Behavior and Information Technology

2006

Special Issue on "Computer Support for Learning Communities"

Edited by Markus Rohde, Volker Wulf & Gerry Stahl

Table of Contents

Introduction: Computer support for learning communities

Gerry Stahl, Markus Rohde & Volker Wulf

Supporting community-based learning: Case study of a geographical community organization designing its website

Umer Farooq, Craig H. Ganoe, Lu Xioa, Cecelia B. Merkel, Mary Beth Rosson & John M. Carroll

Fostering an informal learning community of computer technologies at school

Lu Xioa & John M. Carroll

Implementing virtual collaborative inquiry practices in a middle school context

Minna Lakkala, Iisa Ilomäki & Ture Palonen

Learning in asynchronous discussion groups: A multilevel approach to study the influence of student, group and task characteristics

Tammy Schellens, Hilda van Keer, Martin Valcke & Bram de Wever

Facilitating asynchronous discussions in learning communities: The impact of moderation strategies

Andrea Kienle & Carsten Ritterskamp

Reality is our lab: Communities of practice in applied computer science

Markus Rohde, Ralf Klamma, Matthias Jarke & Volker Wulf

Introduction:

Computer Support for Learning Communities

GERRY STAHL, MARKUS ROHDE, VOLKER WOLF

This special issue emerged from two workshops on community-based learning: one at the Sixth International Conference on the Learning Sciences (ICLS 2004), held in Santa Monica, CA, and the other at the International Conference on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL 2005), held in Taipei, Taiwan. A call for papers was issued as a follow-up to these stimulating workshops; 16 papers were submitted, of which six were accepted following a rigorous double loop peer reviewing process. This special issue is part of a wider discourse on learning communities, specifically the conferences series on Communities and Technologies and related publications (Huysman et al. 2003; Ackerman et al. 2003; Huysman and Wulf 2004; Klamma et al. 2004; Stahl 2006).

Within the perspective of the history of computers, interest in computer support for communities represents a logical progression. In the mid-twentieth century, computers were viewed as self-contained machines; designer’s concerns stressed internal efficiency in terms of logical operations and memory allocation. It took visionaries like Bush (1945) and Engelbart (1962) to conceptualize computers as extenders of human intellect. Then designers had to consider human-computer interaction, how individuals actually used computer tools. Although the visionaries provided glimpses of inter-personal implications, most software development focused on tools for individual users and at best took into account human psychology.

More recently, the fields of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) and Communities and Technologies (C&T) have begun to think about how small groups and communities-of-practice relate to computational infrastructures. Consideration of small groups brought in anthropologists and communication analysts. As we now expand to consider computer support for communities, social theorists and business management specialists also become involved in the multidisciplinary effort. Consideration of the community already includes the ultimate expansion to thinking about computers and the world. Groupware bleeds unnoticed into global applications: The burgeoning variety of Internet-based communication media—IM, email, wiki, blog—bring the world together into a maze of community. At this point, computer artifacts become pervasive infrastructure and social practices of usage, far outstripping the plans of technology designers.

Modern communities are learning communities in the sense that they evolve through the collective building of knowledge and the shifting participation of their members (Lave and Wenger 1991). Conversely, learning can be viewed in terms of a member’s increasingly skilled participation in knowledge-based communities. The interplay of community members and the development of their participations are increasingly mediated by computers, networks, software, databases, websites, digital media, etc. The theme of computer support for learning communities is a timely and significant one.

The papers collected here not only recognize the irresistible potential of computer support for learning communities, but at the same time they delve into the ubiquitous barriers and social contradictions involved. They recognize that the design of community-based learning is not simply a matter of technological engineering, but integrally involves intransigent social issues. Existing community structures and educational institutions evolved to meet the needs of a bygone era; adapting them to a high-tech knowledge society confronts conflicts that would not even occur to armchair designers. To uncover and explore these realities of developing learning communities, each paper in this special issue (a) investigates a concrete real-world case and (b) subjects data from that case to scientific analysis. The results may not always be encouraging, but they are thought-provoking and important.

Learning about computing in the community. The first paper takes us out into the community, to a geographically-based nonprofit community organization. It asks how one can foster the kind of practical, technical learning within such an organization that it needs to achieve its goals today. The staffing of a nonprofit is not structured to support learning of its own participants, although its mission in the case study example depends upon educating the local population about ecological issues. In order to accomplish this mission, the organization must learn how to develop and maintain an effective Web site despite severe limitations on technical skills and financial resources. Issues of community computing under these conditions highlight a number of general problems and suggest some innovative responses for diversifying participation, managing organizational knowledge and enhancing social capital. The paper shows how carefully structuring technical training as participatory design can help the organization to learn in a sustainable way.

Re-engineering a learning community at school. Another study by the same group takes what they learned about the nonprofit Web site experience back into the public school. Just as the technical support experts learned from the community volunteers in a way that engaged and empowered the people in the organization, so the teachers in the school learned from their students in an interaction that benefited everyone. Students are often more technically facile than their teachers, so why not, argues this paper, let the students teach the teachers about technical matters. The experience results in authentic learning for the students and ties their learning to tangible practical ends that motivate engagement.

Implementing collaborative inquiry despite school. The kind of learning that builds inquiry skills is severely constrained by the social structure of conventional schooling, even in countries like Finland with successful, progressive education systems. The physical space and time of the school separates students and isolates teachers. It compartmentalizes learning into bite-size servings of unrelated disciplines. It divides lessons from testing—contradicting the formative role of assessment and focusing activity around a tyranny of grading. While this case study transformed some of those conditions, it still found that concerns about grading formed a major barrier to collaborative inquiry. Another, related problem was continued student orientation toward completing assigned work tasks, rather than pursuing progressive inquiry defined as the continuing improvement of knowledge objects (questions, ideas, explanations) within the learning community. Computer support can only facilitate knowledge building if the social relations and the epistemic orientation of teachers and students are already focused on pursuing collaborative inquiry.

Influences of student, group and task characteristics. A traditional mode of analysis within educational research is the statistical analysis of quantified independent variables upon dependent ones, such as exam scores and other operational indicators of learning outcomes. This paper illustrates a multilevel analysis that can distinguish effects of individual differences from effects of participation in small groups. Here, the “learning community” is a freshman college course of 230 students divided randomly into groups of 10. The “computer support” is a generic threaded discussion tool for each small group to communicate about assigned themes. Each student is required to post at least 2 messages to each theme within a 3 week period. A sophisticated statistical analysis is unable to find significant effects of this exercise on the learning within the small groups, despite all the literature that the authors cite on the benefits of CSCL. Perhaps the point is that it takes more than a vanilla communication medium and a minimal imposed interaction task among randomly collected students to constitute effective computer support or a consequential learning community.

Moderation strategies for learning communities. This study explores some techniques for building a more effective learning community through carefully designed computer support and skillful pedagogical facilitation. First, the small group of 12 college students was given an intensive two-month collaborative learning assignment. Second, they were given a sophisticated computer-based environment in which to work. While this software was also a threaded discussion system, it included extensive functionality to support and scaffold collaborative knowledge building, including tools for the students or for a moderator to link, highlight, annotate, manipulate and structure posted notes. The reported experiment is a unique attempt to investigate the applicability of small-group facilitation techniques to computer-supported threaded discussion. Interestingly, the designed functionality for moderation can be used by the students themselves as well as by an outside moderator.

Issues in building social capital in learning communities. The final paper takes the classroom back out into the community, into the reality outside of school walls. It tries to build an apprenticeship learning community consisting of future and current entrepreneurs. By building working relationships between a student community and an entrepreneurial community, it strives to increase trust and thereby build social capital as well as understanding. Although the students are university computer scientists, the computer support only plays a mundane role in the community building. The paper nicely details both the theory and detailed practicalities of trying to match two very culturally different communities, and evaluates the limited success. Perhaps this points to the moral of the special issue as a whole: that the complexities of the social issues dwarf the technical support issues, which however, still need to be respected.

In these six diverse papers we see a range of approaches to computer support for learning communities. Their contrasting experimental approaches and incompatible analytic methodologies illustrate major directions within this multidisciplinary field. The pros and cons of these alternatives are highlighted by the juxtaposition of the papers. Each paper presents its theoretical foundations and its scientific methodology, illustrating these with a concrete application. Despite sophistication of theory, complexity of method and extent of research effort, each study falls short of achieving desired learning and community outcomes. The papers not only present important findings; they also illustrate in their various shortcomings the abiding limitations of our current knowledge of this important question: how to provide adequate socio-technical support so that learning communities can achieve their manifest potential.

We would like to thank the following reviewers for their engagement in reviewing and selecting the papers of this special issue: Amy Bruckmann (Georgia Tech, USA), Hans Brüggelmann (Universität Siegen, Germany), Jörg Haake (Fernuniversität Hagen, Germany), Thomas Herrmann (Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany), Chris Hoadley (Penn State University, USA), Marleen Huysman (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Yasmin Kafai (University of California at Los Angeles, USA), Markus Klann (Fraunhofer FIT, Sankt Augustin, Germany), Michael Koch (Technische Universität München, Germany), Thérèse Laferrière (Université Laval, Canada), Heinz Mandl (Universität München, Germany), Bernhard Nett (Fraunhofer FIT and International Institute for Socio-Informatics, Bonn, Germany), Volkmar Pipek (Universität Siegen and International Institute for Socio-Informatics, Bonn, Germany), Johann W. Sarmiento (Drexel University, USA), David W. Shaffer (University of Wisconsin, USA), Marcus Specht (Open University, Heerlen, The Netherlands), Gunnar Stevens (Universität Siegen, Germany). Thanks also to David Tietjen (College of Information Science, Drexel University, USA) for language editing.

References

ACKERMAN, M.; PIPEK, V.; WULF, V. (eds), 2003, Sharing Expertise: Beyond Knowledge Management, Cambridge: MIT-Press.

BUSH, V., 1945. As we may think. Atlantic Monthly, 176 (1), 101-108.

ENGELBART, D., 1962, Augmenting human intellect: A conceptual framework (Vol. Summary Report 3578). Menlo Park, CA: Stanford Research Institute.

HUYSMAN, M., WENGER, E. and WULF, V. (Eds.)., 2003, Communities and technologies: Proceedings of the first international conference on communities and technologies (C&T 2003). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer.

HUYSMAN, M. and WULF, V. (Eds.)., 2004, Social Capital and Information Technology. Cambridge, MIT-Press.

KLAMMA, R., ROHDE, M. and STAHL, G., 2004, Special issue on: Community-based learning: Explorations into theoretical groundings, empirical findings and computer support. SigGroup Bulletin, 24 (4), 1-100. Retrieved from http://GerryStahl.net/publications/journals/cbl.pdf .

LAVE, J. and WENGER, E., 1991, Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

STAHL, G., 2006, Group Cognition: Computer Support for Building Collaborative Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Supporting community-based learning: Case study of a geographical community organization designing its web site

UMER FAROOQ*, CRAIG H. GANOE, LU XIAO, CECELIA B. MERKEL, MARY BETH ROSSON, AND JOHN M. CARROLL

Center for Human-Computer Interaction and School of Information Sciences and Technology,

The Pennsylvania State University,

University Park, PA USA 16802

*Corresponding author email: ufarooq@ist.psu.edu

Abstract. Community computing supports human-computer interaction among neighbours in geographical or place-based community organizations. Using a case study of such an organization, we investigate the process of designing their web site. Our long-term participatory design approach, integrating developmental informal learning, allowed us to understand how this community organization adopts, evaluates, and sustains web site technology. Based on our case study analysis, we present three design heuristics for developing community-based technology: align and afford new possibilities for participation; dynamically manage organizational knowledge and learning; and enhance social capital within community organizations and with the broader community.

Keywords: Community computing, long-term participatory design, developmental informal learning, sustainability.

1. Introduction

As the Internet becomes more embedded in our daily lives, it is critical for community organizations to have a web presence to disseminate information effectively and efficiently to public citizens, discuss issues related to regional economic development and social services, and most importantly, be able to connect and stay connected with the larger geographical community. In this paper, we report a case study of a local community organization, Spring Creek Watershed Community (Spring Creek), designing their web site to achieve such goals. In working with Spring Creek, we followed a participatory design approach in which we qualified our role as facilitators and technology consultants in the design process rather than technology providers or programmers. Through such roles, a fabric of informal learning was introduced in which members of Spring Creek analyzed, designed, and managed their web site in the long-term.

Community-based learning can refer to a variety of forms of learning, both formal and informal, in the context of individuals, groups, and communities (see discussion in Stahl 2003). We are interested in informal learning in the context of community computing. Although learning is closely associated with schools and classes, most of the learning in our lives actually takes place outside the control and confines of formal education (Brookfield 1984; Caffarella and O’Donnell 1987). Informal learning is manifested in our daily, meaningful activities in the context of our home, work, social life, and community-based outreach. It occurs continuously throughout life, requiring no particular preparation (Dewey 1966).

From our interaction with Spring Creek, we learned how a community organization adopts, evaluates, and sustains Web site technology. Our contribution is the case study analysis, based on which we propose three design heuristics for developing Web site technology. These heuristics present possible socio-technical design interventions that consider the unique characteristics of geographical community organizations, such as their lack of resources of all sorts (e.g. money, technical skills, technology infrastructure). Our paper is also an empirical contribution to the study of community-based learning because it addresses geographical or place-based community organizations instead of online communities (e.g. community networks), communities of practice (e.g. community for teacher professional development), or educational communities (e.g. school settings).

This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews related literature pertinent to the design context of community organizations. Section 3 describes our participatory design approach to work with community organizations to collaboratively design technology. Our premise is that engaging community organizations in more meaningful and long-term design activities will enable them to become a part of everyday information technology literacy. Section 4 gives a background of our case study and describes the research methods. Section 5 provides details of the case study and its analysis. In section 6, we present three heuristics for designing Web site technology based on our analysis of the case study. We provide some concluding remarks in section 7.

2. Literature review: Design context for community organizations

Community computing supports human-computer interaction among neighbours (Carroll 2001). It refers to socio-technical interventions to support community interactions and civic activities among participants living in physical proximity and sharing common resources. Examples of such geographical or place-based community organizations are a local food bank providing emergency food and clothing to those in need or an animal rights group protecting rare birds from extinction near an excavated site.

Community computing settings are viewed as a distinct domain containing activities and practices that differ from workplace and educational settings. While there is certainly overlap between these domains, the impetus is to discover the ways that community context impacts user requirements, system design, and socio-technical practices. Within the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) communities, there have been a number of attempts to organize researchers around the community computing research area, including several workshops (ECSCW, 1997, Community Networks: Opening a New Research Field for Cooperative Work; ECSCW 1999, Broadening Our Understanding: Community Networks and Other Forms of Computer Supported Community Work; CSCW 1998/PDC 1998, Designing Across Borders: The Community Design of Community Networks), conferences (Communities and Technologies Conferences 2004 and 2005; Global Community Networking: Building an Internet for Citizens, 2000; Global Community Networking II: World Congress of Citizens' Networks: Renewing Communities in the Digital Era, 2001), special issues of journals (Computer Supported Cooperative Work 7, 3/4), and the development of a new journal devoted to community computing (Community Informatics journal).

While there have been calls to study community computing contexts, there are few studies that attempt to describe how geographical community organizations appropriate technology. We are concerned with finding ways to support technology use, design, and learning in community organizations as they work to achieve social and communitarian goals. Technology plays an important role in community organizations, enabling them to advertise services, communicate their mission, and to recruit volunteers. Despite this importance, community organizations often face significant challenges when implementing technology in their organization (Balka 1997; Balka 1995; Benston 1990; McPhail et al. 1998; Trigg 2000; Mogensen and Shapiro 1998; Robertson 1998). In community organizations, technology decisions are often driven by the availability of scarce resources including few full-time staff members, limited (or nonexistent) technology budgets, little grant funding, and a constrained pool of technically skilled volunteers. Community organizations often make use of off-the-shelf solutions and have to live with a system even if it is not optimal because of the trade-offs involved in trying out a new system.

A number of strategies have been suggested to effectively carry out technology design projects in community computing. Kyng (1988) suggested a number of strategies that can be used with resource poor groups such as: (a) sharing stories and conducting work place visits to demonstrate how technology might be used in an organization, (b) finding models for local work, (c) using futures workshops to help people envision and plan for potential changes in work practice, and (d) and using mock-ups that make design decisions more concrete. These strategies are exemplified by a number of studies within CSCW that describe technology projects with nonprofits. Trigg (2000), for example, created a database that served as an in-house ‘sandbox’ to try out design ideas for a nonprofit. Robertson (1998) served in an advisory capacity helping an organization think through some of the “shopping’ decisions involved in choosing a new technical system. Mogensen and Shapiro (1998) worked with groups to expand their technology thinking by presenting alternatives to solve problems that organizational members encountered in their everyday work. McPhail et al. (1998) used a future’s workshop and demos to elicit user participation.

In our work, we try to push the line between user and designer further by finding ways of encouraging the development of design and technology planning expertise within the work practice of community organizations. The next section explores our methodological approach for working with community organizations.

3. Methodological approach: Integrating learning with long-term participatory design

Participatory design (PD), which originally emerged from socio-technical systems theory (Mumford, 1983), is a practice among design professionals that explores conditions for user participation in the design and introduction of computer-based systems in organizations (for detailed discussion, see Clement and van den Besselaar 1993; Greenbaum and Kyng 1991; Kensing and Blomberg 1998; Schuler and Namioka 1993). Concurrent with designing technology that facilitates communitarian goals, we are also interested in community organizations learning about technology and changing or refining their practices to sustain their learning over time.

Much literature on PD emphasizes that mutual learning by developers and users is an outcome of successful partnerships (e.g. Ehn and Kyng 1991). Carmel and colleagues (1993) mention that one of the themes in PD is mutual learning (Floyd et al. 1989), in which users and designers teach one another about work practices and technical possibilities through ‘joint experiences’ (Clement and van den Besselaar 1993; Kyng 1991). It has been acknowledged that mutual learning is not a separate activity but an inherent characteristic of the design activities in PD (Irestig et al. 2004).

Whereas PD researchers generally maintain consensus that learning is a part of PD, it is less clear what the nature of learning is during the design process. Traditionally, PD brings users and designers together in mutual commitment, where the users must learn about technology in order to understand what computer technology can do for them, and designers have to learn about the application domain in order to build a flexible and efficient system to fit the users’ needs (Bjerknes 1993). Such views of learning in PD, Carroll and colleagues argue (2002), are quite singular and ephemeral. Rather, a ‘developmental’ view—in the sense of Piaget and Inhelder (1969) and Vygotsky (1978)—of learning should be adopted in which users develop qualitatively different roles through the course of long-term collaborative design process with designers. In the study by Carroll and colleagues, teachers went through transitory roles from being informants to analysts, designers, and eventually coaches. This developmental process was engendered by active contributions on part of the users and designers in co-constructing and engaging in meaningful activities. Other arguments for the developmental perspective of PD have also been made (e.g. Beguin 2003; Bodker and Gronboek 1996; Bodker 1999).

In considering learning in PD from a developmental perspective, the issue of sustainability becomes critical (Kensing and Blomberg 1998). Clement and van den Besselar (1993) note that when designers leave, the participatory processes seldom diffuse to other organizational entities. They argue that users must increasingly gain in their ability and willingness to take on the roles of designers. PD projects are increasingly developing knowledge management strategies and techniques to help sustain the participatory process after designers depart or fade (e.g. Bodker 1996; Kensing et al. 1998).

Our approach to PD incorporates developmental and informal learning as argued above. We take a long-term PD approach that combines ethnographic fieldwork with participatory design to develop community-based technology (Carroll et al. 2000). Learning is inherent in our approach, where community members are engaged in self-directed and relevant design activities, gaining in their capacity to become more technology skilled through hierarchical and lateral forms of learning (Farooq et al. 2005). At the same time, we as designers explore different roles such as facilitators and technology consultants in the design process to support their learning cause (Carroll 2004). Our PD approach is guided by the goal to achieve sustainability (Merkel et al. 2005; Carroll and Farooq 2005). We work to achieve sustainable design, learning, and work practices that inject a sense of designer independence on part of the community organizations as we fade from the process.

4. Case background and research methods

Our case study is part of the Civic Nexus community computing project. Civic Nexus is a three-year participatory design project with the goal of working with local community organizations in Centre County, Pennsylvania (USA) to increase their ability to solve local community problems by leveraging and enhancing their capacity to use information technology (Merkel et al. 2004). Each year, we work intensively with a cohort of four community organizations. We begin with ethnographic fieldwork to understand how technology is used in an organization and how it fits with their values and work practices. We then work with the organization to select a technology project that we will work on together over the course of approximately a year. During the concluding stages of the technology project, we gradually fade from the process in an effort to allow the community organization to manage and guide their technology endeavours.

Spring Creek was one of the organizations we focused on during the first year of the project (2003-2004). Following is a brief description of the organization.

4.1. Background: Spring Creek Watershed Community (Spring Creek)

Spring Creek (http://www.springcreekwatershed.org) is a community organization located in State College, Pennsylvania (USA). The mission of Spring Creek is to promote actions that protect and enhance the quality of life, environment, and the economy throughout the watershed while maintaining and improving the high quality of Spring Creek and its tributaries. Their Web site is a way to achieve their strategic goals of increasing public awareness of watershed issues through education and communication, enhancing intergovernmental and interorganizational cooperation, and maximizing involvement and participation in Spring Creek actions.

Spring Creek was born in 1997 through a grant by Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection to Clearwater Conservancy, a stakeholder group of Spring Creek. The fourteen Spring Creek Watershed municipalities recognized the importance of sharing watershed challenges and concerns with each other and came together voluntarily to form the Spring Creek Watershed Commission. Elected or appointed officials from these municipalities gather every other month to discuss watershed issues and promote watershed cooperation. They jointly sponsored several important projects, the most notable being the development of a Spring Creek Watershed Plan. This integrated water resources management framework coordinated projects of stakeholders throughout the Spring Creek Watershed Community, including not only the municipal partners and authorities but also nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, the development community, and private citizens.

Watershed planning is a challenge because the units of government charged with land use planning are different than the geographic units defining natural resources. But with increasing awareness of water resource and other ecological systems and their fragile nature, cooperative planning and decision-making among Pennsylvania municipalities will become not only more accepted but increasingly promoted as the most logical method to manage water resources and ensure their protection for the health, safety, and welfare of the citizens of Pennsylvania.

Like most community nonprofits (Benston 1990), Spring Creek has limited staffing and financial resources. Table 1 lists the key players in Spring Creek with whom we interacted with.

Spring Creek has only one paid staff member, who works for Clearwater Conservancy. This staff member, Lauren, is compensated by Clearwater Conservancy for dedicating 15% of her time to Spring Creek in the capacity of its lead coordinator. Emily was a full-time staff member for Clearwater Conservancy. Her role was to lead the Water Resources Monitoring Project, started by Spring Creek to establish baseline data to be used for longer-term protection of Spring Creek and its tributaries. Financial support for the monitoring project came from a variety of watershed stakeholders including industries, institutions, municipalities, authorities, and foundations. Andy was an undergraduate student at a large university in Centre County. As a student, he was required to complete an internship as part of his program requirements, which he took up through a volunteering position with Spring Creek. Richard was a volunteer for Spring Creek and Clearwater Conservancy, with an interest in enhancing the technology capacity of Spring Creek. The volunteers were not financially compensated.

Table 1. Key players in Spring Creek.

4.2. Methods

4.2.1 Data collection. Research access was granted in October 2003 during a workshop in which we invited potential community organizations to partner with us on the Civic Nexus project. Spring Creek expressed their interest in working with us. The field research was carried out during a period of approximately 14 months up to November 2004. Although our direct involvement faded after this time, we continue to monitor the progress of Spring Creek with respect to their web site technology.

Because our methodological approach was guided by participatory design, the primary method of data collection was observation recorded through field notes. However, observations were not just passive. We assumed a variety of roles within the case study situation and participated in the events being studied in the capacity of different roles (Yin 2003, pp. 93-94). Our research method more closely resembled action research. We attended Spring Creek’s Web site committee and other technology-related meetings, each lasting about an hour. During observation, we assumed active roles such as facilitators and technology consultants, consistent with our participatory design approach. We also made direct observations during which we adopted slightly more passive roles, such that we were observing activities and their dynamics but not taking part in them. Secondary sources of data collection included documentation (e.g. meeting agendas, meeting minutes, and newsletters), archival records (e.g. emails and web sites), and physical artifacts (e.g. design mock-ups and scenarios).

We conducted two semi-structured interviews with Lauren and one with Emily that lasted approximately an hour each. We focused on Lauren and Emily because they were the primary stakeholders of Spring Creek and were non-volunteer members of the organization (paid staff members or in charge of the decision making process). The interviews were tailored to each person and focused on their perception of what happened and why in relation to Spring Creek’s Web site; on how decisions and actions were influenced and made and conflicts resolved; and on our particular role. The interviews were tape-recorded and subsequently transcribed. Additionally, many informal discussions, including both face-to-face interactions and phone conversations, were held with Lauren and Emily.

4.2.2 Data Analysis. The analysis of the data collected was done using the general analytic strategy of developing a case description (Yin 2003). Although the objective of the study was not a descriptive one, a descriptive approach was followed to help identify the complex stages of designing a Web site and how we as researchers scaffolded this process using the participatory design approach summarized in section 3. Our perspective on participatory design as a learning process guided our analysis of the data, reflecting important socio-technical elements of designing a Web site. However, the data were also used to inform the participatory design approach itself, in that the design emerged as an iterative process taking place throughout the data collection and analysis phases. For example, the idea of ceding ownership was developed at a fairly later stage after analyzing Spring Creek’s insistence on us designing their web site, and seeing the importance of sustainability in community settings.

4.2.3 Data Evaluation. In order to assure rigor of our results, we triangulated the multiple sources of data collection. To ensure reliability and plausibility of our results, all of our field researchers met biweekly with others in the Civic Nexus research group to report the field observations. The research group reflected on the collected data to generate collaborative interpretations. This collaborative process of data analysis helped to remove the individual researcher’s subjective bias, thus increasing the reliability of data analysis.

We worked hard to achieve investigator triangulation. Multiple researchers from Civic Nexus attended meetings to converge on the interpretations that were being made about Spring Creek’s Web site design process. The reporting of the experience with Spring Creek in this paper is from the researchers’ perspective of the dynamics that occurred within Spring Creek during their Web site design process. Member checking was performed in our research, where we presented our analysis for feedback from Spring Creek, accounting for our bias in interpretation of the community context and the process of Web site design.

A research issue we encountered was anonymity. We have used the actual name of our case study organization, because we feel that knowing information about their Web site, specifically the URL and back end system, is critical to understanding the issues that revolve around designing a Web site. However, we have anonymized the names of Spring Creek’s key players to protect their real identities.

Because of the particular methodological perspective we adopted in our fieldwork, another critical research issue we faced was the difficulty in trying to encourage change and observe change simultaneously. It would often happen that we would be actively engaged in solving a problem with the organizational members (e.g. helping them understand how to upload files to a web server), which would render it difficult to take field notes related to that particular situation. In such cases, we often tape-recorded meetings for later reflection and analysis, and had multiple researchers in the field for different tasks (e.g. one researcher engaged in problem solving and the other taking field notes).

Our methodological approach of long-term participatory design obviously has several challenges. These challenges are discussed in our prior work (Merkel et al. 2004). For example, our role as researchers co-evolved with emerging practices of the community organization. In some cases, we adopted more passive roles where we simply observe community settings, and in other instances, we adopted more active roles where we co-construct joint activities with our community partners. As such, it became difficult at times to gauge the level of our influence on community practices. We regularly teased out such influences in our research meetings and through member checking, as mentioned before.

5. Case description and analysis

This section contains the description and analysis of the case study. The first subsection is a prelude, since it provides an overview of the events from October 2003 to November 2004. The remaining three subsections analyze the process of adopting, evaluating, and sustaining Web site technology by Spring Creek. Specifically, these sections address the use of content management systems to develop and maintain web sites.

Prior to Spring Creek’s use of content management systems, other significant events took place related to the design of their Web site. For example, Spring Creek first tried to understand what ‘design’ meant and subsequently analyzed their Web site to elicit design requirements. In another instance, Spring Creek used techniques like scenarios to design the content and layout of their Web site. We mention such events in the overview to give readers a background, but we do not analyze them because our prior accounts have already done so (see Farooq et al. 2005; Farooq et al. 2006). Moreover, analysis of Spring Creek’s Web site technology, which we focus on, is more relevant to this special issue.

5.1. Overview of events

Prior to our involvement, Spring Creek’s Web site was developed and maintained by a commercial vendor. Spring Creek’s goals on the Web site were misaligned with their actual mission. The vendor projected them as a stereotypical environmental preservation group, whereas they sought to express their actual goals: local economic planning, influencing decision makers, and encouraging quality of life through watersheds. The situation was even more frustrating for Spring Creek because they did not have control of their Web site. They did not have administrative rights to their Web site nor were they technically skilled enough to update the Web site themselves; furthermore, the vendor was not willing to update the Web site as per Spring Creek’s requests.

Spring Creek decided to take control of their Web site. During October 2003, Lauren formed a Web site committee for Spring Creek. In November 2003, the first Web site committee meeting was held, led by Lauren, and attended by many volunteers interested in working on Spring Creek’s Web site. During this meeting, Lauren explained the need to redesign Spring Creek’s Web site. This meeting provided the foundation for seven subsequent Web site committee meetings. Table 2 gives a summary of all these meetings.

Table 2. Summary of web site committee meetings.

During the second and third meetings, among many events and actions that took place, two of them stand out. First, Lauren was supposed to draft the content of the new Web site. This involved redoing Spring Creek’s mission statement and their core message that they wanted to convey to their stakeholders through their Web site. Second, outside of the Web site committee meetings, Lauren recruited a new volunteer intern, Andy, to help with peripheral tasks related to Spring Creek’s Web site. Specifically, Andy’s responsibility as directed by Lauren was to develop Spring Creek’s online newsletter to be put on their Web site. Following is an email excerpt on December 30 2003 by Lauren to the Web site committee, updating them on the progress so far (words in bold henceforth are our emphasis).

Result: Umer, Richard, and I ended up meeting for a little while on December 13.

What happened:

1) We outlined how I was going to leave our current host and then switch to our new host.

2) We finalized the draft mission statement.

3) I was assigned the task of compiling the first batch of content.

4) We agreed on assignments for Andy (our new intern) - create a proposal for the newsletter

5) We agreed that the committee should meet in January.

During the fourth and fifth Web site committee meetings in February 2004, the content of Spring Creek’s Web site started to emerge. Many discussions were held between the committee members, specifically related to the confusion between the concepts of designing for content and designing for layout. The outcome of these discussions was that content of the Web site should be designed first, focusing on the core message of Spring Creek. Layout was to be designed once the content was finalized.

At the end of the fifth meeting on February 21 2004, Lauren forwarded an email from Andy to the Web site committee regarding the design of the newsletter. Lauren wanted feedback from the committee on Andy’s newsletter proposal (referred to as ‘document’ in the email). Following is the email excerpt from Andy to Lauren.

Been working on the external design for the newsletter. Ran into a few things I'd like to get your feedback on before I proceed.

Could you email me the updated mission statement for the website as I'd like to incorporate that into the document…I just want to make sure that the document meets your goals.

Also, take a look at browser based WYSIWYG (‘What You See Is What You Get’) editor link below…

I am interested in your thoughts regarding the usability of the WYSIWYG…

The newsletter proposal was quite comprehensive, detailing requirements specifications and Andy’s responsibilities over the next few months. The objective of the 13-page proposal was the following (taken from proposal): ‘The purpose of this document is to provide the system overview and specifications and present the baseline requirements for newsletter development’. The proposal was divided into four sections: Section 1—Overview of the project; Section 2—Functions and framework of the newsletter application; Section 3—Detailed look at newsletter publishing cycle (creation, publication, modification); Section 4—Project timeline.

In parallel with Andy’s work on the newsletter proposal, three Web site committee meetings were held in March and April. The result of these meetings was that the Web site content was finalized, and the layout was being discussed. Various paper mockups were presented as alternatives in the eighth meeting.

We (the Civic Nexus researchers) suggested the use of wikis—online WYSIWYG editors for editing Web pages without knowing much programming—to model the paper mockups so that Spring Creek could see the consequence of implementing them through prototypes. We did not want to overlap with Andy’s work on the newsletter design, as he was also using a WYSIWYG editor, similar to a wiki. After discussing this situation with Lauren, it was decided that it is better to ask whether or not this would be an issue. Following is an email reply from Andy to us on April 6 2004.

No I am not working on the design (of the web site). Feel free to model it as you wish. If you'd like some feedback, send the layouts out to me.

Following this email, we created three different templates for Spring Creek’s Web site on our system known as BRIDGE (Basic Resources for Integrated Distributed Group Environments; http://bridgetools.sourceforge.net) (Ganoe et al. 2004). The BRIDGE infrastructure is seamlessly integrated with browser-based wiki-style asynchronous editing. For accessibility and familiarity, BRIDGE client systems look and behave like a normal web site, with all content rendered as HTML and images. Simple forms of authoring are supported. Each page has an ‘Edit’ link which supports editing and new page creation using a simple shorthand notation that requires no external authoring tools or knowledge of HTML.

At the end of April, we emailed these Web site prototypes to Lauren. In early June, we met Lauren and explained how to use the system to edit the web pages, add menu items, create links, and so forth. Lauren preferred the third web site template we developed (http://java.cs.vt.edu/public/users/ufarooq/Spring+Creek/Sample3/index.html).

We had only created a few menu items and links on this Web site so as to provide a minimally detailed and basic template for Spring Creek to start adding richer content. Lauren and Emily, a newly hired staff member, started adding content during June, July, and August 2004. They designed the logo, added hyperlinks to the Web site, contributed significant content (e.g. historic timeline of Spring Creek, details of the Water Resources Monitoring Project), and much more. We also met with Spring Creek in early August to better understand their use of our system and gauge requirements for enhancing BRIDGE to further support their activities.

Because the Web site was nearing completion, Lauren wanted an update from Andy regarding the newsletter so it could be uploaded to their Web site on BRIDGE. She sent the following email to Andy on August 12 2004.

Here is the link to our ‘final draft’ of our website…As far as the site design goes, I would say it is done and that you can use this style to finish the newsletter…We are planning on going live with it in early September after the newsletter is done.

On August 14 2004, Lauren got a response from Andy, in which he had redesigned their whole Web site. Following is the email reply from Andy:

With time running out I decided to make the whole effort worthwhile. I've configured and modified an open source content management system to suit your needs. Not just for newsletters but the entire website.

This ‘surprised’ Lauren, as was indicated in one of our transcribed phone conversations with her and Emily on August 18, 2004:

‘My understanding is that he was done with his internship at the end of August period. And so when he sent me those emails (referring to Andy’s emails), I was really surprised because he was telling me that he was really busy’.

Spring Creek now had to make a decision between BRIDGE, which had already been used to create significant content during the summer (June-August 2004) by Lauren and Emily, and Andy’s open-source content management system Mambo (http://www.mamboserver.com). Mambo, like BRIDGE, allowed management of Web sites by any administrator or authorized user. Only the super-administrator and administrator needs a high level of technical knowledge in Mambo; the manager, user, and guest use a WYSIWYG editor to interact with the web site.

Following our participatory design approach, we did not want to make the decision for Spring Creek. Rather, we wanted to help them discover the pros and cons of both systems and eventually resolve the situation on their own.

We subsequently met with Andy, Emily, and Lauren in September 2004 so that Andy could explain the functionalities of his system. During this meeting, we provoked questions on behalf of Spring Creek such as how easy it would be to update a Web page or upload a picture. The outcome of this meeting was exploratory. Lauren and Emily decided to give Andy’s system a try, and thereafter emailed him asking specific questions on using Mambo. During October, Lauren and Emily met with us and specifically asked us what Spring Creek should do to decide between BRIDGE and Mambo. We remained resolute, using the utmost care so as not to bias them toward any one system and encouraged them to think about the consequences of using BRIDGE and Mambo. For example, we asked them to consider how Spring Creek will maintain BRIDGE and Mambo after we fade from the research setting and Andy moves on.

After this meeting, Spring Creek decided to develop their Web site with Mambo. The content from BRIDGE was ported to Mambo and further refinement was done. We interviewed Lauren and Emily individually during November to understand their rationale for choosing Mambo over BRIDGE and their decision-making process. This allowed us to compare socio-technical elements of two content management systems and glean in-depth requirements for designing Web site technology for community organizations.

Spring Creek’s current Web site is using Mambo’s content management system (http://www.springcreekwatershed.org). Lauren and Emily, among others in Spring Creek, now manage the Web site in-house by themselves without relying on any specific technical volunteer. The decision making they had to do required and motivated learning and the development of critical information technology skills—which is probably more important and significant than the decision itself.

We now analyze our data regarding Spring Creek’s adoption of BRIDGE, evaluation of BRIDGE and Mambo, and maintenance of their current Web site.

5.2. Adoption of content management system

Content management systems, like BRIDGE and Mambo, are end user development tools. End user development is about exercising greater control by non-developers and non-programmers over technology, such as enabling design of computer-based applications without getting entangled in the nitty-gritty details of programming (Sutcliffe and Mehandjiev 2004). Our rationale for introducing BRIDGE to Spring Creek was to enable members, like Lauren, to become an integral part of designing their Web site so as to emphasize their organizational values as it related to their organization’s mission (Farooq 2005). One of the tensions we had in mind was that members of community organizations rely on help from volunteers and have a strong tendency to want experts to use technology (Benston 1990). This is because they have little time to devote to technology as indicated by the following quote from an interview with Lauren:

‘This isn’t a funded project; I’m basically volunteering my time…We don’t have time to learn this (referring to technology)’.

One reason BRIDGE was used extensively to design Spring Creek’s Web site was the minimal cognitive overhead needed for its use. Furthermore, the benefits of using a wiki-like system were apparent, as it required little learning and less time to achieve tangible results. Although we realized the benefits of BRIDGE for Spring Creek, we did not impose technology on them but allowed them to assess how it fits with their organizational practices (Trigg 2000). At the time when we introduced BRIDGE to Lauren, she was extremely enthusiastic about using it and remarked:

‘This (referring to the wiki-like functionality) is just motivating me…you’re putting something in front of me that I can use’.

After becoming somewhat familiar with BRIDGE, Lauren indicated her desire to leverage volunteers to manage the Web site:

‘What I would like to do eventually is once we get the site in a manageable point, I would like to have a volunteer or two volunteers who are willing to update the site regularly’.

However, relying on volunteers carries its own baggage of problems. For example, in one of the interviews, Lauren from Spring Creek remarked about volunteers who might not fully understand their mission in their limited participative time, and how this might have adverse effects on their organization:

‘Like there’s this one volunteer who I would like to be able to have him do certain things on the site, but I don’t trust him…If he only had control over that one thing so he’s not promoting his own agenda, that would be good…You don’t want somebody to be able to go in and screw up your site’.

In June 2004, Lauren involved Emily in starting to add content to their BRIDGE Web site. At this point, before Emily could even add content, it was problematic for her to login using BRIDGE as indicated by one of her emails to us:

‘Lauren gave me a list of things to add to the Website (she left for the day) and I cannot seem to log on to the site with her name and password. Do you know what her password is? (I can tell you what she told me it was)’.

Even though coordination to some extent was done between Lauren and Emily, helping Emily to start using technology took some effort. Part of this was because of the diverse skill set of community organization members—Emily was not familiar with Web site technology. After creating a user name and password for Emily, her reply to us was:

‘Thanks! I am new to the world of Web sites so I am sure that you will be hearing from me soon’.

Indeed, we did. We facilitated Emily in adding content to Spring Creek’s Web site. Some activities that Emily learned during the course of using BRIDGE were linking Web pages, adding hyperlinks, and creating menu items.

5.3. Evaluation of two content management systems

The months of August, September, and October 2004 were challenging for Spring Creek. After a surprising email from Andy redoing the whole of Spring Creek’s Web site, Lauren and Emily had to decide between BRIDGE and Mambo. The ‘look and feel’ of Spring Creek’s Web site on Mambo was similar to the one on BRIDGE, because Andy had simply imported the content (see Figures 1a and 1b).

Figure 1a. Spring Creek’s front page on BRIDGE.

Figure 1b. Spring Creek’s front page on Mambo.

The tension for Spring Creek in making their decision was related to the learning and effort that Lauren and Emily underwent over a few months to acclimatize to BRIDGE. In a later interview with Emily during November 2004, she reflected on this:

‘At first, neither of us (Emily and Lauren) wanted to switch…I was very reluctant because I had been the one that put up most of the content on the Web site’.

Further, Lauren perceived Andy’s effort as futile to some extent because Spring Creek was so close to going ‘live’ with their BRIDGE Web site in September 2004. During our phone conversation on August 18, 2004, Lauren remarked:

‘It sounds like to me what he (Andy) just did is a big duplication of effort. I saw this stuff on Sunday (referring to Andy’s emails) and I was kind of upset because I kind of felt like we were headed down a successful road and…this now a fork…I just feel like we are so close to being live in September and this just seems huge’.

During our interaction with Spring Creek, we noticed the tension between valuing volunteer participation, specifically Andy’s work with Mambo, and choosing BRIDGE. In an informal phone conversation we had during first week of September 2004, Lauren addressed her concern that if she goes with Andy’s system, would we ‘have any bad feelings’ in working with Spring Creek. We clearly expressed our position, stating that we would facilitate Spring Creek irrespective of their decision under the rubric of our Civic Nexus research project. To this, Lauren responded, ‘I appreciate this’.

Sustainability was Spring Creek’s primary concern during their decision-making process. They had already experienced a lack of control over their technology (Web site) with the previous vendor, and did not want to be left in the same position. In our August 18, 2004 phone conversation, Lauren expressed this concern:

‘I think that we’re capable of using either system from first glance. I mean it’s way better than it ever was (referring to the situation of having a choice between two systems)…but again, I didn’t try his (Andy’s) system…so that’s one thing. The second thing…my big concern is…am I gonna end up in the same situation (referring to their previous Web site and being dependent on a vendor) because is he (Andy) gonna be there for support’.

Functionally, BRIDGE and Mambo are quite similar; they both support WYSIWYG Web page editing, accounts management, and file management among other features. The major difference between BRIDGE and Mambo was that at the time, BRIDGE was not released as an open-source system, whereas many users already embraced Mambo in the open-source community. We were clear about this matter with Spring Creek, explaining to them how the use of an open-source system is one facet of achieving sustainability because of the wide user base and helpful online resources like forums. Being reasonably comfortable with the idea of seeking future help from an open-source community at this point, we and Andy met with Spring Creek in September 2004 to experiment with Mambo and assess its usability. Prior to this, Andy had not met with Spring Creek to explain Mambo’s functionality. Lauren was concerned with the ‘ability to change stuff on our own (referring to Spring Creek)’. Emily, who had significantly developed content in BRIDGE, was proactive in asking Andy about Mambo’s features:

‘Could you explain just like the hierarchy of this system like a category versus an item versus what’s a section…I think (be)cause that would help me figure out how I need to put things in there (referring to adding content and structuring the Web site directories)’.

After this meeting, Spring Creek adopted Mambo as their Web site content management system. In a later interview with Lauren in November 2004, we asked her to reflect on her decision making process between BRIDGE and Mambo. She, in fact, preferred BRIDGE to Mambo in terms of usability, but felt that Mambo was more sustainable in the long-term, as indicated by her response:

‘Aesthetically, I liked yours better (referring to BRIDGE in comparison with Mambo)…it was really hard (referring to the decision) because I liked the way yours looked better. When you look at the management of files over time, I felt like that (referring to Mambo) was probably going to be easiest…I don’t even know if it was a good decision…Even though its not really what I probably want to do, because its easier to stay with this one (referring to BRIDGE), but long-term…I hope we made the right decision (going with Mambo)’.

Spring Creek quickly learned Mambo, its administrative functionalities, and Web site management capabilities. From September-November 2004, Emily and Lauren actively used Mambo to develop their Web site, importing much content and layout information from BRIDGE. It was clear that Spring Creek had now decided to go with Mambo as their community-based technology.

5.4. Maintenance of Web site

After we met with Spring Creek and Andy in September 2004, to date no one has heard from him again, despite Lauren’s multiple attempts to contact him via email and phone. From our perspective, this was similar to Spring Creek’s earlier situation when the vendor created their Web site but never maintained it. However, this time, Spring Creek had control of their technology. In a matter of weeks, after this meeting with Andy, Emily was actively using Mambo forums to help herself learn the ropes of Spring Creek’s newly adopted community-based technology. When asked in an interview in November 2004 about how she learned Mambo and what kind of resources she used, Emily replied:

‘I rely heavily on the Mambo forums. I love forums because you’re anonymous…The Mambo forums have been great. I have been printing out everything they send me’.

To us, this was an indication of at least two things. First, leveraging forums was a way for Emily and potentially other Spring Creek members to bridge social capital with Mambo’s online open-source community. Second, Emily felt more confident in using and learning Mambo as she received friendly and encouraging responses to her questions on the forums. For example, she related an experience in which one of the forum responders read Emily’s profile as a biologist and encouraged her in a subtle manner:

‘I signed in…as a biologist trying to make a Web site…he (forum responder) said something about “I’d rather you be a biologist trying to make a Web site than a Web site designer trying to clone a sheep” (laughter all around during the interview)’.

We were also interested in how Spring Creek was, or was going to manage knowledge for the purpose of transferring their newly learned skills to other members. This was important because in community organizations, the primary source of the workforce is volunteerism, which typically implies short-term, ephemeral interjections. Thus, it becomes important to quickly train newcomers. Prior to interviewing Emily, we interviewed Lauren in November 2004, and we asked her about any documentation they maintain, to which Lauren responded:

‘I just gave Emily my folder on the Web site. I have a folder that has, you know, the committee information, our URL, the server like (information)…(Lauren gets the folder to show the Civic Nexus researcher)…the idea was just to try to get everything so its in one place. So I had all the hosting stuff…I have been building this so I have everything in one spot…Eventually, all the Mambo stuff will be in here’.

We decided to probe this further by asking Emily how this documentation could be used. She commented:

‘If somebody were to come in after me, if I were to leave, it would be easy for me to help them learn this site…I think if we keep documenting the way we do, it will be alright’.

Emily also gave an example of training existing staff members to learn Mambo:

‘We are talking about our office manager…so after we have everything setup, we will show him how to add content…It would also be in Clearwater that everybody would be updating I think’.

After conducting these interviews in November 2004, we gradually faded from the process. We did not meet face-to-face with Spring Creek, though we exchanged a few emails with them since then (approximately ten emails to date), responding to some of Emily’s technical questions and occasionally asking them about the status of their Web site. In February 2005, Lauren emailed us about their current status and future plans:

Good news - We recruited a volunteer who is working with other volunteers to create some of the more substantial content. It will take a while for this content to be completed start to finish because they are volunteers, but they are very excited about the new site and have said that it is a big improvement…

You guys really did a great job and I can't wait for more content to be added to the site.

Based on our data analysis, in the following section we discuss implications for designing Web site technology. The following points summarize the case study:

• Community organizations value their mission and care about how the larger geographical community perceives them. Misalignment of their projected, online goals with their actual mission motivated and seriously committed Spring Creek to modify its learning and work practices, and move toward revamping their technology practices for the collective benefit of their organization and the larger community.

• Community organizations value participation, specifically volunteerism that often comprises diverse (in background, skill set, and so forth) and ephemeral constituents. In our case study, managing these constituencies for Lauren required extra articulation work of coordinating tasks and executing them (e.g. coordinating Andy’s newsletter efforts and adding content to Spring Creek’s Web site).

• Community organizations rely heavily on social capital to fulfill their goals, in the context of both strong and weak ties, at multiple levels of analysis: individual, group, organizational, and community. In Spring Creek, individuals like Lauren, groups like the Web site committee, organizations like Clearwater Conservancy, and communities like the online users of Mambo were all engaged in developing and enhancing social capital.

• Members of community organizations often do not have ample time and resources (e.g. access to training) to learn and use technology. This was the case with Lauren and Emily, which motivated and committed them toward technology involving less cognitive overhead for the amount of invested work and realization of the organization and community’s collective benefit.

• For community organizations, knowledge management is even more challenging because of quick volunteer turnaround and organizational leaders being more absorbed in coping up with fulfilling the organization mission because of their lack of resources. Lauren and Emily formulated the strategy of developing technical documentation to transfer their knowledge, often specialized and tacit, to others.

• For community organizations, long-term sustainable use of technology and consequences of its use matters. Spring Creek realized this through their experience with the previous Web site and incorporated the criterion of technology sustainability in their decisions during adoption and evaluation of Web site technologies.

6. Discussion: Implications for designing Web site technology

Although community computing goes back to the 1970s (e.g. Berkeley Community Memory (Farrington and Pine 1997), Cleveland Free Net (Beamish 1995), Santa Monica Public Electronic Network (Rogers et al. 1994)), only recently has there been greater engagement between community computing and human computer interaction (see Carroll 2001 for discussion). Community settings present new challenges for designing community-based technology, partly because of their civic nature, which is starkly different from traditional workplace and educational settings.

Our case study of Spring Creek adopting, evaluating, and maintaining Web site technology suggests broader strategies for designing socio-technical interventions. At the most general level, the approach we are pursuing has three design heuristics abstracted from our data analysis. First, we are trying to align and afford new possibilities for participation. This is because community organizations value participation, which is often diverse and requires additional articulation work. Second, we are trying to dynamically manage organizational knowledge and learning. This is because community organizations lack resources and face a great deal of volunteer turnover. Third, we are trying to enhance social capital within community organizations and with the broader community. This is because community organizations are embedded within a system of local relationships (intra- and inter-organization), and the ongoing history of their geographic and larger community.

6.1 Alignment and affordances of new possibilities for participation

Part of the value system for community organizations is their consideration for volunteerism. For example, the John Hopkins Nonprofit Sector project reported that the number of people volunteering in civil society organizations in the 35 countries they studied exceeds 190 million, which represents over 30 percent of the adult population in these countries (Salamon et al. 2003). Valuing participation by community organizations is relevant to adoption and design of technology because it is likely that volunteers will participate in and manage technology-related activities.

Because technology is typically not part of the core mission for community organizations, the use of a community-based workforce creates tensions as the organizations work to harness a diverse set of skills. Volunteers and staff members possess a diverse set of technology skills, which makes it difficult to prescribe a skill set while still being participative (McPhail et al. 1998). In addition, managing such diverse constituents requires additional articulation work as evident from our case study. This is because it involves increased coordination of the cooperative work processes and operationalization of subtasks (Gross 1999; Gerson and Star 1986).

Thus, one of the concerns for designers of Web site technology is being able to quickly bring an individual on tasks within the bounds of the organizational values and its social structure. This is because community organizations often have ephemeral participation from volunteers, staff members, and so forth, and have limited time within which organizational tasks need to be accomplished. Community organizations also need to reconcile the diverse skills and backgrounds that individuals bring with them, while simultaneously focusing on their organizational mission.

Having fail-safe mechanisms embedded in the technology to support privileges for users can address these concerns. One way to achieve this is to separate the organization’s external, public view (actual Web site) from the internal, private workspace (test bed for Web site), allowing users to try, learn, and assess the consequences of their work without affecting the organizational image. In our case study, Spring Creek used the three templates on BRIDGE to develop their Web site content and layout. The Web site templates on BRIDGE allowed Lauren and Emily to moderate and assess the consequences before the changes were actually propagated to the public Web site. Allowing versioning capabilities to modifications could also help in analyzing gradual changes over time. This would support the typical ‘undo-redo’ features of modifying artefacts.

Supporting privileges seems critical in developing Web site technology for community organizations. For Spring Creek, Lauren wanted a volunteer to update the Web site after it had reached a manageable point, but simultaneously expressed that trust may be an issue with newcomers. Having granularity in the type of privileges could provide flexibility to leaders of community organizations in delegating their work to volunteers. For example, in addition to role-like privileges to access specific Web site content, they can be allocated according to different groups (e.g. ‘Newsletter group’ for volunteers doing newsletter-like tasks). This could facilitate greater collaboration between volunteers working on similar tasks. Moreover, allowing privileges to change over time can enable technology managers to allocate additional responsibilities as trust gradually builds up.

6.2 Dynamic management of organizational knowledge and learning

By sharing and co-constructing knowledge, individuals contribute to the shared intellectual capital of the community organization (Nahapiet and Ghoshal 1998). Communality (van den Hooff et al. 2003)—the collective storing and sharing of information to which all members of the collective have access—is a consequence of knowledge management.

Based on our data analysis of Spring Creek’s case description, we noticed that transfer of acquired and learned technical skills is not only more important because of quick volunteer turnaround but also more challenging because of lack of resources to develop such knowledge management practices. One of the practices Lauren adopted in Spring Creek was to document, in one physical folder, all material (electronic and otherwise) related to their Web site. From our perspective, this was an indication of an attempt to build a knowledge-sharing community (Brazleton and Gorry 2003) for Spring Creek. Lauren’s main concern was that if she leaves, the tacit knowledge related to the organization’s Web site should be preserved and accessible.

In addition to having a shared information repository, an important part of communality is being able to dynamically access the desired knowledge. This was evident by both Lauren and Emily’s efforts to actively engaging the Civic Nexus researchers and other knowledge bearers (e.g. Andy) through email. Such email exchanges related to both lower-level technical details, such as understanding the structure of the Web site directory, and higher-level organizational practices, such as how to choose between two Web site technologies. Emily also used discussion forums to share, co-construct, and dynamically access technical knowledge related to Mambo. Her forum correspondences were not only saved online, but Emily also printed each of these threads to add to Lauren’s physical folder repository.

To support dynamic management of knowledge and learning, one solution could be a repository of electronic artefacts for a community organization. Electronic artefacts could include Web site versions, emails, discussion threads, and similar products like the ones we observed Spring Creek collect and analyze. This repository could take the shape of a simple file-sharing directory on a common machine in the organization to an online, internal knowledge database that is specialized to the organization’s characteristics and its proximate users.

Dynamic management of organizational knowledge and learning is not just related to accessing artefacts in a repository but also people who co-constructed these artefacts and their activities. In community organizations, transitioning between volatile members of a volunteer workforce and quickly bringing their skills to bear on organizational tasks is a challenge. One way to dynamically manage and coordinate volunteering activities over time is to maintain an up-to-date repository of volunteer profiles, including their technical skill set, tasks they worked on, documentation of their activities, and so on. This can allow leaders of community organizations to assess how the skills of new volunteers will align with tasks within their organization. In this way, volunteers can be identified based on their niche skill set. This emphasizes the social component of knowledge management, involving identification of people with appropriate skills and bringing these people together to increase learning, organizational knowledge, and communication (see broader discussion in Ackerman et al. 2003).

6.3 Enhancement of social capital within community organizations and with the broader community

In addition to communality, connectivity—the ability to reach other members of the collective—is also a facet of knowledge sharing (van den Hooff et al. 2003). Community organizations must sustain and enhance the original social capital with which they were formed and broaden it into a variety of key areas (King 2004). This is important for the purpose of recruiting and developing board members, raising philanthropic support, developing strategic partnerships with other organizations and the larger community, engaging in advocacy, and creating a shared strategic vision and mission within the organization and its members.

Leaders in non profit-like community organizations have an important role in developing social capital and, further, investing their already-limited time in the right kind of social capital to fulfil their organizational mission (King, 2004). At a general level, this involves engagement with both strong and weak ties (Granovetter 1973). Putnam (1993) talks about the ideas of ‘bridging social capital’ to describe the relationships with people outside one’s organization and ‘bonding social capital’ to refer to the relationships that are developed within an organization.

In our case study, Lauren’s attempt to reconcile the decision between BRIDGE and Mambo with both Andy and the Civic Nexus researchers was an example of valuing participation and maintaining social capital. She wanted to satisfy both stakeholders and did not want to lose their goodwill. Her initiative to involve Andy and the Civic Nexus researchers in deciding between the two Web site technologies was an indication of bridging and enriching social capital. This is corroborated in research, for example, that talks about bridging social capital as especially important in community settings to leverage the power necessary to carry out their agenda (Carroll and Rosson 2003; Kavanaugh et al. 2003).

The use of Mambo discussion forums by Emily was an indication of developing social capital with the broader community. This broader community transcended the geographical vicinity of Spring Creek, as it was an online collective. The availability of such an online community was one of the criteria for Spring Creek to choose Mambo over BRIDGE. In a way, this online community was the critical mass that embraced a particular technology. It was this critical mass that led to Spring Creek’s successful adoption of the technology.

Research in the field of CSCW and artificial intelligence (AI) has created applications that can be understood as technical support for building social capital (Becks et al. 2004). One way for community organizations to enhance social capital is through online social networks. An online social network that extends across organizations and into the larger geographical community can possibly help to locate resourceful people according to their volunteering interests, technical skills, social abilities, etc. With larger groups, such as many organizations or a whole community, it is likely that a recommender system can facilitate faster access to more meaningful resources (see broader discussions in Resnick 2002 and Reichling and Veith 2005). For example, an expert-profiling feature could connect an organization to skilful volunteers who have specific skills like Java programming and/or can provide advice on technical issues.

7. Conclusion

We adopted a broader, socio-technical perspective on how community organizations construe, adopt, design, evaluate, and sustain technology in the context of their learning and work practices. This contrasts, in some ways, with current literature on designing technology to support learning that largely focuses on the individual learner or the traditional role of the classroom teacher (e.g. Palloff and Pratt 2001; Pena-Shaff et al. 2001; Swan 2001; Tu and McIsaa, 2002: from Klamma et al. 2003a). We used the framework of long-term participatory design to understand and analyze community-based learning, based on the notions of developmental and mutual informal learning and sustainability. We used an in-depth case study of a community organization and illustrated design heuristics and features for developing Web site technology to support community learning, community work, and community building. Thus, this paper offers a new perspective on the technological support for place-based, geographical learning communities. Although we presented one case study, the discussion around design implications abstracted from our case study was intended to and can promote constructive debate among the community of designers.

The broader contributions of this paper are twofold. First, we enhance the breadth of empirical studies in context of computer support for learning communities. Few studies have attempted to systematically link community computing to technology design for supporting learning and work practices. Most empirical investigations focus on applications of collective learning environments of students, teachers, and/or professionals, ranging from traditional educational institutions to technology-based experimental facilities (e.g. Yokawa 2003; Strobel 2003; Klamma and Spaniol 2003; Klamma et al. 2003b). Our case study of a proximate, geographical community organization, which characterizes many nonprofits in USA (and other places around the world, e.g. non governmental organizations in Europe), adds diversity to such empirical collections.

Second, we contribute to the understanding of technical aspects in community-based learning. The nuances of the community computing context—such as scarce full-time staff members, high volunteer turnaround, and significant reliance on social capital—makes the design space distinct from more well-studied settings such as education or workplaces. The design implications and discussion, based on the analysis of our case study, represent first-order approximations to systematically understand the dimensions of designing for community-based learning and work in community computing.

We believe our paper is of interest to scholars interested in the implications of information technology for community-based interactions and belonging to the broader domains of HCI, CSCL, CSCW, learning sciences, and social informatics. Scholars in community computing can consider the role of long-term participatory design in their own research investigations to engage organizations in meaningful activities and reflect on how our analysis and broader design implications can be useful with respect to their own context. We also believe that our paper is valuable to the general audience of community practitioners and researchers interested in building community capacity using information technology.

Acknowledgements

This project is supported by US National Science Foundation under grant IIS 03-42547. We would like to thank Michael Race, Matt Dalius, Janet Montgomery, and Laurie Kemmerer for their technical support during the fieldwork. We also wish to acknowledge Markus Rohde for his guidance in writing this paper.

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Fostering an informal learning community of computer technologies at school

L. XIAO, J. M. CARROLL

School of Information Sciences and Technology

The Pennsylvania State University

Correspondence L. Xiao. Email: lxiao@ist.psu.edu

Abstract

Computer technologies develop at a challenging fast pace. Formal education should not only teach students basic computer skills to meet the current computer needs, but also foster student development of informal learning ability for the lifelong learning process. On the other hand, students growing up in the digital world are often more skilled with computer technologies than their teachers. We describe an online course design project in which a group of students designed an online health course for their middle school and teachers played the roles of facilitator and learner. We suggest fostering an informal learning community of computer technologies at school as a supplemental method of formal computer education to address the shift in educational context and as a place offering opportunities for students to work on real life projects and solve real life problems.

Keywords: informal learning community, school context, Web site design

AMS Subject Classification: 94A99

1 Introduction

Technological concepts and skills are essential in today’s world. Computer education is increasingly important at school. In order to keep up with the fast development of the digital world, one needs to master the skill of learning new technologies. Formal education should not only teach students basic computer skills to meet the current needs, but also help students to develop informal learning abilities for their lifelong learning process.

On the other hand, computer education has been a challenge for schoolteachers. Traditional classroom-based learning generally adopts the ‘adult-run’ learning model in which teachers possess more knowledge about the subject and transmit knowledge to students (Rogoff et al., 1996). However, it is well known that students who grow up in the digital world are often more technologically savvy than their teachers. In some subjects or areas, teachers may not be able to function in their traditionally accepted role as content experts. Moreover, many schools focus on providing the physical infrastructure such as computer labs and Internet access, and have overlooked the need to provide the appropriate program to help the schoolteachers to effectively incorporate information technology into their teaching. For example, in a national survey of teachers, Market Data Retrieval (MDR) reported that 60% claimed five hours or less of training annually (Market Data Retrieval, 1999).

One approach to alleviate the situation is to cede more control to students. In such a learning environment, students interpret and demonstrate their understandings and receive assistance from those who are more advanced in the subject (Hertz-Lazarowitz et al., 1992; Brown et al., 1996). Through the process of articulating, illustrating, and debating, students learn from expressing and negotiating differing views about how to solve a problem or resolve an issue (Chan et al., 1997). Developed from Sweden in the late 19th century, the Study Circle is the idea of people studying in a small group, where the group leader is an organizer who does not possess theoretical qualifications, and group/circle members have no previous theoretical qualifications but practical experience (Brattset, 1982). In the Study Circle, terms applied are circle members or participants, instead of pupils and students, circle leaders instead of teachers (Bjerkaker, 2003). The Study Circle is a proof of concept that students learn from each other and gain knowledge without teacher supervision.

Another supportive but complementing solution is to better exploit the community resources. The local community presents real life context that students are familiar with and that students can apply computer skills to. Constructivists believe that students learn best when they engage in real activities (Dewey, 1916). Engaging in real life activities helps students realize that their learning is meaningful and learn how to apply their knowledge about the real world to the activities. School is a learning-centred institution that aims to help students learn how to make lives (NOT how to make a living) (Postman, 1995). School is a great and important place to connect community resources with students’ education needs with local community. Moreover, often students are interested in learning technologies because learning and using new technologies are fun to them (computer games are good examples). Working on real life problems helps educate them how to apply technologies to better serve society.

Our research group, Civic Nexus, has worked in collaboration with a local high school program that ran head-on into this issue. In working with the program, we observed how a group of students worked with teachers on a technology project in their school. In the process, both the students and teachers acquired knowledge of online technology, but their responsibilities were recast: the teacher played an important role as facilitator in this learning process, however the students were more knowledgeable about the technology than the teachers and became the experts, taking the roles of instructors and consultants (Xiao et al., 2005).

Based on the experience of working with the local high school program, we suggest fostering an informal learning community of computer technologies in schools, as a supplemental method of formal computer education and a means of helping teachers to integrate technology into school curriculum. We begin with the introduction of Civic Nexus research, followed by an in-depth description of the technology project--–designing an online health course for school. We then discuss a few design implications of creating a Web site for the informal learning community. We conclude with discussion of the evaluation of the community.

2 Civic Nexus: Encourage Informal Learning of Computer Technologies in Community Groups

Civic Nexus is a three-year community-oriented participatory design project. Helping community groups sustain technology learning and development in their organizations is the goal of our research. Built on the previous methodology that blends ethnographic methods with long-term participatory design (Carroll et al., 2000), we (as Civic Nexus researchers) work with community groups to investigate the existing infrastructure of technology support in community groups as well as help them develop their technology capacity through various strategies, such as enriching community activities through technology implementation, developing and maintaining community Web site, and developing strategies to manage technical expertise in their organization (Merkel et al., 2004). We also collaborate with community groups on technology projects to foster informal learning of technologies in the community. In terms of promoting sustainability, we see community groups as owners of technology projects. We believe that supporting informal learning in community groups is crucial to help them meet the technology needs and sustain technology adoption in the organizations.

2.1 Informal Learning in Community Groups

Technology implementation is a challenge for small community groups that have scarce resources (McPhail et al., 1998; Mogensen et al., 1998; Suchman, 1996). There are often few full-time staff members in these groups and they are usually already overwhelmed by their workload. Limited (if not no) financial resource makes it unlikely for community groups to afford formal training courses for members. Non-technical volunteers usually dedicate their long-term effort to the community services and civic engagement, but technology volunteers who help with community technology issues often come-and-go.

The context of small community groups makes it especially important to offer informal learning support in the community groups. Informal learning takes place in a wide range of settings, including both the non-education centred places like clubs and shopping centres, and the education centred environments such as public libraries, and schools (King, 1974). ‘Informal learning can be unpremeditated, self-directed, intentional and planned’ (McGivney, 1999, p1). Informal learning occurs continuously throughout life, requiring no particular preparation (Candy, 2002).

Informal learning is explicit learning that is not constrained or supported by prescribed frameworks (Eraut et al, 1998). In our fieldwork, we have observed that people do learn technologies informally. For example, we have observed that members of a watershed group formed a learning and design group in order to develop a community Web site; a program administrator of a historical society asked us to draw a diagram for the process of uploading a file to a Web server; and an executive director of a leadership group asked the technician who was fixing the computer crash problem to explain what the technical term FAT (File Allocation Table) means.

We adopt the definition of informal learning by McGivney (McGivney, 1999, p1-2) in Civic Nexus research. By their definition, informal learning is the learning that: a) occurs outside a dedicated learning environment and may not be recognized as learning (e.g. listening, observing, interacting with others); b) involves non-course-based but intentional learning activities, which take place when there are explicit interests and needs from community members. According to this definition, we consider students’ learning process throughout the project as informal learning although the project was carried out in the context of school.

3 Work with a School Program – towards an Informal Learning Community

At the beginning of the Civic Nexus research, we held a workshop in which invited potential community organizations to partner with us on the project, including the Learning Enrichment Center/Gifted Support Program (LEC), a program belonging to the State College Area School District (SCASD) ( http://www.scasd.org/249710010249155/site/default.asp ). LEC was planning on an online course design project and expressed their interest in collaborating with us. We worked with the student group and a LEC teacher on the project from October 2003 for approximately 15 months. After that, we continued to monitor the activities of the group through their mailing list.

3.1 Background of the Online Course Design Project

Different from the other community groups that are civic-goal oriented, LEC is a program that is dedicated to support informal learning of students The program provides learning opportunities to students who are interested in exploring areas beyond the standard curriculum. It supports the development of a range of interests such as art, writing, and mathematics through various activities, e.g., field trips, guest speakers, and training sessions. It also encourages students to develop problem solving and research skills through participation in real world projects.

Our work with LEC is about understanding the process of one of their technology projects – putting a health course online. As online courses becomes increasingly popular, the high school and LEC program decided to push their teaching practice beyond the current classroom-based and correspondence models, towards online education. Currently, the students may take the health course in a traditional classroom setting, or do self-study on the subject based on the course materials handed out by the teacher, and then take a final exam at the end of the semester as what the school refers to as a ‘correspondence course’. It has been noticed that there are increasingly more students take the health course via correspondence (over a hundred every year). LEC program believes that it is because the correspondence model offers more flexibility and the course content itself can be easily self-taught, students prefer correspondence to classroom learning for the health course. LEC program decided to select the health course as the first one in their online course design project, assuming that the online model could attract the students because of its even more flexibility than correspondence, and eventually may replace the correspondence model.

A LEC teacher advertised the project and recruited ten teenager students who were interested in learning Web technologies when the project first started in October 2003. The level of each student’s computer skills ranges from very basic technical skills like scanning to more advanced like programming in C++ and writing shell scripts for servers. A high school senior joined the group in January 2004 and became the administrator of the course Web site. The LEC teacher was comfortable with basic computer technologies like email or Web surfing but did not have experience about online course development.

We were initially consultants that provided advice about the Web site design, such as commenting on the Web site layout, suggesting course management software, and hosting a lab session at our university. Our role became gradually passive as students were able to be more control of the design process, and we acted as occasional ‘hint giver’, or as ‘active listener’ who encouraged reflection on the project. We also took a passive role as meeting observers and email lurkers, in line with our research belief that community groups should offer support for informal learning.

3.2 Methods

3.2.1 Data Generation

We conducted face-to-face open-ended interviews (some of interview questions were asked through emails) and we observed the process through participant observation. We interviewed the SCASD director once and the LEC teacher five times. The interviews covered a broad range of topics related to the project such as the background of the LEC, the goals of this project, and issues related to the design process. At the end of the project, we interviewed the teacher about her learning experience with technology during the project and her feedback on working with this students group.

Since our interest is the process of the project, participant observation was our major data generation technique (Mason, 2002). We participated in the weekly design meetings in which students discussed and worked on the design of the online course and joined the group’s mailing list. We also videotaped the presentation the student group gave to the schoolteachers and school administrative about the course Web site they developed.

We also collected secondary data. For example, we collected the design meeting minutes, design artifacts and the final version of the Web site. Finally, we produced a questionnaire to capture students’ learning experience during the process.

3.2.2 Data Analysis

We analyzed the data using the general analytic strategy of developing a case description (Yin, 2003). The descriptive approach helped us identify the complex stages of designing a Web site through group effort. In this project, a group of students gathered to design the online course, under the facilitation of a LEC teacher. We view it as a collaborative learning process in our analysis, reflecting important factors that impact on the learning outcome.

3.2.3 Data Evaluation

Rigor is a challenge for qualitative research. Dubé and Paré investigated the level of methodological rigor in positivist IS case research conducted over the past decade (Dubé et al., 2003). In Civic Nexus research, the multiple sources of data collection provide evidence of data triangulation. We (as Civic Nexus researchers) meet biweekly with the rest of the research group to report fieldwork including interviews and observations, and reflect on the collected data for a better understanding of the process. The group process in data analysis assures the inter-coding reliability. As a way of doing member checking, we sent the LEC teacher our interpretation of the project process accounting for our bias in the interpretation.

3.3 Design Process of the Online Health Course

Picture this – teachers are sitting in a computer lab, listening attentively as the students explain, using a PowerPoint presentation, how to use a course management system, and then quiz the teachers on their retention of the material at the end of the lesson.

This is what happened in the project of designing the online health course in which an LEC teacher played an important role as facilitator and the students took the roles of instructors and consultants who are more knowledgeable on technology contents than the teacher. During the project process, the students learned to use the open source courseware Moodle and designed the course Web site. After the course Web site was developed, the students gave a PowerPoint presentation to schoolteachers and school administrative, describing the implementation details and pragmatic benefits of the Web site they built and the design process they followed. At the end of the presentation, students gave the teachers an ‘in-class’ quiz to examine how much the teachers had learned during the presentation, and answered the teachers’ questions and concerns about offering online courses at school.

Later, the students took part in the design of evaluating the developed online health course. Together, the LEC teacher and the students constructed a questionnaire for students who would take the online health course to evaluate the format of the course, giving input on both the teacher’s course evaluation expertise and the students’ knowledge on evaluating technologies. The questionnaire covers a wide range of issue, such as the helpfulness of online forums and online chapter quizzes on learning health, comparison between the online course and the correspondence course, the benefits and disadvantages of taking online courses, and user interface design issues like ease of Web site navigation, problems with course Web site (e.g., technology difficulties). Throughout the process, students are assigned different tasks to work on by the LEC teacher based on their computer skills and preference. These tasks include scanning materials, uploading files, designing quizzes, and so on. For each task, there were at least two students who work together. The LEC teacher facilitated and monitored the progress. For detailed description of the project process and the role shifting between the students and the teachers, please refer to (Xiao et al., 2005).

4 Towards an Informal Learning Community of Computer Technology

Learning communities usually imply places where people share knowledge, cooperate, and work together on learning activities (Baker et al., 1996; Bauman, 1997; Cross, 1998; Haythornthwaite, 1998; Hill et al., 2000; Kowch et al., 1997; Palloff et al., 1999; Rasmussen et al., 1997; Raymond, 1999; Riel, 1998; Schwier, 1999; Misanchuk et al., 2001). School is a formal learning community where students are brought together to learn subjects and encouraged to share their experience and knowledge, but ‘the learning in question will be much more restricted and externally defined than an informal learning community’ (Romiszowski et al., 2003, p.408). In an informal learning community, learners are self-selected and gather together for informal learning purposes (Romiszowski et al., 2003, p.408).

After completing the design of the online health course, the students continued to learn computer technologies together. The positive learning atmosphere of the project attracted other students to join them (as of April 2005, there are seventeen students on the mailing list). The students formed an official computer club called TECS under the supervision of the LEC program. In the computer club, the students discussed various project ideas including ‘to set up an email server on our TECS server; Computer classes for students and teachers; Even more personalized teaching one on one tutoring; Graphic design, Web page design; Build computers for people; Computer modification/upgrade; LAN party; Game server Rental’ (evidenced from the email dated 10/14/2004).

TECS is not the first computer club supervised by LEC. Bell Grant was issued to the program ten years ago to support a computer club for students who are interested in exploring computer technologies, and a NERDS group was formed under the grant (all members of the NERDS graduated before the online course design project). However, TECS is the first one at school that is interested not only in cool technologies, but also in helping school and others in the local community. For example, the list includes ideas like ‘Computer classes for students and teachers’, ‘Build computers for people’, and ‘game server rental’. TECS computer club is not just a computer club that a group of students get together to learn and play with cool technologies any more.

From our experience of working with the LEC program, we suggest an informal learning community of computer technologies at school as a complementing method of formal computer education and a way of helping teachers integrate technologies into school curriculum. The community has four goals as follows:

4.1 Support students to work on real life projects

Constructivists believe that students learn best when they engage in real activities. Authentic activities motivate students as the process itself demonstrates that their learning is meaningful and they can apply their knowledge about the real world to the activities.

The project of designing an online health course is an authentic learning activity. The problem itself is a real life problem. The students were very familiar with the context of the project, because it was not just any Web site design project, but one of designing an online course of their own school! In fact, among the students group who designed the online course, some of the students had already taken the health course through correspondence and some had the experience of taking an online course. These motivated students to be very active since the beginning of the project. For example, in brainstorming sessions, students suggested many functions that an online course should have based on their experiences, such as ‘Site should include a general picture of how the class is doing, both on-line & traditional; Site should include a timeline and a suggested deadline; Site could include auto quizzes with optional retakes; Questions for quizzes would come from a bank of a predetermined number and would be chosen randomly; Hints could be an option; Client would receive immediate feedback on quizzes; The site should have several times to chat with the teacher’. The functions suggested by the students demonstrate how they understood an online course should be (The LEC teacher was mainly a facilitator of the meeting and note taker of the ideas.

By engaging in this real project, students learned Moodle quickly. The LEC teacher introduced Moodle to the students on 12/2/2003 by email. We provided the lab session about installing the software on December 18, 2003. After that, there was a winter break after that until early January 2004. Since then, the students went on to learn the courseware and finished putting one section of the course online by February 2004, and gave schoolteachers and administrative a tutorial-like presentation on how to use Moodle for developing an online course on March 15^th 2004. They carried out all the project activities after school hours. We think it was a successful example of learning a new technology within the short amount of time, especially as the students learned Moodle all by themselves starting from various levels of computer skills. The success of this design project at school in an informal learning environment demonstrates that support authentic learning in an informal learning community is feasible and is a great approach to engage students in informal learning activities.

The goal in the authentic learning model is not just about helping students learn the content knowledge of the subject, but also helping them interpret, process, and apply them. The example of brainstorming ideas shows that students assembled their prior knowledge about the course itself and the online course format to the design project. The email dated 11/26/03 shows that the students not only discussed Web site design issues, but also complex real life issues related to offering the course at school (see below):

‘Determine who can take cyber class and establish guidelines for:

number of students

limited number ???

when it will be offered

class will be offered Fall, Spring, Summer

time frame

class will have definite starting and ending dates

progression

on-line class will have a linear progression

Teacher Concerns shared by Mr. XX [he is the health course teacher and he was in the meeting]:

who will monitor the class

how will the traditional class be replicated on-line

would it be possible to include a project

can current power point presentations be included

We agreed that Mr. XX should join us when we begin working on the actual construction of the site.’

Here is another email from a student in the group showing the serious thought he gave to this real life project.

‘One of the best things about having a computerised class is getting the computer to do some of the teacher's work. I therefore think that after we get all this in, we should set a goal of going back and changing as much as we can into Moodle activities and quizzes. The vocab sections especially are just begging to be graded electronically. Lets try to have a meeting soon when everything is up there, and we can discuss that.’

The designed health course not only demonstrates their learning outcome of the technology, but also reflects the students’ understanding of how an online course should be designed. Moreover, the students’ presentation illustrated how the students articulated their work, and interpreted their understanding of the project. The LEC teacher acknowledged that the students learned a lot in terms of communication and collaboration skills besides technology, ‘[they] need to communicate to staff and public [to make the project succeed]’. Most of students said that the hardest part of the project was to organize course materials and design the Web site. For example, one student said that ‘[the hardest part of the problem in the project was] figuring out the best way to put things into the course [Web site]’.

Students also gained the experience of coordinating with people that are involved in this real life project. For example, when the students group was looking for permanent host for the online course, a student talked to the technology director of the school to ask for help, as shown from the email dated on 12/15/2004

‘XX had a meeting with XXX who will be setting up the TECS server in the North Building with XX as admin for our cyber site. This will hopefully happen in January.’

Evidenced from the email, the high school freshman XX not only worked as designer in the project, but also as a project representative negotiating with school administrative.

4.2 Encourage peer help with technology learning

It is well known that people learn together and share knowledge in community. For example, Rosson and Carroll discussed the informal and collaborative learning between kids and senior community members when working together on computer simulation project (Rosson et al., 2003). However, there is something new to the informal learning community in the context of school and is worth being emphasized here. It is typical at school that groups to help advanced students learn more and groups to help students who need learning aids differ substantially. This informal learning community offers a place that invites students at all levels to join the learning activities. The informal learning community provides a less competitive study environment than a classroom and helps engage students at different levels in collaborative activities. Collaborating with peers at different levels of computer knowledge helps students realize the importance of cooperation, and stimulates students who are more adept at computer skills to help those who are less competent. At the beginning of this project, because all of the NERDS group members had graduated and LEC program did not have a computer group, the LEC teacher decided to recruit students who were interested in learning technologies. It is this recruitment that was based on the interest not the level of computer skills that enabled grouping students who are good at computers and who are not together, and it worked out great! The LEC teacher commented, ‘The students truly amaze me. They are very committed, knowledgeable and very willing to help each other to troubleshoot problems or teach a new concept’. For example, after he learned how to create a unit of quizzes for the online course, a student wrote instruction about it for his peer students who need to work on this task. In order to ensure that his team members would understand the procedure, the student wrote down eleven detailed steps (one with seven different subparts) and added at the end of the instruction that:

Note: You can also add questions by typing a special .txt file. The details of this format can be found by clicking on the yellow question mark by the ‘Import Questions from File’ button in the category-editing column

In an informal conversation with the LEC teacher, she told us that previous NERDS group members were very good at computers but they were interested only in learning advanced technologies. Moreover, ‘if you don’t speak the same language (about technologies), you don’t get much interaction’. Through working with others at different computer levels, the TECS club considered the learning needs of less advanced students. For example, one of the TECS ideas is ‘Even more personalized teaching (and) one on one tutoring’.

Besides supporting collaboration of students at different levels of computer skills, supporting intent participation is also important in this informal learning community. ‘Intent participation is a powerful form of fostering learning’ (Rogoff et al., 2003, pp.176). In intent participation, people learn through participating in ongoing or anticipated activities, with attentive and intentional watching and listening. ‘Learning through observation and listening-in is pervasive in children’s lives and is effective’ (Rogoff et al., 2003, pp.176).

Listening-in includes both eavesdropping and overhearing (Rogoff et al., 2003). In the course design project, most of meetings were hold in the computer room at LEC. Sometimes there were other students in the room checking emails, browsing the Internet, or working on their homework during the meeting. In the middle of the project, the LEC teacher introduced a female student who was interested in the project to the group. This student had a friend in the design team, and prior to join the project she was sometimes in the computer lab when the student group met. Although we did not have data to explain why she became interested in the project, we believe that her awareness of the project process and what the project members were doing played an important role.

Students in the group also learn from their group members through intent participation. For example, one student emailed the group for help on a technology issue claiming that he is willing to learn through intent participation (from an email dated 4/19/2005):

‘One more thing... I am unable to upload files to the "siteFiles" section, only the "English 12" section. This isn't much of a problem, except that there is one image that needs to go in a folder in the "siteFiles" part. Could someone please move the file "Wolves0001.5.jpg" from the 4th quarter folder of the English 12 section to the "\4th Quarter\Of Wolves and Men\" folder of the "siteFiles" section? Either that or show me how to do it myself.’

‘Learning through keen observation and listening, in anticipation of participation, seems to be especially valued and emphasized in communities where children have access to learning from informal community involvement’ (Rogoff et al., 2003, p.176). In this informal learning community, students are not only invited to work with others on meaningful activities, but also encouraged to ‘observe’ the activities.

4.3 Encourage teachers to work with students as teams

McGivney and her colleague’s study demonstrated that a key factor in widening participation and encouraging educational progression is people who inform, advise, encourage informal learners, and motivate and help them to engage in new activities including formal and certificated programs (McGivney, 1999, pp.25). Teachers are the ‘key’ people in this informal learning community. Students look to teachers who possess advanced knowledge of computer technologies for technology guidance, an understanding of the complex phenomena of the real world and the social impacts of the technologies, and for knowledge of how to apply technologies to solve real life problems and enhance real life quality.

Schoolteachers benefit from working with students. The online course design project illustrated that teachers can facilitate computer technology projects even if they do not know how to implement the technology (Xiao et al., 2005). Working together helps teachers learn information technologies from the students who are more knowledgeable on computer application and learn together with students through meaningful activities.

Authentic activities related to school education not only motivates students to quickly participate in the process because they are familiar with the context of the real world, but also helps teachers integrate technologies into curriculum. This also increases awareness of the informal learning community to other teachers who are not involved in the projects and encourage them to join in the community. For example, in the online course design project, although English teachers were not engaged in the design, they were interested in what the student group was doing, and attended the presentation by students. After the presentation, English teachers decided to put an English course online and asked TECS students for help.

Different from using authentic learning as a formal education method, teachers’ role in the informal learning community is not a true evaluator of students’ behaviour any more. They are community learners who are more experienced in real life experience. Students’ role is redefined as well in the interaction with teachers. They are not only learners, but also consultants helping teachers on technology if needed, and shapers of the community who propose ideas for community activities, carry out technology projects, and recruit new members.

4.4 Create and Maintain Connections with the School and the Local Community

The online course design project at LEC is different from a design project for a technology course. A project assigned through a computer course typically involves only the students and the course instructor, and the students usually need to coordinate with the course instructor and/or their project team members only. This design project is different. It happened in the context of the school, not a course. It has involved coordination with other school members such as the health course teacher who provided course materials, the other LEC staff members who helped on hardware support, and other teachers, like English teachers, who attended the presentation and joined the discussion of the course Web site design.

The LEC teacher told us that she became to know that Moodle is a courseware for developing online courses and students could use it to design the online health course in an informal conversation with the technology director and a technology service person of the school. In Sept. 2004, the server of the online course went down. The LEC teacher had to call the service help for Go Daddy, where the domain of the online course was registered (a commercial organization that offers Web hosting service).

Finding a permanent host was a big issue. Not able to receive permission to host the course on the school server, the LEC teacher called Adelphia to check the cost and process for getting a static IP from the company in early October 2004 as shown from the email dated 10/11/04:

‘ Sever status - Server is now up and running. Thank you, XXX. We are looking into getting a static IP to keep our server up and running. XXX has called Adelphia and they do provide static IP for this area. She called XXX from computer services and we should hear within a week as to the cost and process.’

Not until December 2004 did the school decide to host the course Web as shown from the email dated 12/15/2004

‘XX had a meeting with XXX who will be setting up the TECS server in the North Building with XX as admin for our cyber site. This will hopefully happen in January.’

A personal email from the LEC teacher to one of the researchers on 12/19/04 hints the difficulty in getting support from the school when trying to get a permanent host:

‘XXX has approved the static IP and XX will be network admin. It has taken us this long!!!!! but we kept on trying.’

In both emails, XXX is the technology director of the school. All these examples illustrated that a real life project can involve social networking of the real world, and the difficulty of coordinating with other people who are not directly engaged in the project.

Social capital is about how people build and maintain active connections in a social entity (e.g., an organization, a community, or a civil society) (Coleman, 1998). Rose defines social capital as repository of individual’s formal or informal social networks for producing or allocating services (Rose, 1999). A social network is a set of individuals or groups who are connected to one another through socially meaningful relationships (Wellman et al., 1988). In order to carry out the project smoothly and successfully, the informal learning community needs to expand its social network through creating and maintaining connections with its broader social context, the school and the local community.

5 Design a Web Site for the Informal Learning Community

In a typical virtual learning community, members are usually located at different places and seldom meet with each other in real life. Most of learning activities in the community are carried out through virtual collaboration using Internet. The informal learning community we discussed in the previous section is different. Its members are from the same school and face-to-face interaction is the major means for carrying out learning activities among the members.

However, Internet still plays an important role in such an informal learning community. In the design project, although students met once a week to discuss project related issues and work together, the group still used a mailing list to send out meeting minutes, update information about the project issues, and ask for technical help, as shown in the email examples we provided in the previous section (e.g., email dated 11/26/03, 10/11/2004, and 4/19/2005). Students also used the online discussion forum provided by Moodle to help each other on learning Moodle technology. For example, a student posted a question on the Web site about where to put scanned worksheets on 05/14/2004, and a reply message was posted on 05/15/2004 morning with detailed instruction of uploading files to the Web site.

The examples of the design project illustrate that students in today’s world are used to communicating electronically, and online communication helps collaboration on projects even though students meet face-to-face regularly. Online interaction is expected in an informal learning community in today’s digitizing world. A Web site for the informal learning community that considers each goal of the community helps improve learning outcome of the learners, coordinate community activities, and increase the visibility of the community in a broader context. Bruckman classified four categories of educational use of the Internet: information delivery, information retrieval, information sharing, and technological samba schools (Bruckman, 1999). The four categories are in the order of decreasing emphasis on information and increasing emphasis on community and the social context of learning. Based on this categorization, we view a Web site of the informal learning community as a place for students to deliver information, retrieve information, and share information, and one kind of technological samba schools that emphasize the role of authenticity in learning to relate the learning situation to the real world. The Web site of the informal learning community focuses on development of learners’ informal learning ability and encourages learners at different levels of computer skills to participate.

In this section, we discuss a few design implications of the informal learning community’s Web site, taking into consideration that members share the same school history and meet physically on a regular basis. As this is a community not only for advanced students, but also for students who are in need of help on learning basic technology. The Web site should be, therefore, attractive to students of all levels, instead of using too many technology jargons on the Web site. For example, the Web site of k-8 interesting projects uses some pictures of the projects and an image of a funny painting boy on the Web site to attract the kids to read the Web site, and the simple look makes it relatively easy to navigate to other Web pages ( http://www.alleghany.k12.nc.us/ses/page3.htm ). Another good example is the Web site created by Howard Hughes Medical Institute that invites kids who are interested in exploring biology ( http://www.hhmi.org/coolscience/ ). The Web site uses colorful and funny image icons to substitute text or buttons as hyperlinks to other Web pages. The Web site of Education 4 Kids presents a much more professional look and may be actually less attractive to kids to engage because of its formal style ( www.edu4kids.com ). The Web site of MySQL discussion forum presents a lot of technology jargons and very ‘cold’ look interface, not attractive at all to young kids who have little knowledge about MySQL ( http://forums.mysql.com/ ), and is the last kind of interface we would suggest for designing a Web site for this informal learning community.

Provide Online Meeting Notes with their Own Communication Spaces

The fact that major activities of a real life project are through face-to-face interactions in the informal learning community implies that the design of the community’s Web site needs to focus on how to integrate students’ collaborations in physical place into the virtual space. One technique is to provide meeting notes on the Web site each with a communication space. Typically, online meeting notes function as an archive of the project only. By making the note of each meeting the topic of a threaded discussion, students can react to the meeting notes online, such as updating the status of the project after last meeting, questioning some issues discussed the meeting, proposing new understandings of the problem covered in the meeting, etc. This feature combines the communication happened in physical places with the communication happened online, assumed that it will help integrate activities happened in physical places into virtual space. This feature can also be considered as an interaction-oriented structuring tool (Weinberger et al., 2003) that supports the students to reflect on the meeting content such as their decision of the project, their proposed solutions of the problem, and their understanding of the problem context.

Support Different Views of a Project in the Community

Working on real problems, students interpret the process based on their own understandings of the complex social phenomenon. Students may therefore hold different views of the problem and have different understandings of solving the problems. This sets another design focus of the Web site, that is, to support different views of the project. In physical setting, students discuss their own understandings of the problem during the meeting and the activity. Stahl et al. argued that students should be able to construct personal views with an existing CSCL knowledge space to facilitate divergent thinking (Stahl et al., 1999). Providing an online discussion forum for each project helps students elaborate their opinions and ideas verbally in the virtual world.

Provide Project Template to Help Students Organize Real Life Projects

In a technology project of a computer course, usually the problem context is already set in the project description that is written by the course instructor, and the instructor often suggests facets or issues to pay attention to for the project. The focus of the project is often on the implementation of the technologies only ignoring socio-cultural factors that might affect the project outcome if it were a real life project. In the informal learning community, the students need to be more self-dependent when carrying out authentic activities, and find out what are the factors that may affect the project outcome. Considering this context, the Web site can provide a project template as a means to help students outline the project, organize their project brainstorming systematically when they look for other influencing factors to consider in the project besides technology issue. Below is a sample project template:

Project Template #1

Project Title:

Project Idea:

Team members:

Software needed:

Network issue:

Need coordination from:

Who will benefit from the outcome, and how?

Drawbacks/Trade-off:

Who to Contact:

Weinberger et al defined content-oriented structuring tools as the tools that provide structures referring to the content to be learned (Weinberger et al., 2003). The content-oriented structuring tools foster knowledge communication in collaborative learning environments and the outcome of collaborative knowledge construction (Fischer et al., 2002). The authors presented one example of content-oriented structuring tools, the prompt cards with meaningful questions about the content. The project template can be viewed as a template of content-structuring tools that helps students focus on the major issues that need to be considered in a real life project. For example, the issue of trade-off in the project template motivates students to think and discuss the pros and cons of the project, of the technology to use, and of the solutions of the problem, etc. Describing the project with templates also help students to get familiar with the real life work style that usually requires a certain format of documentation such as reports for the work.

Provide a Tailored Public Community Discussion Forum with a Level of Anonymity

Collaboration with others is powerful in learning process. People learn by interacting with others interpreting different perspectives, working with others co-constructing new knowledge. One example that looks at using technology to encourage community members to help each other is the project of Pearls of Wisdom (POW) that provides digital tools for development of a network-wide community that values the contributions of technical expertise from individuals and facilitates the asynchronous sharing of this communal knowledge (Chapman, 2002).

In designing the Web site of the informal learning community, supporting intent participation of the community activities encourages students to help each other. Supporting intent participation means to support for observation, including watching, active listening (eavesdropping), and passive listening (overhearing). Suggestions from learners who are more experienced and discussions that are embedded in the ongoing activity often enlighten learners’ keen observations (Rogoff et al.’s study, 2003). Making the discussion forum of the project available to all students provides a chance for students to ‘listen to’ what the students have discussed. Making the meeting announcement and meeting minutes available provide awareness of the project process and implicitly invites all students who are interested to join in the activities.

Online discussion forum is an effective tool to support both asynchronous and synchronous discussions. Providing a community discussion forum supports members to communicate with each other about technology issues through the Web site. In supporting learning from collaborative design, Lid and Suthers implemented artifact-centered discourse and threads that live in multiple discussion contexts, and obtained excellent results in terms of quality and quantity of discussion in their empirical study (Lid et al., 2003). To support flexible collaborative distance learning, Haake et al proposed a CURE learning platform that support the implementation of a variety of tailorable learning environments (Haake et al, 2004). In this informal learning community, a tailoring technique for the community discussion forum is necessary for students to exchange learning experience at different levels of computer skills. To enable students to discuss technology issues at different levels, the Web site can classify the community discussion forum into different sections, such as advanced tech talk, help you help me, and what’s new about tech. On the community Web site, providing a keyword based search engine that can search across the different discussion forums helps members to look for common information from different discussion context.

It challenges the traditional roles of teacher and student when teachers ask for technical help from technology-savvy students. One method of helping engage teachers in the learning community is to allow members a level of anonymity in the discussion forum of the Web site. By doing so, it is less uncomfortable for teachers to join in the online discussions.

Provide a Project Advertisement Space for Teachers

Another approach to encourage the participation of teachers through the Web site is to provide a place for teachers to propose teaching related projects. For example, a physics teacher may want to demonstrate the concept of gravity using Flash, but needs help on learning Flash. She/he can propose the project idea on the Web site and calls for students who are interested in assisting in the task. School projects, especially those that are related to teaching practices, make it easier for teachers to participate in the activities. This collaboration helps not only teachers learn technology and integrate technology into the curriculum, but also helps students understand the idea behind the project as well, e.g., understand better the concept of gravity when working on the Flash project with the physics teacher. Providing a separate place on the Web site for schoolteachers to propose project ideas explicitly encourage teachers to work with students.

Provide a Online Information Repository for Maintaining Local Connections

Social capital articulates the networks of trust and reciprocity in which actors are interconnected with each other (Borgatti et al., 1998). The more interconnected the actors are to each other, the more they trust and share resources with each other, and thus the group/organization as a whole benefits. Acknowledging those who have coordinated community’s projects on the Web site provides positive atmosphere for creating new connections and maintaining the existing connections.

Providing a repository of connections in the Web site helps members to store and retrieve connection information. When the LEC teacher contacted Go Daddy for helping on the server, she sent an email to the student group as follows:

‘The server has been down… On Friday XXX called the service help for Go Daddy. She spoke to XX (e-mail - *******) XX said we need to log in and request *****. The 800 number is ******* for additional help. X hopefully will be able to help us with this. In any event, XX, said to call or e-mail and he would assist us. He said it was not a problem and we should be up and running as soon as we take care of this issue.’