e-minters Online Social Architects: Recognition of Informal Learning

in Communities of Interest

Niki Lambropoulose-minter, eLearning and Online Communities Architect, Researcher

nikilambropoulos.org

Abstract: As an attempt for informal learning recognition in online Communities of Interest, theory in this chapter was extracted from a dialogue between the members of the e-mint community on lurkers, newcomers and online groupz-ware. Twenty-eight e-mint members offered practical insights for usability and sociability issues towards online communities. Additional theoretical support to the concepts is provided based on social psychology, education, management and communication studies. The theoretical framework that supports Informal Learning and Communities of Interest draws on late 19 th

century and middle 20th century theories as these were the eras of new approaches related to masses’ interaction. A new methodological framework for data extraction and data analysis is introduced using software-based Social Network Analysis and Content Analysis, on the cluster of messages about lurkers, newcomers and the features of online groupz-ware.

1. Introduction

Correspondence between everyday and scientific life is a blessing (Warren & Jahoda, 1966:9). This chapter is a collaborative product from e-mint discussion messages on non-active participants and systems to facilitate online discussions. Due to the nature of the interactivity of the group and the way the chapter was developed, we found useful for the readers to bend the rules for scientific paper writing. This results from both the natural process of building the chapter as well as the copyright and ethical issues that were raised in the process. Public copyright or group copyright is not actually valid, at least not at this present time, as in open source software development. As such, the first part refers to the process and the results as derived from the messages, the second part connects usability and sociability with the previous while the fourth part is dedicated to the discussion and connective links between the two and theoretical background. Lastly, the summary describes interesting issues found in the process and future trends.

E-mint (www.e-mint.org) is an online community of community managers and community-based researchers using yahoo.groups for online interaction. The first aim of this chapter is provision of advice for management in online communities and the practical proposal of an application design that will help newcomers and lurkers, all based on e-mint community managers’ suggestions. A second aim is to describe the process that occurs between ‘Real Communities of Practice’ to ‘Online Communities of Interest’ and ‘Online Communities of Practice’. The latter processes are described within the grey zones of inactivity and activity on different levels without actually indicating a hierarchical order among them. The grey zones based on the attitudes

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concept as ‘complexes of ideas and sentiments… contained in motives’ (Cohen, P.S., 1966), needed to be added as they actually describe the plasticity of CoP development to potential online CoP. The grey zones are drawn from the ‘sleeper effect’ (change of behaviour after a lapse of time), borrowed from the social psychology terminology of the 60s (Hovland, Janis & Kelley, 1953). At that time, sociologists were actually interested in attitudes ‘always as a part of an ultimate aim of studying the structure of social conduct’ (Cohen, 1966). Thomas and Znaniecki (1918-20) have defined social psychology as the ‘scientific study of attitudes’ (cited in Allport, 1954).

The last 5 years Jenny Preece, an e-mint member, continuously insists on the concepts of sociability and usability regarding creation, design and development of online communities in a more or less theoretical vacuum. Since this approach is of major importance, we cannot do otherwise but support her suggestion. Practical insights are given by e-minters for both. The usability framework is going to be portrayed by the e-mintes as perhaps the most relevant subjects to provide it. The suggested theoretical approach could be a description of the canvas where sociability and usability are weaved in the context of the Communities of Interest. As such, the theoretical framework sketches two processes in a macro and micro level i.e. the group formation and the individual’s active participation process in the group. We introduce the ‘sleeper effect’ to describe the ‘potency of becoming’ that exists in both the macro level of the community and the micro level of the individual as becoming part of a community. Both attempts draw from social psychology (group dynamics, attitudes and communities of practice), learning technology (tacit and informal learning in communities of interest), management (group organisation and motivation) and communication studies (online interactivity and dialogue).

The 50’s and 60’ era selection in favour of the social and learning theories is due to the fact that it was then when social psychology and social learning theory appeared as the passage from American behaviourism to a more sociocultural approach with an emphasis into group intelligence due to mass media development. The author finds similarities in the recent years such as the introduction of new disciplines coming from the passage of social psychology and learning theories to the online social psychology and online learning.

The author was first subscribed to the e-mint online community of online community managers to find solutions for her job as an ICT Project Manager at the Greek Education Office in London in 2002. It was the quality of the messages on the topic of lurkers and groupz-ware that made her decide to use the actual context under the threefold perspective of classical content analysis (Bauer, 2000), discourse analysis (Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis, Herring, 2001) and empirical linguistic analysis (Herring, 2001, 2004) based on the intentions of the communicators (Preece & Ghozati, 2001) and situated meaning (Gee, J.P.; 1997:97). An online community is an organic self-evolving organisation using contextual communication and as such, different disciplines claim methods and techniques for research such as Education, Sociology, Psychology, HCI, Communication Studies or Management. The plasticity due to continuous flux creates challenges for the researcher (Preece, 2003). Although observing, interviewing, taking notes, collecting artefacts and participating in the activities is crucial, ethical issues arise from participant observation. These issues were of a great importance later on, when we decided to use material from the online group we were as active participants.

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Deutsch (1949) in his theory of social interdependence stressed the importance of promotive interaction that occurs as members encourage and facilitate each other’s efforts to help the community. To build common knowledge we need to understand each other to a sufficient degree. Awareness for understanding is another concept within the theory of social interdependence. Dourish and Bellotti (1992) connect awareness to shared spaces and define it as an understanding of the activities of others, which provides a context for own activity. In an informal learning framework, group-generated text and community knowledge building are created by the active members. Dialogues function and increase the capacity of to say to one’s self by means of words of symbols, what one has done or one will do (Bruner, 1995). The dialogue as a social interactive medium in online discussion and information sharing is actually the only medium that conveys the meaning of the interactive sequences and contributes to constructive learning. Participants can compare their own prior learning and the level they might reach, both at the point of expert-to-novice transfer and the construction of new knowledge. The more advanced member acts as the leader while there is no demonstration of his/her behaviour but the result of it. The differences between Online Communities of Practice (CoP) and Online Communities of Interest (CoI) are based on the following levels:

the intention drive and its attributes (intensity and awareness) that leads to motivation,

the different levels of external and internal motivation as central towards attention,

the rules and the netiquette of communication and practice, the production of artefacts and the division of labour.

Intention is the initial framework that defines the next levels. The corollary of the characteristics is the determination of the levels of members’ engagement. They describe more the social activity theory framework than a free and open level of self-organised CoI.

3. e-minters

The discussion on lurkers and online groupz-ware occurred during April, although some replies were arriving until the end of June. 28 e-minters sent messages on the topic and messages from 25 e-minters were used in this chapter. 7 members left the lurkers’ corner and became low engagement participants (low, medium and high levels of engagement by Oriogun, 2003).

The community managers’ profiles suggested the following two differences: (a) the number of online communities’ members they were moderating (from 3,000,000 members in Sulake Company to 120 members from Greek Teachers Working Abroad Yahoo Group). (b) the ratio of applications complexity and sophistication from production companies for massive use of software (from email and yahoo.groups to commkit).

As the discussion was developing, a clear distinction appeared between Theory, Technology and Community Management started to occur. Then the initial findings were presented to the e-mint book-committee and the decision was that they are interesting and useful but a significant issue of copyright has risen. As such, e-minter

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Lizzie Jackson suggested that permission is needed from the members in order to use the selected data material. Permission was asked to be given from e-minters via individual emails and most of the participants, as copyright owners, not only agreed to use the messages but they agreed to use their real names as well, although it was mentioned that there were several ways to identify the members (as subject A, B etc or use fake names). Re-sending opinions was an option as well but not many e-minters decided to extend their suggestions.

4. Messages Analysis

Based on the initial findings that seemed to be very helpful for both the online community managers and researchers, the study was directed to informal learning as learning outside formal educational systems based on Community Knowledge Building. Yahoo.groups software provides a database of the messages. In addition, the messages are arriving in the members’ mailboxes individually via email. As such, all messages related to the initial question were categorised and coded depending on the raised topic as in grounded theory research framework. Problems had to be dealt due to the absence of theoretical frameworks for both Online Research and Online Informal Learning.

4.1 Research Online

Nowadays, Research Online is not fully developed yet, as not many methodological approaches are designed specifically for research online. As such, the researchers use methodologies that deal with online situations borrowing methods and techniques from the ‘real’ ones. Although the adaptations have the same principles, there are limitations due to the virtual nature of the research. For example, direct observation is not possible, everything is text based and the meaning within a specific context as well as researcher’s subjective eye, are the basic means for analysing the data. As such, we decided to follow the focus groups methodology, which works as an adjunct to group interviews. This is due to the fact that the reliance is on the interaction within the group who discuss a topic (Morgan, 1988:9). It is from the interaction of the group that the data emerge. Focus groups, are contrived settings, bringing together a specifically sector to discuss a particular theme or topic, where the interaction within the group leads to data and outcomes (Cohen et al., 2000:288). In our case, the contrived nature, which according to Cohen et al. is a limitation, is not a limitation because the nature of the group is completely natural. As such, focus groups in online research within CoI could be economical in time, yield insights for the discussion topic, have practical and organisational advantages, and bring people together with different opinions or different collectivities. In addition, they produce a large amount of data, develop, generate and evaluate the produced data and gather feedback simultaneously. All restrictions and decisions provided by Cicourel (1964), Morgan, (1988) and Krueger (1988) for generating a bond between the researchers and the interviewers, group sampling, control, researcher’s chairing for balance or even ensuring participants feelings of being comfortable are not applicable here. Definitely non-directive, active members initiated and directed the dialogue deepening their own opinions.

Non-structured group messages taken out of CMC in a focus group might better test a specific research question;

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obtain greater depth and breadth in responses compared to individual interviews; (c) verify research plans or findings;

extract patterns and themes of agreement or disagreement as units meaning for design patterns/genres; and

enhance the reliability of interviewee responses.

As a result, activities are not ‘anthropologically strange’ (Garfinkel, 1967). Common dialogues as conversational material contain stocks of knowledge based on common understanding, revealing patterns as a ‘cookbook recipe for actions’. Asking for additional material on an individual level might be seeing as re-interviewing and doing validity checks.

As the e-mint online community uses yahoo.groups software and yahoo.groups clearly defined that the copyright of a message within yahoo.groups belong to the sender of the message. In order to deal with the unusual ethical considerations, we had to get the permission from each member after they send the messages as well as informing them about the purposes of their use in research. All participants expect 3 gave the permission to use the context of their messages on this particular context.

In content analysis (Krippendorff, 1980; Weber, 1990) all messages were examined and analysed while classification was based on two methodological approaches: (a) grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967); and (b) Dynamic Enquiry (London & McMillen, 1992). Strauss and Corbin (1990) suggest that grounded theory is especially useful for complex subjects or phenomena where little is yet known. Cook and Smith (2004) used grounded theory to extract successfully informal learning concepts. As such, after sending the initial message, the rich responses the messages were collected and their initial value was recorded. Following Cook and Smith (2004), the initial examination of the corpus (transcribed messages), initial low level theorising then took place in the form of category and concept formation. Concepts are classified and grouped together under a higher order, more abstract formations called categories. DE was headed towards the articulation of a collective reality that encompassed individual views, problems, underlying causes of the problems and solutions, as suggested by the members of the studied community and it produced interesting results for agent-oriented systems methodology in a previous study (Lambropoulos, 2003). The systemization of the results and the construction of a skeleton were conducted towards both the inductive (looking for patterns and associations) and deductive (propositions reached hypothetically) extractions.

4.2 Ethical Considerations

Ethical issues (Robson, 1993 & Bell, 1991) were raised after the decision since we did not have the permission of the group and none of them knew that there was a possibility to use their actual dialogue. However, a research in previous cases revealed that this is eligible in research as soon as the permission is acquired, not to mention the authenticity of the messages. Hovland, Lumsdaine and Sheffield (1949) as well as Smith (1968) agreed in the creation of safeguards against the contamination of results by guinea pig subjects who know that they are under study (Hawthorne Effect). In 1957, Siegel and Siegel conducted a study on reference and membership groups. In the study the subjects were not aware that they were part of research interest. Relative

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to our study, Preece (2000) observed a community of sufferers from knee injuries for several months prior to doing the study. Still, in contrast to the previous attempts to justify our decision to use the specific dialogue as a case study, there was not such an initial intention to use the content as part of research interest but of general interest as an e-minter. As such, the process as occurred enabled the subjects to unfold their own opinions and reflect upon their actions without the researcher’s interference in any way. Based on previous researchers (Baym, 1997; Preece, 2000) and community members’ own opinions we decided to use the content of a particular online cluster of messages referring to lurkers, even though the author started the discussion, initially as a group member. Because of the nature of the research, assurances to the participants regarding anonymity and confidentiality were given after the decision of using their messages. As such, a detailed permission email was sent to the subjects regarding the way they wanted to be mentioned in the study as well as their personal details. All participants suggested that their real name is fine to be mentioned. Another issue might rise because this chapter was written for the e-mint book. The initial question as an enquiry it never indicated that it will be used to ‘gain’ knowledge towards a book chapter in a self-referential way. Yahoo.groups data are available to anyone who would like to check the verity of the statement. There was no intention to use e-mint group as a participant observation study. Exactly the same question was sent simultaneously to another two academic lists in order to get opinions for the questions about lurkers and a system for online discussion. There were zero responses from the academic lists. Surprisingly enough, in e-mint, 28 community members responded with a considerable number of messages, significant enough to be part of a chapter for practical issues in online communities. The informal email was sent on Wednesday, message 3905, 14 Apr 2004 07:22:22 +0100 (BST) and it was the following:

Subject:  a question of actionHi all,I was wondering whetehr you might have any ideas abouta kind of software needed to activate people who arenot willing to participate in discussions, an'intelligent' or not way to 'push' them in action..for example knowing the other person might help, thenwe create a profile of the members when they subsribeto the groups... or I found that people who developempathy are more likely to participate in adiscussion... any ideas of existed programmes or evenmore> needed ones?

many thanX!niki

Most of the replies were sent the next day (14 out of 23) and the other messages arrived before the 30th of June exhibiting considerable time lag.

4.3 Methodology

The problems towards user-designer co-operation in HCI for the construction of online groupz-ware were: (a) the absence of specific methodology for online communities; (b) the absence of several approaches for online questionnaires specifically designed for online communities. Andrews et al (2003) were the first ones to create a framework for online questionnaires; (c) the great number of online

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communities on the net, suggests different problems as every community has a unique nature; (d) the absence of a solid criteria system (standards) for online communities’ categorization and indexation; and (d) difficulty in detecting the huge number of non-participants due to absence of any exhibited behaviour. As such, they are invisible although they are the biggest number of community members.

Identification of needs and suggestions in e-mint online discussion could be detected in two steps:

1. Online Community Managers (OCM) Focus Group (sociability and usability): (i) identification of the sample, (b) conduction of a focus group open interview in order to get users and designers’ needs and suggestions for the system as such as well as management of the process of introduction and use of the system. Software-based research is suggested to facilitate Social Network Analysis and Content Analysis.

2. Systems Comparison: the second stage suggests a survey for the best applications in both the market and the academic world, if existed. A record of the existing applications, index of the basic characteristics and their dynamic and innovative features could inform the designer with the structure for further development of successful and commonly used software. A combination with the results form Stage I, would give a detailed first description of the needed system. The final improvements are going to use the actual users’ suggestions as derived from the next stage. This stage is actually the second one, before stage III in order to acquire the final improvements from the actual users, remaining close to the usability framework.

4.2.1 OCM Focus Group (sociability & usability)

Context analysis is needed in order to develop an understanding of the designers’ focus group and the space for interacting activities. The target is to help newcomers and potential participants in online communities. The context for this study is the sufficient number of online community managers (OCM) (23).

As such, context analysis was derived from the:

1. Target population and sampling: 26 online community managers were the focus group and they were discussing the topic for 14 days using the yahoo.groups environment.

2. Focus group interview: Two processes are believed to help drawing context analysis. (a) interactions mapping based on Social Network Analysis (SNA).

Target population & Sampling: Online Community managers participated on one focus group discussion from the e-mint yahoo.group. They currently work for the following companies and organisations: bbc, commkit, ladomery, neoone, jindal, tempero, sulake, tuc, lts, exmosis, tagteacher, habbo, bibliotech, chatmoderators, University of Pennsylvania and Yale Gordon College of Liberal Arts. So, the decision made on this specific group was due to:

1. High level of expertise.2. The number of online communities’ members they were moderating (from

3,000,000 members in Sulake Company to 120 members from Greek Teachers Working Abroad Yahoo Group).

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3. Relativity to the main study target group (from 0 relativity as in Habbo Hotel to 100% relativity as in tagteachernet)

4. Participants’ familiarity with different software used in online communities. The ratio of applications complexity and sophistication varied from simple open source software (for example yahoo.groups) to software from production companies (for example commkit, specifically designed software for massive online communities).

5. Some e-minters were voted among the U.K. web gurus6. Accessibility to the focus group

28 participants responded with interesting insights, after the introduction of an open ended question about their opinion on both the system and the process of active participation. The discussion started on Wednesday, 14th of April 2004 07:22:22 +0100 (BST). Most of the participants replied the next day (14 out of 28) and the other messages (the rest 14) arrived before the 30 th of June. There was considerable time lag between two sub-discussions due to a change of the discussion subject.

5. Methodology and Results for Social Network Analysis (SNA)

Following Shneinderman’s (1998) concept on information visualisation and based on the auto-correlated nature on discussions, we decided on the use of Social Network Analysis (SNA, Baroudi, et al, 1986).. One of the goals of SNA is to visualize communication and relationships between people and/or groups through diagrams as it depicts social relationships between a set of actors (Baroudi, et al, 1986).. We used a GUI based network analysis tool called Netminer for Windows. Cyram NetMiner II is an innovative software tool for Exploratory Network Data Analysis and Visualization. Its unique feature lies in the integration of standard Social Network Analysis (SNA) methodology with modern 3D network visualization (or graph drawing) techniques in the spirit of Exploratory Data Analysis (Netminer, 2003:1).

According to Borgatti et al (2001), SNA is a new, fast growing field of study mostly based on statistics than theory and related to systems theory and complexity theory. A real problem with SNA is the inability to test hypotheses statistically, because the data are by nature auto-correlated. However, this is exactly what we wanted due to the self-evolving nature of the discussion in a focus group (or any group discussion). Network researchers have developed a set of distinctive theoretical perspectives. Related to our report are the following two: (a) the focus on relations between actors rather than attributes of actors and (b) the sense of interdependence in a community. Social relations can be thought of as dyadic attributes between an individual and a context. Actions (talks to…) and cognitive (same view as…) are examples of dyadic attributes in the online communities’ context between an actor and another. The substantive effects of social network variables we are going to use are the attributes of ego network and network closeness (influence, diffusion). The substantive determinants of social network variables are personality (centrality) and networking.

There are two basic kinds of network analysis, reflecting two basically different kinds of data we used: ego network analysis, and complete network analysis. Ego network analysis can be done in the context of traditional surveys. Each respondent’s message is correlated to other messages according to the directions of content reply and the

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people s/he interacts with, relating attributes of ego with attributes of their interacting partners. Complete network analysis helps the researcher to obtain all the relations among a set of respondents using the techniques of subgroup analysis, equivalence analysis and measures like centrality.

5.1 Results

Degree (Figure 1 & 2)

The degree (Freeman, 1979) refers to the number of ties to others in an adjacency matrix. We had 47 nodes from 28 participants.

Figure 1. Discussion Network nodes

Figure 2

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In-Degree and Out-Degree describe the direction of the messages from and towards an actor. For example Chris sent 2 messages and 6 messages were referring to his suggestions. Ilana sent one and one actor replied explicitly to Ilana.

Centrality

Centrality is a structural attribute of nodes in a network and their structural position in the network. It is a measure of the contribution of network position to the importance, influence, prominence of an actor in a social network. Centralization refers to the extent to which a network revolves around a single node.

Figure 3. Information Centrality

Closeness (Freeman '79)

Closeness refers to the graph-theoretic distance of a given node to all other nodes. Simple closeness is an inverse measure of centrality: the larger the numbers, the more distant an actor is, and the less central. Should really be called "farness". Normalized version divides the minimum "farness" possible (N-1) by "farness" to simultaneously make the range 0 to 1 and invert the measure so that larger values correspond to greater centrality (truly "closeness"). In a diffusion process, a node that has high closeness centrality is likely to receive information/infections more quickly than others.

More specifically, measured as share of all centrality possessed by the most central node. Closeness Centrality analyzes centrality structure of a network based on geodesic distances among the nodes. For a directed network, each of incloseness centrality and out-closeness centrality is measured separately, depending on whether the distances 'from' or 'to' other nodes are considered.

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Cindy, Rebecca, Chris and Ewan are the ones who sent the highest percentage of messages, i.e. information in the discussion. Jenny sent only one message, although it was related to three different discussion correspondents.

Figure 4. InCloseness Centrality

Figure 5. OutCloseness Centrality

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Clique Clique analyzes cohesion structure of a network based on the cohesiveness among the nodes. Clique is a maximal complete sub-graph of three or more nodes. It consists of a subset of nodes, all of which are adjacent to each other. Netminer computes betweenness of all the links in the network, and find link(s) with maximum betweenness value and remove it, and then recalculate betweenness of all the links again. This process will be repeated until no links remain, gives an order of link, and applying hierarchical clustering produces a nested structure of community (Netminer, 2003).

Figure 7. Clique

In Figure 10 three sub-dialogues took place between the participants. The subjects were registration to a system, delurking and working f2f VS online.

5.2 Social Network Analysis: the Identification of Actors and eDemocracy

Social Network Analysis (SNA) supports Informal and Non-formal Learning as well as collective ways of defining objectives, standards and decision making based on CoP and CoI. SNA could bring the actors in front and suggest the individuals who are able to help the community. If we use the internet and online communities to reach our targets then we incorporate the basic qualities of eDemocracy. Formal education is based on well described frameworks without taking account the process-based approach, the interactivity between individuals and their environment and self-directed learning. One example of inadequate implementation is Piagetian

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Constructivism, often supposed to not have taken into account the interpersonal relations (Crook, 1994). However, in 1965 Piaget himself suggested, “ cooperation … eliminates the process … of egocentric thought” (1995:208) since cooperation is defined as “… all relations between or more equal, or believed to be equal, individuals, that is to say, all social relations in which no element of authority or prestige is involved” (Piaget, 1995:200). We suggest the wide use of focus groups in order to assess as well as gather CoP and CoI suggestions and identification of people who are able to help the communities, either as employees or volunteers.

6. Content Analysis

The following threefold perspective is suggested for the next step of analysis of the messages: (a): classical content analysis (Bauer, 2000), (b) discourse analysis (Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis, Herring, 2001) and (c) empirical linguistic analysis (Herring, 2001, 2004) based on the intentions of the communicators (Preece & Ghozati, 2001) and situated meaning (Gee, J.P. (1997:97).

Discourse analysis (DA) for content analysis was used to identify similarities, differences and suggestions as extracted from the messages. DA of the messages was highly depended on the context taking into consideration that ‘the conventional meaning of an utterance was but a stage of its interpretation’ (Sinclair, 1992:79).

6.1 Messages Discourse Analysis

Informal learning processes and the individualistic bias can be partially overcome by research methods that either engage with people in the social contexts of their lives (such as participant observation), or by questioning them collectively (as in discussion groups of various kinds) (Livingston, 2000). Discourse Analysis (DA) refers to the analysis of all form of spoken interaction and all written texts, is concerned with the function of language and its uses for a variety of consequences, considers the way in which language is both constructed and constructive and recognises that the same phenomena can be described in different ways (Potter & Wetherell, 1987). Potter and Wetherell insist that DA cannot be readily contained within a fixed methodology. Similarly, Burr (1995) refers to DA as an approach rather than a method. Following all three and taking into account that DA itself is subjective and interpretative, we are going to view and use DA as an approach that will help the extraction of contextual assumptions regarding lurkers and a management system as derived from the e-minters. Having in mind the limitations of DA, it is an attempt to reveal useful insights to what is presented as fact or common sense and be restricted to the internal working of the text.

Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis approach (CMDA, Herring 2001), is drawing theoretical assumptions from linguistic discourse analysis. ‘At its core is the analysis of logs of verbal interaction (characters, words, utterances, messages, exchanges, threads, archives, etc.)’ (Herring et al, 2004). It is based on three levels of language interchange: (a) structure: structural phenomena include the use of special typography or orthography, novel word formations, and sentence structure, (b) meaning:

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meanings of words, utterances (e.g., speech acts) and larger functional units, (c) interaction: turn-taking (Herring, 1997), topic development, and other means of negotiating interactive exchanges and (d) social behaviour: participation patterns (as measured by frequency and length of messages posted and responses received). Structural CMC phenomena (e.g. emoticons, abbreviations, lexical items, quoting etc) were not taken into account although they are helpful for computer-assisted data analysis. Coding was restricted to the meaning and interaction level. This decision was made due to the purpose of the research was to identify replies as well as observations of discourse phenomena based on semantic reference rather syntactic since the main goal was the identification of answers to the question. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses were used as the semantic references as well as indications regarding the frequency of their appearance were coded and counted and summaries were produced based on content clusters. This is how recognition of Informal Learning occurred. Turn-taking and time lag in spoken communication is absolutely linear whereas in CMC ‘exhibits numerous violations of both the "no gap, no overlap" principle and the principle of orderly turn alternation’ (Herring, 1997). Nonelinearity was depicted in a 2D map of interactions based network analysis (Zaphiris et al., 2003). Overlap in CMC is also problematic. In group communication, unrelated messages from other participants often intervene between an initiating message and its response, in likelihood proportional to the number of active participants involved in the communication (Cherny, 1999).

We used ATLAS.ti for the qualitative analysis. It handles large bodies of textual, graphical, audio, and video data. It offers a variety of tools for accomplishing the tasks associated with any systematic approach to unstructured data, e.g., data that cannot be meaningfully analyzed by formal, statistical approaches. ATLAS.ti provides significant help in exploring complex phenomena hidden in the data. For coping with the inherent complexity of the tasks and the data, it offers tools to manage, extract, compare, explore, and reassemble meaningful pieces from large amounts of data in creative, flexible, yet systematic ways. The main principles of the ATLAS.ti philosophy are best encapsulated by the acronym VISE, which stands for Visualization, Integration, Serendipity, and Exploration. Tools are offered to visualize complex properties and relations between the objects accumulated during the process of eliciting meaning and structure from the analyzed data. The object-oriented design seeks to keep the necessary operations close to the data to which they are applied (ATLAS.ti, 2004). The following table will lead us to description of facts as derived in the messages.

Table 1. Discourse Analysis Coding guide

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS SEARCHKeywords and Themes (recurrent terms, concepts)Compare and contrast Identify ideas and representations (associations, mobility, implications)Variation in textBrakes, hesitations, inconsistencies, contradictionsConsistency with and between textsIntertextuality (repetition of keywords and phrases)Emphasis and detail

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Rhetorical devises usedAlliteration MetaphorsTaking for granted notionsDeixis The use of words that make reference to the situation (now, we this etc)ModalityJudgement (might, regret, correct, right etc)

Online text indications (our suggestion)Use of specific online symbols such as emoticons, stress of text using capital letters, incomplete sentences, dots and dashes, nick names etc

6.2 Research Variables

According to Livingston (2000), in order to study informal learning empirically, we have to focus on those things that people can identify for themselves as actual learning projects or deliberate learning activities beyond educational institutions. In discussion forums of CoI this is not possible since the knowledge is absolutely tacit and hidden behind he lines. As such, all messages were inserted in ATLAS.ti Hermeneutic Unit. Initial Coding was conducted based on the three primary concepts of Theory (THE), Community Management (MA) and Technology (TECH). Memos were created based on the architecture of the messages. The first level of coding was initially based on Theory, Management and Technology. The second level was based on the nature of the stanzas and as such after the first 10 messages, the same umbrellas for coding started to appear as in figure 12.

Figure 8. Hermeneutic Unit and Coding

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The categorisation of the results was based on similarities and differences between the conversants following ‘dialogic accounts of discourse theory’. As such, the table of the codes was as following: the Theory Family included all theory about lurkers (L) in the Education, Sociology, Communication Theory and Psychology as extracted from the messages. Management (MA) is under the theory family as a separate sub-category. Some comments were subscribed to different codes. Lurkers (L) had ‘lurkersexample’, ‘lurkerscomment’, ‘lurkerssuggestions’ and ‘lurkerswhy’ to indicate examples, reasons, comments and suggestions about lurkers. Ex lurkers i.e. members who sent a message, as well as interesting comments about lurkers were under the same umbrella. Management was strictly about managing online communities and it was the largest category. Technology was divided into comments, examples and suggestions.

Based on a previous study (Lambropoulos, 2004) empathy seemed to be the key for action following e-motion, which, according to Goleman (1997), is the internal motivation for action. As such a ‘feeling’ code seemed to be needed without attaching it to Psychology, i.e. code THE, but creating an initial code on its own. From prvious experience (Lambropoulos, 2002, assignment) on an online MA students’ community, most of the messages were mare information about events. As such another code for ‘information’ was added.

Table 2. Coding Categorization

Super-CodesTHEORY COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY

Sub-Codes

Lurkers

Community (Nature) IntroductionCommunity Building ProcessCommunity Knowledge Building (Informal Learning)

Micro-CodesExamples Individuality of the members CommentsComments Needs Examples Suggestions Motives

SuggestionsReasons Difference between newcomers and non-participants

L Process (+,-,0) Ways of communication (forums, one-to-one emails)

AlternativeProcess of integration to the community Lurkers Super-Code FEELING

After the first coding, two more levels of coding conducted based on a macro and a micro level. The names did not appear on this phase in order to refrain the researcher from subjective judgments due to familiarity with the members. The largest amount of data was for Management and as such a structure was needed based on the two levels. The micro level was conducted first, based on the smallest amount of information, cut

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I down to one concept. After micro-coding the macro coding described the overall umbrellas for micro-codes As such, the new codes for the Super-code Management (MA) were the following: Management as such (MA), positive, negative and neutral (description and comments) aspects of a process for activating the non-participants or Lurkers (+Lprocess, −Lprocess, +Lprocess for both and Lprocess), the nature of the community (©) and flash-quotes1 (F) to describe interesting alternative comments. The extracted logic behind this sub-coding is the following: The Nature of the Community, the main purpose of sharing the knowledge leads to community knowledge building; in addition good Management based on experience and Theory define and develop the tools the Technology provides as well as the process of participation for both the newcomers and the non-participants (L).

When the codes appeared to include a large amount of information we had to split them in ATLAS.ti environment. For example the MA-code (standing for Community Management) was the largest one as consisted of 91 quotations. As such, sub-codes were needed. There was the facility of printing out the codes, and more information such as the time of analysis, their associated codes, memos attached, filters and the quotations in order to have a hard copy on the selected data. The results are presented in text and picture form as extracted from ATLAS.ti. They are presented starting from the pig picture and going down to the details. As such the architectural pattern gives the overall view of the messages and then the SuperCodes of Theory, Management and Technology are divided to SubCodes and MicroCodes. In the following chapter we present the results of the content analysis.

6.4 Messages Analysis

Information based messages were not many (12) comparing to previous researches (Lambropoulos, 2002 assignment). E-minters who expressed themselves in a quite emotional way exhibiting empathy as found in DA analysis, appeared to be the most active members. For example the highest emotional expressive person, Rebecca, is at the centre of SNA analysis as well2. The comments on volunteers agreed with the 1950’s studies on membership and open communities. Most examples used came from the real life.

6.4.1 Messages architectural pattern25 messages (53,1%) appeared to have a pattern: an initial introduction as a response to the selected message, an extensive explanation and justification of their point was made, an example was making suggestions very clear and lastly, a greeting or an interesting quote used to ‘sign’ the message. A detailed description is following:

1. Introduction, usually with an agreement with a previous message; 2. arguments and points of view;3. an example to support the previous suggestions4. stress of interesting points, more suggestions; and 5. signing out.

1 The term FalshQuotes was borrowed from Athletic Journalism in order to describe the first comments the athletes make to the press immediately after their effort. 2 Rebecca was voted Director of the e-mint group in July 2004, 2 months after the study. The analysis of the results was conduced in August 2004.

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An example of message architectural pattern is Graham’s message (Date: Thu Apr 15, 2004 3:52 pm Subject: Re: [e-mint] Decriminalising lurking). Graham quoted the previous comment ‘Ewan J. MacLeod wrote: I really like your point about silence…Who > agrees? Who disagrees?…’. He replies to the message ‘I think it partly depends on the “intended nature” of the/any group, and what the ‘expected’ Signal-to-Noise ratio is. Some groups are intended to be chatty, informal affairs… I think you can encourage people into the discussion by asking for people’s opinions and experiences – that way people feel they’re offering something that can’t be seen as “argumentative”, or something…’. Then he uses an example in order to take his view further as well as an online text-based emoticon ‘For instance, what are other people’s ‘expectations’ of this list? =)…’ and he signs the message as ‘.g -- “Hubris is today our entire attitude towards nature, our rape of nature with the help of machines.” – Friedrich Nietzsche.’.

Another example is Rebecca’s message (Thu Apr 15, 2004 5:27 pm Subject: Re: [e-mint] Decriminalising lurking). She starts with a reference of a previous message ‘Volunteers and Lurkers (Cindy’s question)’, she gives her opinion to the subject ‘There’s not much I know of that you can do about a community where you’re not at liberty to form any type of relationship with the members, individually. Within a ‘normal’ online (and offline) community, volunteers can do quite a bit to build relationship. I’m a major advocate of volunteerism…’ she gives an example ‘At Sulake, we involve our Hotel Guides (members) in just about every aspect of the community by giving them Team Leader responsibilities (training team, recruitment team, safety team…) and by recognising them daily as a vital part of our community…’, she stresses her opinion after the example ‘Volunteers can and often do a much better job at fostering community because they are first and foremost, community members…, It just means “putting the right person in charge of the right task and getting out of their way” as someone in the Volunteer world once said.’ And she ends the message signed as ‘Becs (am I getting any work done today? Don’t ask…my boss is on the e-mint listserv)’.

There were 25 (53,1%) ‘agreement’ messages. Individuals agreed with a previous sender in a non-linear way. 80% of the agreements (20 out of 25) were made at the beginning of the message. These messages were the most coherent ones with arguments and provoked a number of responses. 8 messages (30%) were on disagreement, using mild expressions such as I’d argue that, but what if, I don’t think, however, one other explanation and it’s not actually As e-mint is both an interaction and information community there were 12 messages (25,5%) on information about jobs, conferences, books, previous research on the topic conducted by the members and ideas for collaboration.

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6.4.2 Super-Codes ‘Management’ – ‘Theory’ – ‘Technology’

The number of quotes defined the order is Management (90 quotes), Technology (31 quotes) and Theory (14 quotes). All of them were connected to Management and this is the reason why we are going to view and analyse all super-codes as related to Management. The sub-coding was conducted using ATLAS.ti as depicted in the next is the information visualizion network:

Figure 14. Code Network

Difficulty in describing the theory behind the screen is because ‘in the real world we add the dimension of eye contact and obvious absorption in the meanderings of a speaker, which is hard to replicate on line. Silence can be from total agreement and ore or from crashing forward onto the keyboard fast asleep’ (Chris Rollings).

6.4.3 Management and Theory

The responses to initial question about lurkers, newcomers and systems related to Theory (Sociology, Learning technology, Informal Learning, HCI, Social Psychology

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and Communication studies) revolve around the nature of the community and community building as well as reasons for not participating. There are different types of communities and different types of participants and non-participants. The ‘"intended nature" of the/any group, and what the 'expected' Signal-to-Noise ratio is. Some groups are intended to be chatty, informal affairs in which, possibly, the act of interacting is more important than what is being said, whereas other groups are more like newspapers, and thus people join it for the information rather than the conversation. Encourage either of the two, and you may end up with a group quite different to its origins or intentions’ (Graham Lally). Different types of communities suggest different types and levels of lurking ‘Clearly, in information type sites where interaction is at a minimum "lurking" is the main activity - that is what the site is for and the site manager will be looking to encourage lurkers. At the other end of the scale, community sites such as emint encourage interactivity and we managers see aim to convert as many lurkers as possible. But there is a continuum between these two extremes and we need to get back to those primary questions about what type of site we are running, who its audience is and what their needs are’ (Anne Bennett). ‘Open discussions, often COI's, with many members will have higher proportions of lurkers’ (Nabil Shabka).

Community Culture seems to influence interactions within the community (Ewan J. MacLeod, Dorin Andrews). ‘We used to run one forum for American nationals; and another forum for British nationals. The lurker rate was incredibly high on the British forum because tons of people were "being British" and not posting anything because they hadn't been introduced and thought it would be impolite to simply just start chatting’ (Ewan J. MacLeod). Privacy and invasion issues do follow the community culture ‘It's not actually invading your privacy per se - but then this view depends entirely on your perspective of privacy/invasion’ (Ewan J. MacLeod). ‘People with diametrically opposing beliefs, attitudes, sensitivities - even culture and language - can coexist in the same virtual community as long as they're given their own space to exist in. This means varying community standards according to the area rather than finding evermore-inventive ways to ensure everyone 'tows the line'’ (Emma Monks).

Community Building‘Everybody wants to be part of something and who among us doesn't want to share our knowledge?’ (Rebecca Newton). According to the previous message there are two basic issues that define the nature of an online community, firstly mentioned in Aristotle: (i) the individual as a social being

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(community building) and (ii) the natural tendency of the human being to learn (community knowledge building).

‘Aside from filters and moderators (staff), I'll again make a plug for the backbone of any successful community - the members.... Community management should always be involved in the community through relationship (in my experience and opinion) … Some of us don't want to share anything with a group, some of us don't know how to share with a group… Sometimes, the only way to discover someone's brilliance is to spend time with them one-on-one’ (Rebecca Newton). As such, facilitating communication and building relationships are essential actions for Community Leaders. ‘So, while it's important to respect lurker's wishes to lurk, it's just as important to create relationship with community members and get to know them… you never know what affect you'll have on a person by spending enough time and interest in them to learn who they are… There's not much I know of that you can do about a community where you're not at liberty to form any type of relationship with the members, individually’ (Rebecca Newton).

Community Leaders are responsible for community building and there are several techniques to facilitate the development of the community. The community needs time to evolve. An initial help would be to encourage members to create their profile: ‘We also have profiling and allow people to use profiles to bring groups together’ (Ian Dickson). Online communities have complex natures ‘because the complexity of the group is too much for "one box" solutions’ (Ian Dickson). As such the use of sub-groups could facilitate newcomers and non-participants to find a suitable discussion: ‘If you want to design your software to encourage participation then creating small group based social spaces as Ian was saying is the way to go. People are more likely to post to those sorts of forums.’ (Dan Dixon). Open Community and anonymous posting could limit the criticism feeling that newcomers and non-participants might have: ‘Another way to get people interacting is to allow interaction with the community with lower barriers.’ (Dan Dixon). Several techniques are used to encourage one-way participation, analysing interaction in one-way and two-ways communication. Initial one-way communication could start with votes, polls, surveys or special offers (Will Wharfe, Dan Dixon, Rebecca Newton, John Wood). ‘The limited mechanisms we use for bringing back the lurkers are polls and occasional special offers, as well as discussion highlights in a fortnightly newsletter… ‘Our community (UNIONREPS.org.uk, a site for trade union shop stewards) has such impenetrably specialised conversations that lurkers become every bit as vital to cultivate as posters’ (John Wood).

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As in many online communities, ‘our members are naturally isolated (often the only person that all their workmates are looking to, when they don't know a lot more themselves), so the sense of membership that evidence of other people with similar problems brings is a good in its own right’ (John Wood). Volunteers could provide great help to community building since they are community members. ‘Within a 'normal' online (and offline) community, volunteers can do quite a bit to build relationship’ (Rebecca Newton).

Community Knowledge Building – Informal Learning The zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1977), related to Community Knowledge Building as supported by asymmetrical interactions, is suggested to be the key for newcomers integration via legitimate peripheral participation (Lave and Wenger, 1992): ‘most of the conversation takes place between people with a fair degree of knowledge… Lurkers can learn a lot by paying attention to such groups, while not necessarily knowing enough to contribute much themselves… The ability to lurk makes it easier for those who don't 'talk the talk' to benefit from the knowledge of the community.’ (Peter Harvey). ‘some of us may not have anything relevant to add and just want to learn’ (Rebecca Newton).

Awareness is suggested to have an important role for preventing impish behaviour. ‘Yes, there needs to be an awareness that if/when a person decides to 'join-in' they are not going to be bullied or laughed at’ (Chris Rollings). Awareness and insight help the members to ‘be more forthright ;-)’ (Ewan J. MacLeod).

E-minters supported the natural evolution of the community, a community that has conversations with active members and listeners. ‘Sometimes I feel we make problems for ourselves by putting so much emphasis on interactivity’ (Anne Bennett). Lurkers are community members (‘lurkers are considered to be community members’: Dorin Andrews) and have the right not to post if they do not want to, although some members suggested that no action deprives action: ‘So I closed the email. This deprives Chris of a response, closes of the conversation (if no one else chooses to respond) and stops the traffic on the subject altogether’ (Ewan J. MacLeod). ‘I imagine Popbitch is a good example - I know of many people that never post on it but feel a great loyalty to it’ (Dominic Sparkes).

Newcomers and Non-ParticipantsNewcomers and especially non-participants is the biggest ratio of members: ‘there's a large number of lurkers and nothing is going to change that’ (Dan Dixon) but they are part of the community. Newcomers possible lurk ‘to find out if the 'goods' is what [they] want’ (Cindy Lemcke-Hoong). ‘Having first looked at the h2g2 page

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doesn't in itself make you a lurker, but would produce a disproportionally high difference between unique users visiting, and users posting’ (Rob Marcus). ‘The 98% is just the people that don't post. We've not got the stats to work out exactly how many are lurkers, and stats being stats they would need us to tie down exactly what a lurker was’ (Dan Dixon). Great emphasis was made on self-observation processes for non-participants. ‘If an occasional lurker blinks for a few days, they'll likely miss the one topic that was crying out for their specialist knowledge’ (John Wood). A reflective description of non-participant’s thinking process was provided by Ewan J. MacLeod: ‘So I have a comment for Chris. Or I *had* a comment for Chris. I was agreeing with him - I wrote out three lines and went to hit 'send'. I don't have a lot of time to write as the emails continue to pour in so I thought a quick response was better than none at all. Then I thought "oh, hold on, someone else will come along with a really, long, incisive and interesting response making my three lines look rather poor." So I closed the email. This deprives Chris of a response, closes of the conversation (if no one else chooses to respond) and stops the traffic on the subject altogether. That's not so good for a community of community people. Sometimes I don't bother to write a response because I don't want people to react negatively to its brevity, let alone the content’.

Non-participants have the right not to participate if they do not want to: ‘but what of those who really really don't want to join in?... if it was compulsory for every member to speak or join in, would it be less fun for those who really really just wanted to watch and listen?’ (Chris Rollings). As for the other members, ‘it's important to respect lurker's wishes to lurk’ (Rebecca Newton). Especially for ‘managers (who) need to accept that people will say what they want to say, when they are ready to say it’ (Rebecca Newton). In addition, ‘when the discussion is most relevant to them and they have something they feel adds value to the 'conversation' even if the rest of the time they are silent… its nice to have validation that it's ok to lurk from other active community members’ (Lucy Crichton). There is not need to give so much emphasis on lurking or delurking for Community Knowledge Building unless there is a serious problem of community survival. The word lurker is referring to people who never post (Preece, 2003). It ‘is a dreadfully pejorative term’ (Anne Bennett) as all participants agreed: ‘Lurker is quite a funny word but it is a little bit derogatory!’ (Lucy Crichton).

It is difficult to make the first post. Following Dan Dixon, ‘Posting the first message somewhere can be a scary and exposing action and just a simple affirmation of this to the person who

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posted is a great thing’. And ‘Fear of appearing patronising dogs me’ (Chris Rollings). ‘Making a first post is a big hurdle for a lot of people’ (Robin Hamman). Lack of confidence might derive from shyness, since non-participants are ‘too shy to join in the conversations’ (Lucy Crichton) as shy members tend to be more self-observant. Another reason might be ‘ fear of people reacting to brevity’ (Chris Rollings). Dorin Andrews suggested that ‘People lurk for both altruistic as well as for personal (selfish) reasons, and posters have more positive attitudes toward lurkers than lurkers themselves. Lurkers do not report as much satisfaction with their experience as posters, but do feel they get what they need. In earlier work we learned that lurking levels are different in different types of communities (e.g. lurking in software communities is much higher than in health support groups)’. Lack of confidence leads to hesitation; Ann Light found in a study of hers that ‘in general, non-participants answered less fully than participants’. Another reason might be the lack of simple statements like ‘yes, I agree’ and ‘no’, statements that can be detected easily in ‘real’ life with body language like a movement of the head ‘Is it the medium of email combined with 'responsible adults' such as ourselves not wanting to write back saying "agreed", when they know that the message is going to be routed to every single subscriber on the list?’ (Ewan J. MacLeod). Dorin suggested the following influences for lurking: perceived roles, culture as forms of expression, moderation, management, relationships and situations outside the community, external and offline situations and attitudes, including attitudes towards lurkers.

More answers for the reasons why lurkers lurk are the following as extracted from Appendix III:

people hate and are petrified to speak in public, many experts in the community create hesitation, members are used to messages from the same posters, members wait until there is something relevant to their interests, the nature and the culture of the community are central, there is a natural burn-out of the community, it doesn’t feel nice to reply and just say ‘I agree’, and non-participants see life in a more negative way than active members.

Not all reasons are actually completely negative but conditions as well as tools can be provided in order to eliminate them. Delurking is not supposed to dominate decisions on Management and Technology: ‘I can fully appreciate the need to slightly push, bribe and encourage delurking when there is no conversation taking place, but is it always essential within a 'thriving' community?’ (Chris Rollings). The only problem might be with lurkers is that ‘it [is] difficult to evaluate the 'success' of the community.’ (Dominic Sparkes).

Research has been conducted on non-participants, as it is considered to be a common phenomenon in online learning communities. Sproul and Farj (1997) refer to an 80%

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of lurking between 6,600 members of WELL, a highly interactive community. In a study that compared 77 health support groups and 21 technical support groups the average percentage of lurkers was 46 per sent and 82 per cent (Preece, 2000). Some people spend many hours lurking and know the topics of conversation and key players very well. Little research has been done on the cognitive processes and the strategies lurkers use in online forums, information seeking and locating, creative information ‘copying’ and the thick red lines which separates potential participants, lurkers and active members. Additionally, there is not enough research on frameworks and application that might help to bridge this gap. As such, new definitions based on the differences between the members who actively read, lurk, send information, and those who interact seemed to be needed. The term ‘potential participants’ is introduced after Preece et al. (2003) suggested that lurkers actually never participate in the discussion. Potential participants are the newcomers and the ones who actually have an interest in activity but they might exhibit wish for active participation. Based on the number of messages in online learning courses, Oriogun (2003) introduced Low, Medium and High participation of the users starting with one message as the lowest participation. Lurkers and Potential Participants do not participate at all, which means they have zero messages and no appearance on the discussion forum although they are important in the group. As such, adding Potential Participation would complete Oriogun’s scale as conveying their transition for becoming and leave lurkers as the members who never participate. Perhaps a definition of time limit for each community is needed to draw the line between the two. Both terms refer to non-participants as both are vital community members.

Lurkers are ‘essential within a 'thriving' community’ according to Chris Rollings and ‘lurking levels are different in different types of communities (e.g. lurking in software communities is much higher than in health support groups)’ (Dorin Andrews). Again, ‘Of course, some people don't want relationship or don't want to share their what's in their brain - and that's ok too.’ (Rebecca Newton). ‘…the motives of newcomers differed in certain respects from those of the experienced participants’ (Anne Bennett). E-minters, as community managers, share the difficulty of ‘not going to easily get more people actively participating’ (Dan Dixon). Even though they are experienced online managers and community leaders ‘if the person is not revealing his/herself, how do we know?’ (Ewan J. MacLeod). ‘With on-line communities, a lot of the signs are hidden therefore needs a lot of efforts to dig out what is what’ (Cindy Lemcke-Hoong).

Delurking in E-mintDuring the discussion, lurkers heard ‘its nice to have validation that it's ok to lurk’ (Lucy Crichton). Additionally, ‘they increase your stats, they cause no problems and, let's face it in most communities they are the majority of the members’ (Anne Bennett). The positive discussion on the topic encouraged 7 members to leave the lurker’s corner. Their initial and ‘signed’ postings were less positive in average than the rest of the members as Dorine Andrews indicated.

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Activated members sent their messages. The following phrases were at the beginning of the message: > ‘Hello First post from me’ (Lucy Crichton)> ‘Hi - I'm John, also a newly reformed eMint lurker’ (John Wood)> ‘My first post too.... I guess the thread about lurking got my fingers onto the keyboard rather than the mouse...’ (Alex Bainbridge)> ‘Though I have been on an e-minter for over a year this is my first Post’ (David Satenstein)Consequently there were ‘signs’ at the end of the message:> ‘Anne (now ex-luker)’ (Anne Bennett)> ‘lurker feeling absurdly guilty for lurking’ (Catherine Padfield)> ‘[delurking briefly]’ (Emma Monks)

6.4.4 Management

Even though the initial question in e-mint was about software to facilitate online discussion, management seemed to be more important. Online Community Managers (OCM) need to foster and support their community as a unique, organic body, seeing each member on an individual basis with specific interests, needs, targets and common visions for themselves and he community. As such, part of OCM’s job is to facilitate Community Building and Community Knowledge Building. Community’s purposes, nature and culture define all actions in a nonlinear way, bringing on top ‘unnaturally keen’ volunteers, as communicative skills and empathy are required for insightful actions for helping each other. Community building is related to building relationships between the members cultivating the sense of belonging via getting to know each other. As in real life, the feeling of acceptance directs right attitudes as it encourages members’ participation and improvisation in a safe environment. The initial step of registering in a specific CoI requires the most important drives for an individual, the intention and motivation for sharing knowledge. Community Knowledge building starts in this initial stage as it is when the newcomer is introduced to the community, s/he is getting the sense of its nature and culture as well as the purposes of its existence. The initial starting point for newcomers, registration, is where COM are needed to help them and prevent the ‘lurker’s corner’ from the beginning. COM’s awareness with the help of groupz-ware and volunteers could leave delurking as the last weapon.

The following process describes the process of integration in an online community based on Management:

Good Registration System: ‘I think getting them to register is probably an equal barrier’ (Robin Hamman). ‘It was frustrating for our community managers seeing so many lurkers and knowing that the majority of them *wanted* to register but couldn't quite bring themselves to do so’ (Ewan J. MacLeod).

Induction and training in order to build positive attitudes to new users from the beginning.

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Profiling for community building. Videoconferencing for community building (Miranda Mowbray). Netiquette (‘there needs to be an awareness that if/when

a person decides to 'join-in' they are not going to be bullied or laughed at’: Chris Rollings). Rebecca Newton gives a very vibrant description for the need for netiquette: Empower the loyal, mature, responsible members with basic tools to deal with problem people (or as I call them: "foes" - forces of evil). If you can't empower members in this way, empower all members by giving them IGNORE tools. The IGNORE tools are the most effective tools online - wish we had them for offline communities!... Ignoring posts by member name, ignoring chat by member name, etc.’.

Authentic Welcome.‘We do our best to convert the lurkers to users by showing - by example - that new users are welcomed and appreciated’: Ewan J. MacLeod. Authentic welcome can be achieved by:

o live chat (Ewan J. MacLeod, Cindy Lemcke-Hoong) having in mind the privacy issue (Cindy Lemcke-Hoong) and being annoying for old members (Ewan J. MacLeod),

o volunteers (Rebecca Newton, Cindy Lemcke-Hoong), o chatbots. With chatbots there is a hesitation of its use due to lack of

authenticity, as well as ‘they don't encourage response or open-ended participation’ (Rebecca Newton).

o use of Meeters and Greeters ‘Actively say hi to every new joiner’: Dan Dixon)

Subgroups as ‘small group-based social spaces’ (Dan Dixon). It is crucial for newcomers to find the right subgroup and the right context (Ewan J. MacLeod) as well as keep their privacy and develop personal relationships if they want to: ‘So if you wanted to involve the 6 people about X out of the community of 400, you can do so, and take it Secret’ (Ian Dickson).

Follow up email. Good replies from the Community Leaders and Moderators especially to the firs message as ‘a follow-up email’ (Cindy Lemcke-Hoong). ‘I've developed this into making a non-patronising (I hope) statement along the lines of "..Really interesting...I hadn't thought of it like that before...Food for thought...’ (Chris Rollings). Some members ‘who were new to forums were responding to the mere fact of the forum, as is indicated by the answer `see what would happen’ (Anne Bennett).

New users have to be monitored: ‘One of the best techniques we've used is to ensure that new users are monitored closely so that our team can "pounce" on them a few moments after they choose to interact to ensure they get a response and are treated correctly’ (Ewan J. MacLeod).

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Volunteers as seem to be ‘unnaturally keen’ (John Wood) in whatever they do, are community members. They are able to help both community leaders and members, [‘many of us on the on-line community are volunteers… With on-line communities, a lot of the signs are hidden therefore needs a lot of efforts to dig out what is what. Volunteers just run out of steams’: Cindy Lemcke-Hoong). Especially when the community is quite large ‘we should contact the lurkers one-on-one’ (Cindy Lemcke-Hoong).

Time is a threefold issue (‘this time element will always be an issue’: Ian Dickson):

o the time-life of a community and the time needed to be developed (‘I spoke with some people the other day who are planning a big conference, and I said to them that if they don't set up the community side at least three months in advance, then the community will not be developed enough to facilitate the informal networking that they are hoping for’: Ian Dickson);

o the time community members dedicate to the discussions (‘The problem is, how many of us has the time for one-to-one [contact]’ (Cindy Lemcke-Hoong); and

o the time dedicated to the members from the community leaders and moderators: ‘Let alone we should contact the lurkers one-on-one’ (Cindy Lemcke-Hoong).

Expert discussions (analyst, journalist, financial guru) to introduce a topic every week on a financial website. High quality posts were form members often more ‘knowledgeable than the experts themselves’ (Robin Hamman).

One-way communicationo Votes, polls and surveys giving the feeling that ‘the lurkers can

feel that they've contributed something too’ (Will Wharfe).

o A dialogue requires different opinions to develop and lurkers might not get into argumentation. As such, asking about people’s experiences is another one-way communication that could ensure the first step (‘I think you can encourage people into the discussion by asking for people's opinions and experiences - that way people feel they're offering something that can't be seen as "argumentative", or something. For instance, what are other people's 'expectations' of this list?’: Graham Lally). Another example is ‘to say "I found this useful" etc but without running the risk of offending someone (the anonymous responses could be from a pre-defined list) or starting a lengthy discussion. That way lurkers could let posters know that they had lurked.. and posters could get some kind of gauge of the usefulness of what they've posted’ (Will Wharfe).

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o Anonymous posting within the netiquette frames is another way of facilitating the first step (‘maybe there's a case for having the ability to respond to a contribution anonymously.. ie to say "I found this useful" etc but without running the risk of offending someone (the anonymous responses could be from a pre-defined list) or starting a lengthy discussion. That way lurkers could let posters know that they had lurked.. and posters could get some kind of gauge of the usefulness of what they've posted’: Will Wharfe). ‘Allowing members to use an anonymous CGI form to post their opinion is a very cool idea’ (Rebecca Newton).

Keyboard skills might be an issue: ‘how many people, trying to collaborate online, have reasonable keyboard skills’ (Diane M. Smith).

6.4.5 Management-based Technology

Based on members explicit suggestions on groupz-ware, Management and the right type of software that follows community’s purposes is the key for helping people interact: ‘Have perfect software :-) This would automatically ensure that each conversation was right sized re talkers and listeners. 2) Have perfect management. Who would ensure that the quite types slowly became less shy’ (Ian Dickson). Ian Dickson suggested that ‘People don't like fitting themselves to technology. If you impose a technology on people and they don't like it, they won't use it’. The nature of the community, the purpose and the goals define the tools (groupz-ware applications) they are going to be used from a wide range of open source and on the market software.

Will Wharfe gave a detailed description of a system that might facilitate the process of integration: ‘I would summarise the benefits of this kind of system as follows:1) It provides a gentle path that a lurker can follow out of the shadows and into identified contributor land2) It provides far more feedback for contributors than current "public response or nothing" systems provide3) It should reduce the number of repetitive public postings (where people are just saying "I agree")4) Because more people should respond it gives a much better idea of the overall community reaction to a posting than you get from the few people who are prepared to go fully public with their response.5) Because of point 1 and point 2, it should lead to more public contributors over a period of time 6) It might help to reduce the need for moderator intervention – where someone says something out of line

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and they get a very large number of "I so don't agree" comments from the semi-lurkers 7) It effectively creates the semi-lurker role... and I think that they act rather like people in a public meeting who clap/boo etc when other people do so... They add to the overall response in a way that doesn't expose them personally.’

The properties of a system follows e-minters’ suggestions on Management and Theory, clearly based on community and knowledge building. ‘good technology is rarely as simple as simple technology’ (Ian Dickson). However, ‘there's lots of work to be done on structuring on-line conversations, not just to make the readable, but also reference-able, searchable, indexable, etc.’ (Graham Lally).

7. Looking for Groupz-ware

Searching for a new interface, e-mint committee decided to make a list of essential features and decide on a system suitable to e-mint purpose and future trends:

Type of system: pure web-based, web plus email and also functions as mailing list. Both post and read.Membership management: assign different levels of membership ,i.e. roles, permission based - at forum/board level, definition of level, allows for several 'properties' (different look/feel), shows who's onlineContent management: content can be submitted to holding area, editiorial folks can edit content, editiorial can approve content to be published, content can be published to one or more than one property, posts can be highlighted content (ie publilshed outside the forum), rules can be placed for automatic publishing of certain content, RSS of 'articles' lets u 'subscribe' to comments / threads and emails u when there's an update RSS of forum posts, Resource area (archives, articles, discussions, documents), Searchable archive of discussions, Suppress "out of office" emails.Navigation: templated design - ability to change navigation, designs across separate properties, supports CSS?Personal customization: ability for user to bookmark or save postings on the site, customizable user profiles, ability for user to subscribe to different channels or topics.Languages: languages supportedTools: Calendar, User log files/ reports, Webstats, Admin tools (moderation, cms), Video conferencing - incl whiteboards for collaborative work, Syndication of calendar events to other sites (RSS/Xml), IM ability, Search tools, polls/votes/surveys, forums (Threaded? Non? Personalisable?)Technical: Operating system (NT/Linux/Solaris/OSX etc), decision on commercial or open source system, European based or non-European based system, database, Integration overhead, How much configuration will be required to get this up and running?, Ability to move yahoo archive into new system.

The messages analysis showed that management, theory and technology play very important roles as interacting in all procedural steps of newcomer’s community

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integration. Drawing from the results, we will try to establish supporting connections between the findings for a basic online groupz-ware:

1. Registration system 2. Welcome note (from a person or a robot)3. Profile construction list of members4. Clickable members5. Videoconferencing 6. Induction and training7. Subgroups facility8. Initial one-way communication (votes, polls, surveys, newsletters) 9. Informing message for a first post towards an initial authentic reply10. Netiquette and ‘ignoring facility’ by name and user name11. Word filter 12. Discussion highlights as newsletters

In order to follow the previous system step-by-step we are going to use a virtual avatar, Onie, to follow this process:

a. RegistrationOnie is getting a username and password, while filling a basic profile form to register in the community of her choice. She is able to have a first tour in the interface if she wants while she receives a personal welcoming note. The document introduces her to the community, explains the purposes, netiquette and any rules specifically applied for this community. Then, COMs introduction informs her with the people who are able to help her for any problem. COMs introduce themselves with a photo, their roles and their interests and show Onie how to use the system step by step with both images and text (induction). Standards for ‘good’ messages encourage her initially to follow a basic plan and improvise, as it facilitates eliminating the fear of writing a message to the public. The suggested structure is: introduction and reference to the previous message with a clear agreement or disagreement statement, development of her opinion, use of an example to justify and better explain her suggestions, further explanation if needed and a brief conclusion with a sense of humour. If there is not a first post, a document will inform her for recent and relevant polls, votes and surveys available.

b. TrainingOnie is having a synchronous meeting (it is not compulsory) with a COM or volunteer using a familiar to her way as live chat or videoconferencing, or an asynchronous way via email as a second choice. If synchronous, she is having a tour on the interface, discusses any problems while getting instant feedback, and visits members profiles related to her own interests. She is recommended to fill in all areas of the profile such as provide a photo and hobbies.

c. First PostCOM, relevant volunteers and the system are aware of Onie’s movements and her first post. The system sends a message to the person responsible for Onie. Depending on the nature of the first message and whether it is a reply to a previous message or an introduction to herself, Onie is asked to describe her own

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experiences on the subject, before exhibiting her in interactive dialogues. After her firs post, the immediate reply from COM or Volunteer is towards a strong positive attitude for posting and share opinions.

Any system, even the most intelligent one, cannot replace the human being in this initial process.

8. Theoretical Framework

8.1 What is e-mint? From CoP to CoI and OnCoP

Sociability is concerned with ‘the collective purpose of a community, the goals and roles of the individuals in a community, and policies generated to shape social interaction’ (Preece, 2000:7). Purpose, people and policies are the components of sociability in Communities of Interest (CoI). E-mint group is an Online Community of Interest; the members work or have special interest in online management and online social architecture in their ‘real’ lives and there is a need of exchanging their knowledge and experience. The main purpose of the community is to share information, solve any kind of problems related to online communities, and help each other. 3 individuals started the group (WHEN?) and now we are 455 e-minters (28 April, 2004). The development of a group of individuals who belong to ‘real’ Communities of Practice (CoP) to an online Community of Interest (CoI) is an interesting issue in both everyday and scientific life. The development continues to an online CoP (OnCoP), where a common constitution, shared visions, as well as shared products just like this chapter and the book or seminars as well as roles assigned by democratic procedures (voting a committee).

Social relationships, improvisation and brainstorming in asynchronous messaging are the driving forces for the community evolution. Community Knowledge Building as Informal Learning appeared to be the outcome for all members, based on Polanyi’s concept of tacit knowledge as invisible knowledge (1966). Tacit knowledge could be a result from informal learning, which are contextual and tacit in their character, occur in a grey zone of privacy (Bjørnåvold, 2000) and they are difficult to detect and appreciate. Bjørnåvold suggests that ‘invisibility is increasingly being perceived as a problem affecting competence development at all levels, form the individual to the society as a whole’ (p.29). E-minters interacted towards the construction of community-artefacts which is an abstract form i.e. knowledge. Enhancing creativity by being co-present with CoI members saves significant time for newcomers’ introduction and engagement. Learning is evident in personal changes related to the behaviour although very often learning is not visible. Group intelligence created by the members helps the members define themselves in a self-referential manner. Collective development of new ideas, forms, norms, attitudes, purposes and policies might suggest ‘Community Darwinism’. As a result, the process becomes extraordinary important but not necessarily the individual.

8.2 Community Knowledge Building for Group Becoming

CoI and CoP echo Sherif and Sherif (1953) as well as Siegel and Siegel (1957); they recommended a distinction between reference (RG) and membership groups (MG).

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RG work differently than structured, membership groups i.e. motivation appeared higher in MG although the quality was better in RG. Sherif and Sherif (1953) suggested that both membership and reference groups affect the attitudes held by the individual. The direction of a person’s attitude change over time depends on the attitude norms of her membership and her reference group. The members attain membership in RG while maintain membership in MG (Siegel and Siegel, 1957). Membership is some times imposed comparing to free registration in a reference group. The quality of work is sometimes better in RG due to free improvisation, unguided self-directed learning and brainstorming. People tend to exhibit attitude change in RG rather than MG (Siegel and Siegel, 1957). Therefore, the process of active participation is supposedly certain in CoP and possible in CoI whereas CoI are more likely to exhibit change i.e. development comparing to MG. RG members tend to discuss their cognitive dissonance with the content and are more motivated in a free environment comparing to the experts-disciples interaction in MG (McGuire, 1965). The great ratio of lurking could be justified by the previous suggestions.

The process of group becoming is connected to members’ attitudes as containing both the individual and the influence of the reference group in a continuous and interactive circle. As such, the interdisciplinary term that bridges psychology and sociology is ‘attitude’:

… for attitudes have social references in their origins and development and in their objects, while at the same time they have psychological reference in that that they inhere in the individual and are intimately enmeshed in his behaviour and his psychological make-up.

(Warren & Jahoda, 1966:10)

Tough’s theories on self-directed and informal learning consist the links between the two decades (1971, 1978). He advocates about self-directed learning being fairly common in its incidence across most social groups.

8.2.1 From CoP to CoI and OnCoP: the Importance of Sleepers’ Transition

After Rheingold’s book The Virtual Community in the 1990s, the idea of simulating a community was as popular as ever. Collaborative learning (Brown et al., 1989) and the communities of practice (Lave, & Wenger, 1991) supported this view. Is it the new concept of the new millennium or are we reinventing the wheel? Fox (2002), Hodgson & Reynolds (2002) as well as Jones (2003) do not share the enthusiasm. Fox suggests the actor-networks based on a more individualized approach as the communities of practice are actually imagined communities. This is due to the fact that specific practices are exhibited in communities of practice such as mimicry, demonstrating and working together and these properties cannot be implemented in an online learning community. Aristotle (384-322 BCE, translation from the ancient text by the author) suggested 3 levels of a process for becoming a Master or a ‘scientist’; in addition, the previous level contains the potential for the next: (i) the learner who knows nothing but if s/he wants can change through learning by studying next to a Master; (ii) the learner who has reached her/his Master’s level and if s/he wants could bring theory into practice; and (iii) the learner who now as a Master decides to practice what s/he has learnt. The latter are the real Masters or the scientists according to the ancient text: ‘όντες, ενεργεία γίνονται επιστήμονες’ (2003:168). Following a

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contemporary terminology for CoP legitimate peripheral participation the three levels might appear as (Lambropoulos, 2004a):

(i) Initial introduction to the learning practice: the learner knows nothing about the subject. The Master (tutor from now on) is the more advanced person who will help the learner to build the distance of the asymmetrical interactions (zone of proximal development, Vygotsky, 1978:86).(ii) Mutual understanding between the tutor and the learner occurs when interactions are symmetrical as in common knowledge (Mercer, 1995) and grounding.(iii) Energetic participation in the community of practice, in order to develop both the community and its media/artefacts as such.

Jones prefers the term network metaphors as the online tends to separate out from the real community. Jones implies the importance of blended community and learning, the idea of online and offline communities that need to be merged in the activity of real people who are both simultaneously on and offline when they are engaged with computer networks. So, the concept of OnCoP seems to not support all kinds of online communities. As such, the OnCoP usually blend both off and online synergetic activities either with their real and/or virtual colleagues. Some of the members act as invisible observers of the synergetic activities and never seem to cross the threshold of observation.

CoP ad CoI differ in the set of goals especially towards the final products of participation. Attention and goal making process is quite different than setting intention. Setting intention is focused on the present moment and is connected to group existence as the underline force that aligns the members’ actions. Intention does not change comparing to goals and motivation although sometimes is not detectable. Attitudes, motivation, attention and goals are outgrown on intention, actually focus on future outcomes and are continuously to circumstances in order to deliver the artefact. Identifying the group intention and being grounded provide integrity and unity in the group as well as revealing common vision. As such, group dynamics are aligned and all members’ move towards the same direction. Right group intention provides the group with continuing aspiration and quality of work. As such, CoP might have higher levels of motivation and goals, and division of labour follows the jigsaw strategy for completing a mission but sometimes they lack what we called previously as ‘unified thread’ that intention provides, offers shared vision and excels the quality of work. Shared intention creates the self-organised system in CoI and enhances informal learning. Engagement in CoP is crucial but not necessary in CoI. According to Wenger (1998), engagement in social practice is the fundamental process by which members learn and so become who they are as they pursue shared goals over time. Levels of engagement are depended in many factors, both external and internal to the individual. As all e-minters shouted ‘lurkers consist a vital part of the community’. Potential Participants are not voiceless or powerless.

People who belong to different Communities of Practice (CoP) around the world or a specific CoP may never form Online Communities of Interest (CoI) as well as the latter may never become Online Communities of Practice (OnCoP). The attempt to describe a process of becoming is just a suggested description of an individual using a canvas to justify the amazing things that happen in the e-mint group development.

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8.3 Dialogic Accounts of Online Discourse: Community Knowledge Building for Community Evolution

Papert (1991) once suggested that when the learner is engaged in the construction of something external or at least shareable, it indicates a cycle of internalization of what is outside, then externalization of what is inside. The verbal exchange in the community works as the situated platform for conceptual alignment, collaborative learning and common knowledge (Mercer, 1995) all together within the Informal Learning framework. The selection of particular clusters of text that convey the subjective parts of meaning is a dynamic, cognitive process in which the interpreter ‘foregrounds’ certain elements of the display and ‘backgrounds’ the others (Nystrand, 1992). The internal mechanisms that help the active readers on the web to reflect on the ‘online dialogical meanings’, support a constructive grid of interpretations and selection of the meaningful material. If common meaning comes about when the conversants synchronize their role with each other, then internal reciprocity is the initial process of internalizing the meaning. Internal reciprocity is different than empathy. The first is reflective and logical, the latter is emotion based. If there is a way of separating the useful from the useless information in a group-generated text then the selection and construction of the meaning will be a result of internal reciprocity going beyond the person who provided the information (creative copying) in Community Knowledge Building.

An author’s work is without limit and without signification as these are taken by the reader (Barthes, 1997). Bakhtin (1981) emphasized the dialogical construction of meaning as a basic characteristic of all communication. Meaning cannot be transmitted from one to the other, but is constructed between the speaker and the listener, the writer and the reader. It is the reciprocity and the active engagement with the ideas of others that changes an action into interaction, the monologue into dialogic processes. There is a wider point of viewing newcomers as potential participants in online communities since all members need to ground their initial knowledge by reflecting on both other members’ behaviour and themselves simultaneously. As such, every member has the potential to act; the majority decides to stay behind the scene without crossing the threshold of externalization.

The use of contents arouses awareness among the members of the group and a general tendency appears to accept or reject the opinions (Hovland et al., 1953). This selection activates the process of informal group learning and changes occur in or against the favour of opinions towards conclusions drawing on both individual and group level. Surprisingly enough we find an experiment conducted by Janis and King in 1954 cited in Hovland et al.. The experiment had two experimental groups of college students: (a) ‘active participants’, who were supposed to deliver a talk in a group situation and (b) ‘passive controls’, who merely read and listen the same material. The results suggested that opinion change was created by the active participants and was depended on the amount of improvisation and not related to the amount of satisfaction of the active participants. Improvisation indicated that the subjects were trying actually to convince themselves in the first place. ‘The findings provide additional support for the improvisation hypothesis and suggest that the effects of active participation depend upon whether the act of conformity is accompanied by inner responses of a supporting or an interfering nature’. In addition, Hovland and Weiss (1951, cited in Hovland et al., 1953) the ‘sleeper effect’ of the passive subjects

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occurs when cues as to the source of reference i.e. the line of reasoning are absent or forgotten. People tend to disassociate the content with the source after a period of time and as such the learning seems to originate from the group and not from the individuals who made the suggestions. The latter is a great indicator for a research interest in public/group copyright.

8.5 Informal as Social Learning in Online Communities

Livingston (2000) indicated that informal learning includes anything you do to gain knowledge, skill or understanding from learning about anything that interests the individual outside of formal or organized courses occurred either individually or collectively. He stresses the fact that ‘the centrality of their tacit knowledge to the production and reproduction of society has typically been unrecognized both by others and by these people themselves’. According to McGivney, V. (1999) informal learning is learning that takes place outside a dedicated learning environment and which arises from the activities and interests of individuals or groups, but which may not be recognised as learning. As McGivney (1999, p. vi) points out “in the context of adult learning, ‘progression’ can mean several things – personal progression, social progression, economic progression and educational progression. These frequently overlap.” In a recent study conducted by Cook and Smith on UK Online Centres (2004), progression was taken to mean evidence of an advancement of a person’s goals, knowledge, viewpoint, ambitions and/or confidence. Livingston (2000) extends the informal learning concept to lifelong learning and knowledge society.

Livingston’s paper is the main reference to informal learning in our days. He suggested that the basic terms of informal learning (e.g., objectives, content, means and processes of acquisition, duration, evaluation of outcomes, applications) are determined by the individuals and groups that choose to engage in it. He uses the terms explicit and implicit knowledge as found in Claxton, 1998:

Explicit informal learning is distinguished from everyday perceptions, general socialization and other tacit learning by peoples' conscious identification of the activity as significant learning. The important criteria that distinguish explicit informal learning are the retrospective recognition of both a new significant form of knowledge, understanding or skill acquired on one's own initiative and also recognition of the process of acquisition. This guideline distinguishes explicit informal learning from all of the other tacit forms of learning through everyday activities. In basic socialization, learning and acting constitute a seamless web in which it is impossible to distinguish informal learning activities in any discrete way. This provides a diffuse boundary on the informal side of the continuum of learning.

Livingston stresses the importance of the collective aspects of informal learning - the social engagement with others - as an integral part of any actual knowledge acquisition process. In addition, he suggests that ‘much of the most important learning adults do occurs in these moments of transition which provoke a concentrated period of informal learning’.

Guy Claxton (1998) described tacit learning within informal learning environments such as working environments, super-markets, galleries etc. His definition of

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knowledge was implicit and explicit (1998:31). Actually Claxton suggested that there is a positive link between the two; explicit knowledge is acquired by using the d-mode (as deliberate) whereas implicit uses intuition and improvisation occurring as insights (same as the reference groups). Learning occurs by osmosis as in implicit knowledge develops the ability to do the job quickly and in some cases quite abruptly and accurately (p. 22). Learning by osmosis suggests that the individual can get better doing the job by picking up subtle patterns embedded in hundreds of examples in everyday life. The patterns are always there, it needs a relaxed mind to see the unified thread between them ‘simply by attending and responding to the situation, without thinking about it, people are able to extract complex patterns of useful information’ (p. 25). As such, he suggests that collective brainstorming and improvisation are valuable for throwing up novel ideas as in CoIs. D-mode is the evaluation of the previous while he quotes Poincaré ‘it is by logic we prove; it is by intuition we discover’ (p. 93). A reader of threaded messages gets into a flow while the reader moves to different parts of the discussion activity in a very short time. Lynne Chisholm, in a presentation for the EU for non-formal learning (2003), summarised learning methods that seem to be applied to our effort for informal learning recognition for CoI:

Communication-based methods: interaction, dialogue, mediation Activity-based methods: experience, practice, experimentation Socially-focussed methods: partnership, teamwork, networking Self-directed methods: creativity, discovery, responsibility

Our suggestion is founded on the previous discussions and sees informal learning under the same lens as formal learning. When we refer to education most of the times we connote formal education and academic training without considering neither the framework where formal education takes place (schools, organizations, buildings, the educators as human beings with shared problems), nor the timetable, the actual time spent on education. Most important of all, everyday learning is not considered to be part of the education and the educational system. Seeing and being aware of everyday situations is learning indeed, learning about the world we live in; learning is seeing and being aware of how we learn, about our behaviour and our own selves in a self-reflective manner. This is the parallel school. The following figure describes the three sides of learning that simultaneously occur: (a) learning in specific institutions and organizations (formal learning); (b) learning about the world and ourselves (informal learning); (c) learning in our working environment within communities of practice (CoP). The connecting thread between all is interaction, co-operation and collaboration with the context and the people inside the context.

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Non-formal learning (non-formal L as semi-structured learning) is suggested to be located within the grey zone between formal and informal learning. The grey zone between formal learning and CoP is suggested to be the area where CoP form formal learning with focus groups, related to a more democratic approach of decision making in order to participate in decision making. Lastly, the grey zone between CoP and Informal Learning is considered to host Communities of special Interest (CoI). Self-directed, Self-organized learning in Social contexts is proposed to be the learning strategy within and outside the triangle. The holistic educational principle exists within the triangle as the locus where all three approaches meet towards life-long learning process.

We pay great attention to be educated, get academic degrees but we forget the discovery of how to live, interact and cooperate, participate in politics. Learning is evident in personal changes exhibited in the behaviour of the individual although very often is not visible. Informal learning in CoI is invisible with both individual and social aspects in terms of identification, assessment and recognition. In informal learning, formal education is used a tool the individual uses in action. Informal learning contradicts slow and ineffectual formal learning that appears more as a military service. Formal educational characteristics are based on repetition, imitation, thinking in circles, educational design patterns rooted in the curricula as well as fixed educational toolkits (e.g. Computer-Assisted Language Learning, Learning Objects). Informal learning accompanies institutional learning and goes beyond imitation, repetition as well as trial and error methods that are based on old reactions and memories in order to make learning easier. Informal learning leads the person beyond the borders of the known based on self-organized and self-directed learning in a less depended framework. In learning in actuality, not in theory, learning is becoming self-efficient, bringing a tremendous feeling of security to the individual. In addition, individual’s responsibility is necessary for both the other members and the environment.

As such, informal learning could be distinguished in (a) learning in social contexts and (b) learning about oneself within these contexts. Learning about oneself suggests the self-observation and self-directed learning strategies, where the individual identifies patterns of behaviour in her/his own learning, each time finings her balance between herself and the environment and stores them as information. The most important aspect of this learning is the identification of the process and the environment at once. This indicates a process of cooperation and interaction among the community members. Consequently, informal learning is a process-based learning instead of facts-based learning and within this framework has been discussed and analyzed up to now. Although informal learning has being identified as significant as formal learning in this study, there is great difficulty on validating it since any alteration of the known formal education patterns is suggesting chaos and confusion and as such, actual standards cannot be identified. As a result, following a process directed framework and based on the outcome of e-mint study, we identify the following processes for informal and non-formal learning objectives:

being aware of the situation, identification of the framework description of the situation/environment description of problems and provision of solutions and suggestions

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participation in the process of changing the previous environment This framework might provide an initial canvas for Informal and Non-formal Learning assessment and validation.

9. Summary

This effort for recognition of Informal Learning as Community Knowledge Building proved to have very interesting results. At the beginning, the feeling was that a good tool might help lurkers to make the first step but it was proved wrong. He mos sophisticated system as well as a basic system have nothing to offer to the community unless good management will support the process from the start that is the registration. Informal learning is based on intimate relationships between the individual and the environment on a daily basis. Informal learning is the place where both the inside and the outside world meet not based on ideational but factual events, as the result of deep understanding. Informal learning goes beyond fragment finding and carries the joy of learning itself without any motive. In informal learning, profit and goals are not the issues since all actions are incomplete and weaved in a process-based learning.

Object appraisal involves scanning and appraising the input of information from the external world for its relevance to person’s motives, goals, values and interest. Social adjustment refers to the mediation of self-other relations via the information that engages member’s motives to affiliate and identify herself with the group or to detach and oppose herself and in an individual-group circle, the reference groups influence her attitude. As the results indicated, it is the community leaders’ role to sustain the level of familiarity and make clear the purpose of the community in the initial introduction and training. Increased confidence as well as the immediate feedback for the first post could help newcomers and non-participants. Preece and et recorded 74 reasons for lurking. Both that study and this one showed that most of the reasons are not negative and could be solved with proper management and suitable social psychology theory. The introductory stage provides the best opportunity for support and grounding. In this stage, timing and developing right attitudes are very crucial for the newcomer.

The sleeper’s transition seemed to exist in both the individual and the community level. Waking up is connected to communicate, get to know and help each other, in an e-motional way.

Acknowledges

Special thanks to all e-minters! I am grateful to Cheryl Isaacson for the continuing source of inspiration, Jenny Preece for all the editing, the suggestions and her patience with me in the middle of the summer, Ben Shneiderman, another source of inspiration, Lizzie Jackson for her suggestions on difficult issues and last but not least Paul Gains for introducing me to FlashQuoes. The book chapter belongs to:

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Dr. Dorine AndrewsDirector, External Relations Yale Gordon College of Liberal ArtsAssistant Visiting Professoriat.ubalt.edu/andrews 410.837.5128

Alex Bainbridgealex.bainbridge@travelucd.comwww.travelucd.com

Anne Bennett

Lucy Crichton no more info

Ian DicksonCEO, CommKit.com Community Technology Platform

Dan Dixon

Ilana Fox

Peter Harvey

Robin Hamman

Graham Lally

Cindy Lemcke-Hoong

Ann Light

Ewan J. MacLeod

Rob Marcus

Emma Monks

Miranda Mowbray HP Labs Bristol mjfm@hplb.hpl.hp.com

Rebecca NewtonSulake Labs

Catherine Padfield

Jennifer Preece (Professor)

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Information Systems DepartmentUniversity of Maryland Baltimore County1000 Hilltop CircleBaltimore, MD 21250, USA

Chris Rollings

Nabil ShabkaBiblio*Tech*50 Carnwath RoadLondon SW6 3EG Tel:Fax:+ 44 (0)20 7384 6980+ 44 (0)20 7384 6981

Diane M Smith

Dominic Sparkes Operations DirectorTempero

David Satenstein

Will Wharfe tagteacher.net

John Wood

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APPENDIX I

Successful implementations for Non-participants and Technology

Dan Dixon

We recently changed the registration system for one of our community products, H2G2, people had to log in and migrate their accounts. In the first week we had about 4,000 people move accounts, yet in that same week only 1,000 people posting. Some people do have multiple accounts and may have moved those, but there was nearly 75% of the registered and visiting population not posting that week. We now have nearly 14,000 people registered with h2g2 but still only about 1,000 posting a week. We get roughly 50,000 unique users visiting (logged in or not) each week. Of all the people that end up on the site 2% post.

Rob Marcus

People might occasionally visit the BBC football community '606' when they're bored on a Friday afternoon, to see what people are saying about, say, Tottenham Hotspur. If they did this on h2g2 it too would be lurking. But because searching on 'White Hart Lane' finds the h2g2 page listing every football ground in the country, I might find myself looking at it, then leaving because it isn't actually a football site. Result? 1 visitor, 0 posts. Not lurking though.

Ewan J. MacLeod

We used to run one forum for American nationals; and another forum for British nationals. The lurker rate was incredibly high on the British forum because tons of people were "being British" and not posting anything because they hadn't been introduced and thought it would be impolite to simply just start chatting. We found that the average lurker has been browsing the forums actively for weeks and in some cases, months! (We found this from questioning those who recently began posting). Back at the American forum, people were just getting stuck in. There was less British politeness going on. We managed to substantially change the conversion rate from lurker to poster by providing introduction guides, encouraging the ability to post without registering (which then usually led to subsequent registration at some point!) and also

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by popping up windows on a regular basis inviting the viewers to register and post.

Try hovering around any one of the pages on www.rackspace.com <http://www.rackspace.com/> - I think after about a minute of looking at a page continuously (i.e. "browsing"), a little "groopz-ware" application pops up and one of the Rackspace sales guys writes "Hi there, how may I help you?" It's quite annoying if you are an existing customer just having a look because I feel compelled to be polite and explain that I'm an existing customer (to the disappointment of the sales person I'm sure). but it's a godsend if you're a potential customer with a question. I have been converted from a lurker or browser on a website to a purchaser via this technology.

Dan Dixon

…then we stopped Google spidering DNA we got 50% drop in unique users overnight (well overnight 3-4 weeks later when Google re-indexed). I was hassled at the time because we dropped 50% of our unique users but the number of hits stayed the same.... Though when examined the PIs dropped by about 3 times the number of users, so it showed that we lost the serendipitous traffic that came and read 3 pages. The remaining 50% read on average about 35 pages each! There's probably a power law hiding under a rock there somewhere but I've not looked any further yet. It was the 3000/1000 ratio that seemed to indicate "real lurkers" or less active members of the community (and we saw that over a week, I found it very interesting that people moved their accounts but didn't post at the time).

I think it's time for someone to build a rich client application (I think in flash) for reading messages and presenting that information sensibly and dynamically. I hope we'll get the opportunity to do something like that here at the beeb. But being the beeb we'll not get round to that in a hurry.

Robin Hamman BBC

…rather than simply targetting users online, we've sometimes gone out to different events (Asian Festival, WW2 Reunion, clubs, etc) to encourage people to participate. We register them and hand them a print out of the details. Then we find them a discussion to post a message. By the time they get home, they have a response to their first post, either from our hosts or another

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user. This can draw them in quite quickly.

Another idea I've seen work well, usually on dating sites, is a clickable list of new members. A good host, and many of the regulars, can then click the name, see who they are discussing with, and say hi, introduce the new people to discussions they might like, etc.

Diane M Smith BP

It's interesting to compare business project communities and learning communities. For example, my experiences in BP have been very good in terms of people's ability to work without f2f. However, BP has an extraordinarily well-developed networking culture and people are comfortable with the technology.

John Wood UNIONREPS

One of the best techniques we've used is to ensure that new users are monitored closely so that our team can "pounce" on them a few moments after they choose to interact to ensure they get a response and are treated correctly.

If an occasional lurker blinks for a few days, they'll likely miss the one topic that was crying out for their specialist knowledge ('health and safety implications of rusted shopping trolleys', anyone?). We have a huge asset in that our members are naturally mavenish (you have to be unnaturally keen to be a volunteer union rep), but making sure people pass through regularly enough (without necessarily posting) is key. Seems to be working well at the moment, but we're still only a new site. The limited mechanisms we use for bringing back the lurkers are polls and occasional special offers, as well as discussion highlights in a fortnightly newsletter. Any other (cheap) tips on this would be very appreciated! We're still gathering in our first impact survey results, but anecdotal evidence also suggests lurking is good for the soul in support communities like ours. Our members are naturally isolated (often the only person that all their workmates are looking to, when they don't know a lot more themselves), so the sense of membership that evidence of other people with similar problems brings is a good in its own right.

Ian Dickson CommKit

By example CommKit is based around every Topic being it's own unique discussion and thus unique group of people. So

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if you wanted to involve the 6 people about X out of the community of 400, you can do so, and take it Secret. And since they would know that there were only 6 members, and only those 6 will see what they write, it's no longer speaking in public, it's talking round a table. Shy types will still keep quiet, but 80% will talk... We also have profiling and allow people to use profiles to bring groups together. Is it a software panacea? No. But it is a good tool for a community builder serious about building a community. Interestingly we always thought that it would be used for communities of several hundreds and upwards (since I always thought that a yahoo group is fine for smaller numbers) but we are finding that in many cases surprisingly small groups (100-200) are looking at using us because the complexity of the group is too much for "one box" solutions. One the induction/ training side we are finding that it takes a while for people other than the administrator to start to get the confidence to create new topics etc.

Rebecca Newton Sulake

My favorite word filter developed for boards was developed by the creator of the W3 php boards (now owned by Infopop). You could replace all filtered words with any word of your choice. I always used "cowboy" so when someone would say "You're a real ass****" the filter would say "You're a real cowboy!"

Nabil Shabka Bibliotech

This why I wanted to see the ablity to have more than one discussion thread for emint - which is what we do internally. This helps to creat COP's within COP's or COI's, which in turn stimulates conversation. The more micro the group the lower the lurker/poster ratio and the higher likelihood of a new arrival posting. One fourm's lurker is another forum's poster.

Miranda Mowbray HPLabs

I've found holding a videoconference useful for introducing a team that don't know each other and can't meet F2F: it increases the level of commitment. Videoconferencing is a clumsy medium for technical discussions (whether or not you've met the people you're talking with), but I've found it good at transmitting a sense of occasion and of human presence.

Annoying tech-tools are the following: 1) Lazy quoting - where people don't trim the previous message to the bits that matter, resulting in posts that are hundreds of lines long, for two lines of comment. (Ian

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Dickson).

2) Autoresponders that let me know that someone is "out of the office right now" (Ian Dickson).

3) "Get me off this list" posts, IF the instructions are clearly there on all the messages... (Ian Dickson).

4) Messages whose subject is Digest, since this tells me nothing about the subject and life can be too short to open them all up and see what they are about. (Ian Dickson).

5) Top Posting… is annoying if the new text is closely dependent on the older one though. (Ian Dickson).

6) I find it very hard to follow the threads in online conversations, forums, message boards etc, especially when you log on and there's just a page listing all the recent contributions, often on a different subjects – its quite daunting to know where to jump in. (Lucy Crichton).

7) Maybe it's personal but I hate reading conversations on boards where I can only see the message titles/threading and have to click on each message to get in. (Dan Dixon).

APPENDIX II

Case study results by e-mintersAnn Light I did a study into one of the first big Web- based discussion forums (set up by The Guardian around the general election). Here's a snippet 'cos I'd like to reflect with you on whether anything/what has changed... (For those interested in the history/method/purposes/rest of the findings, the paper can be found at the Journal of CMC: http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol4/issue4/light.html)

"It became apparent, though, that the motives of newcomers differed in certain respects from those of the experienced participants. We found that newcomers were a little more likely to post to `put an opinion' (88%), far more likely to `see what would happen' (45%, compared with 27% overall and 17% of readers-turned-contributors) and less likely to post because they disagreed with someone else (30%), than the average. In contrast, some experienced discussion group browsers who rarely

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contributed (readers-turned-contributors) gave quite specific reasons for why they had been stimulated into posting: `Contributors were trivializing an important subject that affected the lives of many disadvantaged people.' Whereas this last example reflects a commitment to changing people's attitudes and was clearly a response to the content of other postings, by contrast, many of the people who were new to forums were responding to the mere fact of the forum, as is indicated by the answer `see what would happen'

We also found that non-participating newcomers who responded were a bit more likely to express their behavior in positive terms, scoring higher on statements `would rather just read other people's opinions' (70 respondents, which was 24% against 20% for all non- participants) and `read it for information' (103 respondents, which was 35% against 30%) and marginally lower on those indicating lack of interest (by an average of about 3%). Not surprisingly then, this group was found to be more likely to return to the forums than non- participating visitors with greater experience, who perhaps chose to go elsewhere. The most common reason given for not participating was lack of time (148 respondents, 43.5%) and some people amplified this by saying that they read the forums at work, where discussing would be frowned on.

APPENDIX III

Why Lurkers Lurk?

1. Answer - because most people hate standing up and speaking in public. They are scared of making a mistake or being thought stupid. (Ian Dickson)

2. she never posted because she felt a little intimidated by all the expertise on the list! (Ian Dickson)

3. Because most people hate editing documents unless they already have a trust relationship with those who will be their co-editors. (Ian Dickson)

4. They suffer from "only the usual suspects contribute" syndrome, as do mailing lists. (Ian Dickson)

5. What's interesting is fear of people reacting to brevity. (Ian Dickson)

6. There are many occasions I find I've read a contribution which moves me to just want to post "I agree", but I too hold back. (Chris Rollings)

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7. Fear of appearing patronising dogs me. (Chris Rollings)8. I often feel guilty reading the messages because I

feel I have nothing to contribute but instead just read other people's ideas. (Lucy Crichton)

9. I guess that people will contribute when the discussion is most relevant to them and they have something they feel adds value to the 'conversation' even if the rest of the time they are silent. (Lucy Crichton)

10. the/any group, and what the 'expected' Signal-to-Noise ratio is. Some groups are intended to be chatty, informal affairs in which, possibly, the act of interacting is more important than what is being said, whereas other groups are more like newspapers, and thus people join it for the information rather than the conversation. (Graham Lally)

11. People lurk for both altruistic as well as for personal (selfish) reasons, and posters have more positive attitudes toward lurkers than lurkers themselves. Lurkers do not report as much satisfaction with their experience as posters, but do feel they get what they need. (Dorine Andrews)

12. One other explanation for the 2% would be if the site (or any site) makes it difficult for people to post when they want to; (Rob Marcus).

13. I hypothesize that the majority of lurkers on a discussion forum are doing so because they can't find a way in; or are not sure what to do. (Rob Marcus).

14. The lurker rate was incredibly high on the British forum because tons of people were "being British" and not posting anything because they hadn't been introduced and thought it would be impolite to simply just start chatting. (Ewan J. MacLeod).

15. I wouldn't underestimate community/group burnout as a factor in their either. (Dan Dixon).

16. I open myself to the possibility that everyone has got bored of this topic, or doesn't find what I'm saying of interest. (Ann Light).

APPENDIX IV

Volunteers (by Rebecca Newton, Sulake)

Rebecca’s example on Sulake provides a clear description of the work volunteers do and the way their job is appreciated: ‘At Sulake, we involve our Hotel Guides (members) in just about every aspect of the

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community by giving them Team Leader responsibilities (training team, recruitment team, safety team...) and by recognising them daily as a vital part of our community. The Hotel Guides (sometimes called "Community Leaders" in many online communities) are responsible for providing a strong presence as active members of Habbo. They assist new players, foster community among the players, teach new players about online safety, help us create new teams, provide a ton of "front line" feedback to the staff, and deal with many issues that arise from the daily operations of the site. One person can't spend one-on-one time getting to know all community members, but a team of many can do this and this team can provide feedback to the Community management. We build community one person at a time. Enlisting lots of people to get involved in fostering community is a good thing. Volunteers can and often do a much better job at fostering community because they are first and foremost, community members. Community Managers would do well to enlist volunteers to be active in every aspect of community building. It just means "putting the right person in charge of the right task and getting out of their way" as someone in the Volunteer world once said’.

APPENDIX V

Feelings in Online Discussion

Based on two researches an empathy and feelings within a community (Preece, 2000; Lambropoulos, 2004b) we decided to look for expressions of feelings of any form within the online text. We found 40 different messages with intensive expressions. We tried to categorize the expressions, initially without trying to find any connections with Theory or Management although it seems that technology tolls that will be able to describe expressions would be much appreciated. In addition, he decision not to mention the names of e-miners who posted the feeling-based phrases was made. As such the categories are the following:

Net-Text descriptions (:-), ;-), F2F ) Expressions of feelings using one word (heh, Yay! Brilliant!

<grin>) Descriptions of feeling-based body language:

> Should I (tongue in cheek, remember) be happy or sad about the fact that you discussed converting lurkers to users by responding to them? (Rebecca Newton). > I've found myself thinking "Yowza, now here's someone we need to hear from!" > I know that if I was checking out a community and someone sent me a message I'd be freaked out

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and would probably shut the browser...> not unlike the kind of evaluation sheet you fill in (or don't!)

Apologise and feelings of discomfort: > Sorry, gone off the point a little there.> I often feel guilty reading the messages because I feel I have nothing to contribute but instead just read other people's ideas.> Why oh why> Sorry I probably jumped the gun…> I hate reading conversations> nothing more debilitating than 'daband peck'

Feelings directed specifically to other members:> Thank you Rebecca Newton> (no offense to Yadkin, Phil!)

General expressions and jokes: > It's a busy day for e-mint!> Yesterday was a nice experience.> Not the least bit boring to me! Thank you for posting (and not "shutting up") and you can come to a party at my place anytime. > I could talk about this with you until the cows come home (as we say in the US).> It is also great to see other people coming forward on this topic.> It's all okay with me.> Thank God!

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APPENDIX VI

Flash-Quotes as interesting comments

Flash-Quotes are interesting comments that draw specific and short descriptions of the subject. At the following table there are Flash-Quotes as extracted from the messages:

Table 2. Flash-Quotes for Management

FLASH-QUOTES for MA

‘It's easy to copy something else that works, but it's the community you need to look at not the technology.’ (Dan Dixon)‘It's not about software as such, it's about psychology first, then software.’ (Ian Dickson)‘So, perhaps Nikki's original question about software to encourage lurkers could be addressed with software?’ (Rebecca Newton)‘You can lead a horse to water’ (Ian Dickson)‘everyone has something to share with the group’ (Rebecca Newton)‘seeding, weeding and watering’ [the community] (Ewan J. MacLeod)‘lurking is good for the soul’ (John Wood)‘Lurkers never ask "how can we be more involved’ (Ian Dickson)‘Lurkers however can be very irritating to community managers who see them all out there and think "wow, if I could get them involved it would really help justify my existence" :-)’ (Ian Dickson)‘Have perfect management. Who would ensure that the quite types slowly became less shy… for building communities that work’ (Ian Dickson)‘We build community one person at a time.’ (Rebecca Newton)‘it's not that lurkers influence the community, but rather how the community itself influences lurking behavior’ (Dorin Andrews)Here's to Lurkers! Becs (2% lurker, 98% yacker - that's a welcomed 2% in some circles - heh) (Rebecca Newton)

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