Blog 1 - Virtual Communities

Reflections on Readings about virtual communities for EIPT 6423:

A community as defined by Bruckman and Jensen is a group of people interacting with one another in some fashion. This loose definition gives rise to many interpretations and generalizations about various collections of people that can be considered to be a community. Anything from the gang at a local coffee shop, to a WeightWatchers group, to a school faculty, to a church congregation can be seen as a community. The common thread in these groups is the interaction among the members within each group. Renninger and Shumar feel that, in addition to the interaction element, a community is characterized by its ability to engender feelings of belonging and purpose in its members. This extra facet, when added to the basic definition of community, allows for a more explicit representation of a community. In order to be a community a group of people not only must interact with one another, they must also feel as though they are getting some overt benefit from this interaction. With this definition in mind, it follows that an on-line or virtual community is a group of people who interact in an on-line environment for some sort of mutual advantage or purpose. These people return to this environment because they benefit from it in some way, either by gaining information of value to them, by acquiring a sense of membership, or both.

In this week’s reading we saw two examples of virtual communities. MediaMOO is a virtual reality environment designed for media researchers to share ideas and network with one another. The Math Forum is an on-line group that is dedicated to utilizing computers and the Internet to enhance mathematics learning and teaching. Both of these on-line environments fit the definition of a community and have experienced varying degrees of participation, one of the indicators of the “success” of an on-line community. MediaMOO became a large community and then its membership dropped dramatically. A number of factors led to this decline, most of which are related to the nature of the context in which the community exists. Technical and historical factors contributed to the loss of participation. These factors are unique to the Internet and constitute a specific issue related to communities using the Web. Another factor that was cited was the splintering of subgroups from the MediaMOO community. This is also an issue related to the Internet and virtual communities. These communities are not geographical and the members are not forced to belong by mere location. The members of these communities can choose to come and go from the environment and are not constrained by locality. This is why the element of benefit or belonging is so important in a virtual community. This is what holds on-line communities together. There is nothing keeping members coming back except for a sense of need or belonging. It is this factor that makes on-line communities both powerful and fragile. In the case of MediaMOO, the community became very large and broke away because there was no place for smaller groups with common interests and relationships to thrive. The Math Forum community, however, is alive and healthy because they have so far addressed these issues. That is not to say that the success of this community is assured. Without constant vigilance and flexibility with regard to the needs of the community members this thriving community could also disappear as technology advances and people’s needs change.

The very nature of the Internet makes for a different kind of community. Members can be anonymous if they so choose and can come and go as they wish with very little personal consequence. Members can come together from all walks of life and many different cultural and geographic backgrounds. This has the potential of making the community experience more powerful. Members can interact without the constraints of a formal face-to-face relationship and can feel free to voice their true opinions and share information with less fear of repercussion or judgment. This type of potential can also translate into a powerful learning experience. By the same token, the anonymity and distance factors can also give rise to some problems. Misinformation can be shared or participants may use the opportunity to express socially inappropriate opinions or feelings. While this type of community may be empowering and freeing to some, to others it might be threatening or intimidating if personal contact is a need for certain individuals. Like real communities, virtual communities are constrained by the knowledge, character, learning styles, and communication types of the members; the boundaries are just a little broader. Just as a real learning experience should be carefully monitored and examined, so should virtual learning experiences. The sense of belonging engendered by certain situations has the potential to be very powerful or very dangerous. A highly collaborative and meaningful experience within a virtual community is very authentic and can be very compelling to the learner. A large, influential community has the power to increase or change the way people think. Peer pressure is alive and well on the Internet.

Research shows that learning is mediated by the social environment in which it occurs. This means that knowledge can be constructed by communities of learning, virtual or real. In the virtual community the power of the Internet and the availability of a diverse population in which interaction can occur make the virtual community and on-line collaboration an ideal place to experience inquiry learning. Through this type of experience, learners construct their own knowledge as they seek to find answers to authentic problems utilizing print and human resources available through the “magic” of the Internet. Keeping in mind the limitations and constraints of this medium, virtual communities would seem to be a very credible place for learners to construct their own knowledge and have the potential to be an effective learning and teaching tool.

Even though I find the idea of Time magazine choosing everybody as the Person of the Year a little bit of a departure from the expected, it is an interesting concept. Their point is that we now have the ability to create communities of learning and collaboration that have never been possible before because of the Internet. We can tap into a wide diversity of information and individuals to expand our knowledge and make the world a “smaller” place. Everybody has the opportunity to share a bit of their expertise and benefit from the expertise of others. The latest opportunity for sharing is the YouTube craze. This web-site allows people from anywhere in the world to share and critique videos of all kinds, not just professionally made ones. I had never been to YouTube before but I logged on after reading the article. The number of videos out there is mind-boggling and I was not particularly interested in most of them. I noticed that you have to “subscribe” to these videos and that there seem to be some “cult classics” on the menu. I also noticed that people comment and share about these videos and they seem to know each other. This is truly a virtual community. I could not figure out which videos to view or even how to do it because the whole subscription thing made me feel like I was moving in on territory that was not mine. The process was a bit confusing. Suddenly, I got that feeling like I was in junior high again and all the “cool kids” were shunning me because I wasn’t an insider. Hmmm… Maybe virtual communities and real communities aren’t so very different.

First Attempt

This is my first blogging entry. As a new blogger my goal is simply to figure out how this works. Profound thoughts come later...maybe.