If You Build It (and email it), They Still Will Not Come. If I knew better, I would take last week's Ocotillo Virtual Kickoff
as a resounding failure. We had set up a series of 1-4 minute streaming
video welcomes from not only our top executive levels, but more
important;y, the faculty co-chairs leading our new initiatives on
learning objects, eportfolios, hybrid courses, and emerging
technologies. We invited people in our system (and beyond) to join some
online discussion boards. We put the word out with system wide email
announcements, plus individualized messages to specific target groups.
The goal was to meet the ongoing mantra that people do not have time
to go to face to face events/meetings, so we set up what was thought to
be a flexible format, hybrid if you will.
At week's end, the video viewership was low, there were only 20 new
accounts added to the discussion board, and the only conversations
there were among our co-chairs.
Time for hari-kari?
No. This is exactly what I expected. over the last 8 years I know I
have set up about 50 or more online discussion boards for projects and
groups, and can remember on one hand the number that have had more than
say 10 messages posted.
We first posted the Maricopa Learning eXchange
in 2000 and four years later, with lots of demos, bribes, competitions,
physical threats (just kidding), I know we have likely less than 4% of
our employees contributing content.
Just building an online community, and announcing it will not make
it happen. Sure, in a class, you make it required for students, but
that carrot is not present.
It takes time, whole lot more than you would ever think is reasonable. Same for patience, and perseverance.
Our faculty co-chairs however are mystified, and wondering why their
own colleagues could not spend say 5 minutes to read and post a comment
to a discussion board. This underscored my belief that even in this
electronic age, we need to go out there and talk to people face to
face, or sit down with them at their computers, and spend a lot more
time in real conversations to get them "in". Our initiatives are all
brand new, still forming, and people do not yet have a clear picture or
set of expectations.
It fits very well with our Ocotillo metaphor, since what we are doing is very organic, not completely pre-planned, and will grow (or die) over time.
It takes much more than technology to build online communities. [cogdogblog]
7:24:22 PM  Google It!.
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