and egalitarian norms. However, Schudon (1979) argued convincingly that real conversations usually do not closely correspond to the ideal. And as Steve Jones (editor of 3 volumes devoted to the study of online communities and research) wrote, "Ftf interaction does not necessarily break down boundaries, and to adopt it as an ideal will likewise not necessarily facilitate communication, community building, or understanding among people" (1999, p. 26). Whether students see each other ftf or not, they know each other only in a very particular social context with very particular rules and norms and roles available to them. I would disagree with Gerry's #3, in which he suggests that people meet each other. Rather, I would argue that the online classmates be given activities by which they can get to know each other online -- some means of self-disclosure, opening up; then I would find activities through which they can develop a sense that "they're in this together" and requires that they depend on each other. 

However.... I have taught many courses (ftf) in which group work is required (all communication courses). Inevitably, one or two groups per class, per term, would have social loafers, people who let everyone else do the work. In an online course, it's probably easier to do this, since it's easy to "hide out" (not reply to email, etc.) and more difficult to make people accountable for their behavior. In Anne's summer and fall online courses, there seemed to be a lot more excuses made about why papers were late and so on -- would you agree with that Anne?

From: "John R. Dunn"

Lecia, I think you would want to subscribe to their list, Gerhard Fischer in Life Long Learning would be glad to hear from you, I think. and thanks for sharing your info--many of my folks care a lot about this issue. One thing, 'folks who hide' online are really obvious in their absence, more so than the retiring types in back of an f2f classroom.

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