Appreciative Inquiry-led Project Development

05 September 2007 ALT-C, Nottingham

Criteria

Conditions

Philosophy

Identity

Emerge is an innovative, 28 month, user-centred, investigation-led, consortium-based project, funded by the JISC and guided by the principles of appreciative inquiry. There are about 28 institutions, 45 project teams and 210 individual participants.

The aim is to support the formation of an "effective and sustainable community of practice” around the Users and Innovation Development Model, using Web2.0 technologies.

Emerge is the support project for the JISC Capital Programme, Next Generation Technologies and Practices (Users and Innovation) strand

Communities cannot be magicked into being

We do not know how to make a CoP

It has to be enquiry-led

It has to be fun

Opening stance

Scott Wilson

typology of communities

• Practice

• Interest

• Action

• Purpose

• Circumstance

• Position

http://www.slideshare.net/scottw/social-software-17042/

CommunitiesShare learning, interests, goals, tasks, values, adversity, place, identity …

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are needed to see this picture.

A model of software development

Investigating the processes that support the emergence of our community

A meta-community of purpose

community defines own activities

Promoting the ‘affinity’ that brings members together mutual

engagement, using shared repertoires

collective negotiation

member profiles

blended, flexible,

distributed

tagging to establish links between members

visual mapping of existing communities & interests

creation of member run interest sub-groups & meeting places

exit strategy

skilled human facilitation

member created content &scheduled web-workshops

purposeful engagement

feat

ures

Exam

ples

of a

ctiv

ities

collective inquiry

Facilitation of community development

Collective inquiry

• Iterative and ongoing• Inform the community tasks and

operation• Be a tool for positive change• Support multiple, differing viewpoints• Involve multiple data collection methods

and times.

Appreciative Inquiry (Cooperrider & Ludema).

a) What you want more of already exists somewhere in the community

b) Communities move in the direction they study

In pairs, take 10 minutes to

• Describe a time when you were the member of a community when you felt really energized, creative and innovative.

How did it go?

• Share an adjective or phrase to describe your experience of the interview.

Appreciative Inquiry: The 4-D model

DISCOVERYAppreciating ‘the best of what is’

DREAMEnvisioning

‘what could be’

DESIGNCo-constructing‘what should be’

DELIVERSustaining

‘what will be’

Positive topic choice

Topic choice

3 to 5 ‘juicy and compelling’ topics which:

• affirmative (stated positively)• desirable (we want more of them)• genuinely curious about• will take us where we want to go

Appreciative Questions

• What processes support the development of the online community?

• What gives life to the community?

• What should be the role of the JISC in creating and supporting such communities?

• What processes support the emergence of technology supported communities?

What helped? interviews

DISCOVERY

Sharing Stories

Send us a postcard

What are your hopes for the Emerge community?

DREAM

• Continuation e.g. “to continue as a space to share practice, interests, thoughts, ideas related to eL”.

• A ‘space to share’ e.g to disseminate information, as a ‘repository for the exchange of ideas’, finding potential research partners, to feedback on experiences.

• A series of smaller communities where the users have a higher profile and the community architects fade into the background.

DREAM

Criteria

Conditions

Philosophy

Identity

Appreciative inquiryThe act of research has a transforming effect on the subject of research. The aim of research is to bring about change.

Appreciative Inquiry attempts to get beyond the essentialism, ethical foundationalism and hierarchies of identity politics to embrace a more radical constructionism in relational theory. (Gergen, 1999)

Appreciative inquiry is criticised for unknowable interiorisation and being "... Pollyanna-ish or excessively focused on warm, fuzzy group hugs" (Grant and Humphries, 2006 p. 404)

e.g.: it …is different to critical knowing; it has its basis a metaphysical concern positing that human life is a miracle that never can be comprehended fully (Cowling, 2001, p. 34)

By applying a rigorous, anti-essentialist, critical theory-led approach, appreciative inquiry can provide a firm foundation as a research approach and evaluation methodology.

Conditions

• Bounded openness• Heterogeneous similarity• Mutable stability• Sustainable development• Adaptable model• Structured freedom• Multimodal identity• Serious fun

Criteria• Multiple• Contextualised• Relative • Real users involved in development

teams• Projects have real impact in institutions• Ongoing, reflexively self-aware,

purposeful community of collaborators• Affectionate recollection• Wider adoption - and adaptation - of the

model• Positive return on investment indicators

Discussion