Factors affecting levels of participation in a class learning community

SI 684/884: eCommunities is a class whose goals are to better understand the principles, mechanisms and processes at work in "online interaction environments" or better known as virtual community spaces. The class is made up of 2 instructors and 16 students who physically meet once a week in class. In addition to the weekly sessions, the course also utilizes the following online interaction tools and adopts the following policies surrounding the tools' use:

- A wiki (http://www.socialcomputingresearch.net/eCommunities/HomePage∞)
The class utilizes the wiki to organize the schedule, the syllabus and to disseminate the weekly readings. Additionally, it is also used as a space where class members who are assigned readings, post a summary of what they have read. Students are assigned readings based on their preference and are committed to summarizing the article by the Sunday of each week. Other students will then edit, critique or offer their comments/ thoughts by Monday. For this purpose, the wiki has proven to be an invaluable tool in facilitating the evolution and growth of the class, specifically accommodating the changes that take place to the readings or the schedule along the way.

- The class weblog engine (http://projects.si.umich.edu/eCommunities/∞)
The class also utilizes a blog engine which supports multiple individual weblogs for each student and a central web space where everyone's post is aggregated. One of the requirements for the class is that each student posts weekly reflections on how the week's readings apply to an online community they have selected to study. All posts are to be made by Tuesday, are aggregated into one space and organized in reverse chronological order. This space provides a unified view for every member of the class to see the latest post and comments made. Additionally, the blog supports the ability for class members to comment on each others weekly post. However, the class policy surrounding this is rather vague and will be elaborated on later.

- Chat tool (http://projects.si.umich.edu/eCommunities/?q=chatbox∞)
Lastly, a chat tool was adopted as a back channel for the weekly physical class sessions. Primarily the chat tool has been utilized as a supplemental space where students are able to voice their opinions when class discussion is going on. This allows multiple discussions to take place without disrupting the flow of the discussion that occurs in class. A serendipitous consequence of this chat tool is that it enables members of the class who are unable to be physically present to nonetheless participate in the class proceedings. Additionally, the conversations that take place within the chat room are also archived for future reference.

The class as a learning community:

In Etienne Wenger's terms, a community of practice emerges when people who have a common interest area come together to collaborate, share ideas, find solutions, and innovate. Through the use of the tools described above, I believe that SI 684/884 constitutes what Etienne Wenger terms as a "Community of Practice" (1998) as the class is not only trying to better understand online communities, it is also attempting to "learn by doing" via the online interactions on the wiki and the weblogs. Through the "practice" of weekly posting, commenting and critiquing summaries of readings, as well as individual weblog posts, the class members are "mutually engaged" in the "shared repertoire" of interacting with each other and collaboratively forming a the "shared understanding" of the principles that govern the effective design of online communities. (Wenger, 1998) Hence, the knowledge that is formed by the class is not constructed individually; rather it is embedded within the context of the community that is formed. This knowledge is shared through "mechanisms that support posting and responding to questions, sharing stories of personal experience, and discussing and debating issues relevant to the community."(Wasko et al, 2000) It is thus essential to create channels where there is open discussion and collaboration, and forums, which support the dynamic exchange of ideas. I believe that the class meetings, the wiki, the blogs and the chat rooms are attempts to facilitate learning within the class community.

Patterns of contributions to the class blogs:

However, despite the provision of these applications, the level of contributions and participation in the class- while meeting the requirements set down by the instructors- has been somewhat lackluster. For the purposes of this assignment, I will pay particular attention to the class' use of the weblogs in order to identify some factors which may account for this lack of participation in the class community.

An examination of the archived contributions on the class weblog engine revealed the following patterns as of 4/5/05:

Total number of posts: 180
Total number of posts by instructors: 3

Given that there were 15 students utilizing the class blogs (one student contributed posts to an external blog service and as such his posts were not visible to in the class blog engine) and that each student was required to post at least one entry each week, there should be a total of 150 blog posts. The 177 posts by the students certainly surpassed the 150 posts required by the class. However, if we were to examine the content of the posts, the numbers become quite different:

Types of posts Number
Sharing of news 12
Comments on other blogs 9
This was because in the initial week of use, members of the class weren?t sure about how to provide each other comments and chose to do so as blog entries instead
Sharing of resources 10
Requests for help 1
Weekly required posts 145

Thus, if we were to look at the content of the posts, the number still hovers around that of the 150 required.

A more informative picture can be gotten from looking at the patterns of comments left on each members' webblogs.

Total number of comments on the weblog engine: 142
Average number of comments on each blog post: 0.8
Number of comments left by the instructors: 92
Number of comments left by students: 50
Average number of comments left by students on each blog post: 0.2

Thus by looking at the general level of commenting on the blogs, we can see that, in relation to the number of blog posts, the members of the class seem to be only marginally communicating with each other. The students of the class are definitely striving to meet the requirements of the course, but in terms of the commenting/discussing each others' ideas about eCommunity development, the numbers do not inspire much confidence. As such, I will now attempt to utilize some of the concepts that I have gained from the course, and my perspective as a member of the class, to explain why there is such a discrepancy in the levels of engagement/involvement in the class.

Factors affecting levels of contribution

1. Lack of common ground:
One of the problems that affects the class community is that there is an uneven level of familiarity with the concepts and communities that are raised in class and on the class blogs. The main reason for this is because there are too many communities being examined; therefore individuals are not familiar with everyone's communities and the particular/specific problems that each community faces. As such, when discussion revolves around another class member's focus community, it is difficult for one to make contributions in terms of commentary or helpful critique. This problem can be conceptualized numerically as the numbers of individuals one can interact with increases nonlinearly with size, making it very difficult to know other members, let alone details of the communities that they are studying. (Brossard as cited in Butler, 2001)

This problem of lack of discussion is not observed on the class wiki however, though a more careful analysis of the patterns of contributions is needed. A possible reason for this is because the members of the class have a common reference in the article/reading that they are discussing. The lack of this common reference on the blogs makes it more difficult for discussions to take place and thus results in less online conversations.

2. Incentives to participate:
A basic motivation to participate in online communities is the ability to gain returns for one's participation. These returns might be motivated by self-interest or might be pro-social where contributions benefit the community. (Sproull et al, in press)

In terms of self-interest, people are motivated to contribute when they see there is value in their contributions and that they are able to receive either a tangible or intangible gain. These gains might include access to useful information and expertise or new insights that might help to refine one's thoughts. A significant motivation to participate is the ability to access knowledge rather than just static information. (Wasko et al., 2001) This highlights Wenger's notions of knowledge being embedded in a community rather than knowledge being a disembodied commodity to be traded. (Wenger, 1998) This is problematic in the SI 684/884 class community as the size of the class might prove to be a hindrance towards contributions from individual members. The problem with this is that when communities grow too large, the members will have great difficulty in getting the appropriate information that pertains to their needs (Wasko et al, 2001)

Pro-social, or community-based behavior, can be explained by a number of theories namely, the potential for generalized reciprocity to take place in the future (Wasko et al, 2001), the strength of social relationships amongst the parties and peer recognition when one's contributions are made visible (Sproull et al, in press). In terms of the class blogs, the amount of pro-social behavior that takes place is dependent on the fact that contributions to the blog are mainly made to fulfill the class requirements. These contributions had no bearing on each class member's learning outcome and there is no incentive for individuals to go through each other's entries. This would perhaps explain why the majority of comments tended to be made by the instructors on the blogs. Here, I feel that if the incentives to contribute were aligned more with generating exchanges and contributions to each other's entries, there would be a much livelier pattern of use in the class weblogs.

3. Usability issues with the blog engine:
Another issue that affects the motivation to contribute has to do with the visibility of contributions from the class members on the interface of the weblog engine. At present weblog entries are organized reverse-chronologically. Because of the limited view offered by the weblog engine's interface, earlier posts tend to disappear from view. Additionally, comments made to the weblog entries are somewhat invisible and not identified with the contributor on the aggregated page. Only a numerical indication of the number of comments one's weblog entry has garnered is displayed. Conversations that result from an individual blog post thus tend to be lost on the main page, and it is very difficult to check on comments made to previous posts if the post disappears from the front page. The only way one is able to track conversations and debates that result from a blog entry is to go into each individual's blog space. And as indicated above, there has been very little incentive and motivation for one to do just that.

References:

Been, G., Ling, K., Wang, X., Chang, K., Frankowski, D., Resnick, P. & Kraut, R. E. (2004) Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities. In Proceedings of Computer Supported Cooperative Work 2004 (Chicago, Nov. 6 - 10), ACM Press, New York, 2004, 212 - 221.

Butler, B.S. (2001). Membership Size, Communication Activity, and Sustainability: A Resource-Based Model of Online Social Structures. Information Systems Research. 12(4): 346-365.

Preece, J. and Maloney-Krichmar, D. (2003) Online Communities. In J. Jacko and A. Sears, A. (Eds.) Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. Publishers. Mahwah: NJ. 596-620.

Sproull, L., Conley, C., & Moon, J. Y. (in press). Pro-social behavior on the net. In Y. Amichai-Hamburger (Ed.), The social net: The social psychology of the Internet. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wasko, M. M. and Faraj, S. (2000).?It is What One Does?: why people participate and help others in electronic communities of practice. Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 9, 155-173.

Wenger, Etienne (1998) Communities of Practice.