bcect project case study open-i

Collaborative Online tools for Business and Community Engagement Case Study

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Case Study Title

OPEN-i: A VIRTUAL COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE FOR THE PHOTOJOURNALISM INDUSTRY

Institution(s) involved University of the Arts London

Contact + Email Paul Lowe [email protected]

JISC programme (if applicable) BCEct

Project Dates March 2009-June 2010

Tags Community of Practice, webinar, collaboration, online,

Headings/Questions Explanation and further information

0. Briefly describe your project (abstract)

This report outlines the strengths and issues of the JISC funded BCE collaborative tools project, Open-i. The aims of the project were:

• To create a collaborative online community of practice (COP) for the photojournalism industry, linking masters level students, aspiring entrants to the profession, established practitioners and key industry institutions

• To trial and develop a toolkit of web 2.0 approaches, in particular live webinars, to enhance collaborative engagement online

• To evaluate the success or otherwise of the project and to draw out conclusions for other similar projects

• To disseminate the results of the trial in relevant channels e.g. conference papers, academic articles, staff development etc within a suitable timeframe

The primary activity was to run a series of webinars to help build this community of practice. These webinars are the focus of this report, although other activities and platforms that were used will be briefly outlined.

OPEN-i is a global virtual community of practice linking photographers, agencies, publications and educational institutions, currently involving almost 900 practitioners from the majority world as well as from the West in an online network with the aim of engendering a debate and discussion about the future of the medium in the world of web 2.0. OPEN-i runs a regular series of live webinars and discussion sessions presented by leading industry professionals to an invited audience of peers, academics involved in the critical debate around images, aspiring photojournalists from the majority world, and masters level students of photography. This is supported by a social networking group with discussion forums, homepages etc. Debates take place bi-weekly and seek to ask challenging questions about the future development of the industry. All the


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presentations are archived and available for later viewing online.

1. Why did you use this approach?

Approx 250 words

The focus of OPEN-i is on trying to re-imagine the profession in the age of web 2.0. Our sector is undergoing radical change and transformation from the old paid for legacy media model of magazines and newspapers that was its original core area, to a new one of more participatory media, more access to audiences etc through the web, but much less money from editorial clients, so we are trying to figure out what new business models might work in the future to produce work that is socially relevant, ethically founded, and has impact on the audience and benefit to the subjects. The debate is focused more on the practice of being a photojournalist than on the aesthetics, we talk more about how to produce and disseminate the work we do than the work itself. In fact we even decided not to allow members to post their photographic work to the site unless it raised questions relevant to these questions, i.e. the site is not a 'portfolio' site to show your work to other people; other spaces exist for that already. The intention for this community is to try to break some new ground, come up with some new insights or models for the future. One way we hope to do this is by bringing together different types of actors e.g. academics, practitioners, academic/practitioners, photo agencies, photo editors, photo educators, new members of the profession and students so that in their interaction there should be some transformational energy generated. Also it is a way to 'test the water' and get a sense of what is happening in our industry from a variety of perspectives. This has had the very valuable outcome of ‘feeding the curriculum’ of our Masters in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography (MAPJD) at LCC, providing the course with a high level of currency

2. What is the context in which you are using this approach?

Approx 250 words

The exponential rise of social media has created a new landscape of interaction and collaboration where the boundaries between professional practice, citizen journalism, the subject and the audience are blurring. The practice of professional news photography and photojournalism has been transformed in the last decade by a combination of technological changes, economic developments and ethical challenges, creating an overwhelming need for the industry as a whole to debate, discuss and open dialogue both within itself but also with interested parties who engage with visual news media, a process that is difficult to undertake conventionally because of the distributed nature of the profession, spread out geographically and economically with a large number of freelance practitioners. An engagement between the industry and the academic world is essential to both for critical reflection on the issues facing the media but also to involve those entering photography in debates about its future role in society.


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3. What collaborative online tools and other technologies were involved?

Approx 250 words

The project director, Paul Lowe, had previously developed a teaching methodology of creating a collaborative virtual learning environment based on using live web conferencing with Wimba supported by a Ning site to enhance social learning as part of the delivery of an entirely online Masters in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography (MAPJD) at the LCC. The BCE project was designed to take advantage of this development both in the software license obtained by the university but also more importantly in terms of the experience gained in moderating and running online webinars. The OPEN-i project therefore leveraged an existing investment in teaching and learning at UAL and took that out into industry. The decisions on which software platforms to use etc was thus effectively predetermined based on the tools developed for the online MAPJD, which included Wimba for web conferencing, Ning as a social hub, Twitter for information sharing, and You tube and Vimeo for hosting archives and other videos. This had the benefit of meaning that the project did not have to spend a lot of its initial energy on determining the best software platforms to deploy, instead we focused on the meta level questions of how to establish and build a community. Many of our conclusions are also ‘platform agnostic’ as well in the sense that most web conferencing and social networking platforms are essentially similar, with the decision to use one over another often determined by forces outside of the control of an individual project (e.g. institutional adoption); we have therefore again chosen to focus on findings that deal more with the concept of using webinars to build a community or BCE process rather than evaluation of the specific software we used.

4. How did you design or set up the interactions design?

Approx 150 words

The development of the network was informed by the work of Etienne Wenger and his various collaborators, in particular the two publications Cultivating Communities of Practice (2002) and Digital Habitats (2009), which provide an excellent foundation for developing and nurturing a virtual community. Wenger characterises a Digital Habitat as

not just a configuration of technologies, but a dynamic, mutually defining relationship that depends on the learning of the community. It reflects the practices that the members have developed to take advantage of the technology available and thus experience this technology as a ‘place’ for community. A digital habitat is first and foremost an experience of place enabled by technology. (2009, p 39) In the generational encounter of bringing together established

practitioners with aspiring entrants to the profession a process of what Wenger identifies as ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ (Lave and Wenger 1999) can occur, in which experiences and information are exchanged between participants, allowing new entrants to the profession to negotiate the rules of the game and help define their emerging professional identity. Of particular importance to the webinar format is the power of narrating experiences, as Wenger confirms

Sharing tacit knowledge requires interaction and informal learning processes such as storytelling, conversation, coaching and apprenticeship of the kind that communities of practice provide. (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002)

5. How did you implement and embed this approach?

We thought a lot about how to establish and nurture the OPEN-i community, as we were very concerned that the whole project didn’t come across to the practice community or to the students as a cheap way of the


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Approx 350 words universities getting guest lectures from established professionals. Our initial ‘core membership’ was therefore all either established figures or academic/practitioners; we waited until the membership hit around 50 professionals before we invited any ‘students’ to join.The membership currently stands at almost 900, about a third of whom were invited by the project team; the rest came via third party invitations. This has had the effect of significantly multiplying the reach of the network, as many of the members are not known to the original project team. Each member so far has been individually welcomed to the community by either the project director or the project administrator.

We started out with a small 'editorial board' of thought leaders in the industry, with a mix of genders, backgrounds and global locations. They were interviewed by the project director to get their views on the major issues facing the industry, and then we had a series of group meetings both F2F and via web conferencing. From this process of brainstorming the issues we came up with a survey of the landscape of the terrain of the industry, and generated a series of key topics to get the community going. These have formed the basis for the first series of live webinars. The main issues focused on new business models emerging from the process of digitisation of the media, the development of multimedia, ethical issues around the coverage of crisis events and conflicts, the relationship between NGOs and the media, and the need for a more global perspective on the industry.

We have run webinars approximately every two weeks during the project, with a variety of times and days of the week to allow different participants from different global locations too more easily participate. Each webinar last typically for 90-120 minutes, and most participants remain online for the whole session. Attendance has varied from 15 to 70, with an average of around 25-30 at each session. All the presentations are archived and available for later viewing online, hosted on Vimeo as mp4 files; to date we have had 2045 views of these.

6. What benefits is this delivery approach producing for stakeholders?

Approx 400 words

OPEN-i as been effective because it has engendered a community of practice that links industry stakeholders who normally operate in the same sphere but do not necessarily communicate effectively with each other. Input from the academic world has secured a high level of debate and discussion within the network, acting as a knowledge transfer process both from academia to industry and, just as importantly, from industry into the academic context. It has fed directly into curriculum and course development in the LCC photography programme, giving the students fantastic opportunities to engage with the profession at the highest levels. Stephen Mayes, director of one of the most significant photojournalism agencies, VII, and a regular contributor to the network, feels that OPEN-i ‘offers a unique platform to share information, expertise and experience with other practitioners around the world’. It provides a ‘completely new opportunity’ that has introduced him to ‘new people with different perspectives and information that has allowed me to expand my thinking. OPEN-i is a terrific resource‘.

Professor Fred Ritchin of the Department of Photography & Imaging, New York University, notes that this project is a ‘major step forward in creating a virtual community based upon learning and sharing experiences’. He notes that Paul Lowe’s ‘energy and thoughtfulness as both moderator and director of the enterprise gives it much more credibility and complexity than it otherwise would have’, and that ‘OPEN-i is as transparent, open-sourced and serious as any network I have seen’. The membership of OPEN-i is substantial, and we have hosted numerous webinars on a wide range of topics, many of which have attracted attendances of over 50. The session archives are a fantastic resource


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for students and for the industry. Ken Kobre, Professor of Photo and Videojournalism at San Francisco State University, sees OPEN-i as ‘changing the face of photojournalism and photojournalism education’, with the webinars providing ‘a refreshing way for a diverse group of photojournalists and students to communicate with one another, providing an important forum that helps give direction to the field’. He concludes ‘While no one can tell how the journalism business will evolve in the future. The discussions taking place on OPEN-i .. will prove to be an important forum that helps give direction to the field’. Professor David Campbell of Durham University has found the community to be an important resource in his academic research, in which he has:

sought to learn from practitioners about the complexities of the current visual economy. OPEN-i has been invaluable in making that aspiration real. It brings together a community around shared concerns and breaks down the barriers between theory and practice. Being able to participate in webinars, access material online and benefit from the network's support for our investigations, has helped advance my work.

Finally, the project has found support from Etienne Wenger, who feels

that it is one of the ‘best examples he has seen of the ‘articulation of a masters course and development and support of professional community in a way that serves the needs of both’ that uses ‘similar technologies so takes advantage of the synergy between the two.’ He also notes that OPEN-i ‘seamlessly broadens the course into an open process of continuous professional development. I would very much like to see his approach recognized and emulated widely in higher education’.

The project has also developed an institutional capacity and understanding of how to develop virtual communities of practice, and how to use the webinar format as a way to engage with industry as well as for teaching and learning that the institution hopes to develop further through the work of CLTAD

7. Did implementation of this approach have any disadvantages or drawbacks?

approx. 250 words

Apart from some technical issues mostly with the audio of the webinars, which are common to most webconfernecing platforms and mostly to do with either bandwidth problems of poor quality sound equipment with users, there were no major problems with the technical side of the project.

8. How will this approach be taken further?

approx. 250 words

The project has developed a systematic process for setting up webinars, and promoting them, and a set of guidelines for participants and presenters (see appendix). A webinar now takes typically around a day in total spread out over several weeks to organise and produce, in addition to moderating the session itself. The Ning site has now been set up as well to require as little maintenance as possible. The running costs of the project are low; the Ning site costs around £150 per annum and the other software platforms are either free or paid for by the University.

Because the community provides such a rich vein of professionally and academically relevant material to the MAPJD course at LCC, the project team believe that the time invested in maintaining OPEN-i is justified in the amount that it feeds back into the curriculum of the course, particularly in maintaining the currency of the staff and students alike. We therefore believe that even without additional support, the OPEN-I community can continue to hold regular webinars for the foreseeable future. However, funding is being sought internally to support the project, and we are also negotiating with an external industry partner to


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collaborate with on a more long-term basis. Additionally, the various external partners we have worked with have

expressed the desire to continue to provide content for the webinars, and we plan to begin to open up the webinars more to the community itself, giving a space for peer-to-peer feedback on photographic projects. Whilst we feel that the work done so far has been very valuable, we fully intend to continue with the project for the future.

9. Summary and Reflection

approx. 250 words

Although in some areas of academic activity such as e-learning and pedagogy, the webinar format has become relatively common, it is still a new experience for most outside of these ‘e-pockets’ and as such still has the potential to engage and excite an audience. Despite technical issues, mostly with sound and internet access, the overwhelming feedback from the project to date has been very positive, people are willing to accept a certain degree of imperfection in the delivery if the content is relevant, engaging, contemporary and challenging. The value to the course team of the MAPJD has been immense, giving the students and academics unparalled access to the heart of the professional industry, and directly enhancing the development and currency of the curriculum.

The OPEN-i community has established itself as a significant platform for debate, dialogue and discussion within the photojournalism industry, and has generated a reputation as a space where high level, intense, challenging and fruitful exchanges can take place between actors who would otherwise find it hard if not impossible to communicate in such a way. Maintaining the activity of the community is sustainable, especially if the focus becomes more clearly on the live webinars and their associated archives rather than other activities. The webinars provide an excellent resource for teaching and learning, not just at our own institution but at others as well, keeping our program current and directly related to the needs of industry. We suggest that there are several ways in which the webinar format could be used to enhance BCE activity.

• Develop a CoP along the lines of OPEN-i that uses a regular program of webinars on issues relevant to the academic and industry/community contexts to build the community. This needs significant commitment in terms of budget, with at the very least a paid part-time community coordinator on 1-2 days a week.

• Run a shorter, more focused series of webinars aimed at a specific issue or interest group that allows the academic community to act as a ’critical friend’ or that is aimed at enhancing student understanding of the realities of the external workplace. This could potentially be incorporated into a course or departmental curriculum, or run as part of an enterprise office outreach program

• Run a specific project aimed at mapping employers expectations for example, where external stakeholders are invited in to a ‘talking shop’

• Run a one-day event via webinars, similar to a conference, but aimed more specifically at a particular issue relevant to the BCE agenda.

We believe that our project has been successful in enhancing BCE in what one might call a ‘stealth mode’ of operation, for many participants in the webinars the fact that this was a university based project was either irrelevant or invisible, and in fact might even have been a negative factor if they had been more aware of it in the sense that it might have been perceived as a ‘student space’ rather than a professional one. However, by initiating a serious and engaged debate around complex issues facing our industry, we are confident that the project has enhanced the potential of BCE for 5 vital stakeholders


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• Practitioners have benefited from the ability to debate and discuss with each other on key topics

• Academics have been able to directly engage with the professional community and act as ‘critical friends’

• Students have been able to enhance their practice through ‘legitimate peripheral participation’

• The MAPJD course at LCC has benefited from direct access to contemporary practice enabling it to remain current and at the leading edge of professional practice education

• UAL as an institution has built up valuable experience and capacity in how to use this approach to enhance BCE by leveraging existing investments

bcect project case study open-i

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