The success of the community is at least as important as the success of the projects. The evaluators are there to help us understand what we are doing.

“The success of the community is at least as important as the success of the projects.”

“The evaluators are there to help us understand what we are doing and celebrate what is working.

Investigating the processes that support the emergence of our community

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

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?

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’

Interviews

Gold nuggets

DISCOVERY

Sharing Stories

Send us a postcard

DISCOVERY

What you told us…• ‘communities don’t just happen –

organise’ there is a need for ‘structure, coordination, focus and planning’

What we’ve done• Provided purposeful, relevant activities

with plenty of opportunities for interaction and discussion in small groups

DISCOVERY

What does this community value?• Openness of clusters within elgg, seeing what

other clusters are forming• Seeing the big picture, it all happening out in the

open (online)• Speed dating• Emerge blog as knowledge capital• Validated the informal/social value of networked

learning

DISCOVERY

Visions of Emerge

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

“The future of EMERGE rests with the fact that it will be a source of social and cultural capital, which will grow and represent cutting

edge understandings.”