How & why do people participate in online (learning)
communities?
Literature review
by
John Millner & Howard Baker

How & why do people participate in online (learning)
communities?
4 key questions:
1. What different types of engagement are there?
2. What motivates people to participate?
3. What are the stages of involvement?
4. How to optimise an online environment for learning?

Types of engagement - some theoretical models

Types of engagement - some theoretical models
Etienne Wenger's * \"trajectories of participation\":
1. Peripheral - initial exposure to a community & its practice
2. Inbound - first steps toward full membership of the community
3. Insider - practice in the community becomes integral to individual's identity
4. Boundary - participants link practices across community boundaries
5. Outbound - participants move on to other practices, other communities
* Pioneer social learning theorist, coiner of terms \"Situated Learning\", \"Legitimate
Peripheral Participation\" & \"Community of Practice\"

Types of engagement - some theoretical models
Amy Jo Kim's * 5-phase lifecycle of community participation:
1. Lurkers or visitors - still relative outsiders; participation is ephemeral/
unstructured
2. Novices - new users who have invested time and are en route to full
participation
3. Regulars - full members and committed participators
4. Leaders - members who broker interactions and encourage/sustain
participation
5. Elders - en route to leaving, perhaps to join a different community
* Neuroscientist and social network architect; author of \"Community Building on
the Web\"

Types of engagement - some theoretical models
Mizuko Ito, Danah Boyd et al *
A taxonomy of online social activity:
1. Peer-driven engagement - online extension of offline friendships
2. Interest-driven engagement - involvement in new, special
interest-based networks; may involve file-sharing, commenting and
publication
* Digital Youth Project (3 year, $3.3m ethnographic study into young people's
online activity, reported 2008)

Types of engagement - some theoretical models
Mizuko Ito, Danah Boyd et al *
\"Peer-based, self-directed learning online\":
• Messing around - exploring new interests, tinkering with new
media & technologies and aquiring new media/technology literacies
• Geeking out - delving deep into a topic or craft, becoming expert
and gaining reputation among fellow practitioners
* Digital Youth Project (3 year, $3.3m ethnographic study into young people's
online activity, reported 2008)

Arthur's 1% rule:
In any virtual community
1% of people will contribute their own content
10% will interact with it
89% will just watch *
* Charles Arthur, 2006. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/jul/20/
guardianweeklytechnologysection2

Blast audience segmentation (based partly on 1% Rule)
Creators
Explorers
Discoverers

It follows from the 1% Rule that
1. You need an awful lot of watchers to get even a small number of
active contributors ...
2. So to build an active community you should go out to attract the
watchers. But also..
3. Make it easy for watchers to evolve into contributors

Motives for participation - some theoretical models

Motives for participation - some theoretical models
Peter Kollock*:
Motivations to take part in learning communities:
1. Anticipated reciprocity - the expectation that useful contributions will be
returned in kind
2. Desire for recognition - ie to be thought highly of by one’s peers on account of
contributions to the community
3. Desire for sense of efficacy - ie a feeling that one’s actions can have a useful
impact on the world
* UCLA academic; author, \"The Economomies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and
Public Goods in Cyberspace\"

Motives for participation - some theoretical models
Ayelet Noff and Yaniv Golan*:
Motivations to take part:
1. Desire for connection - ie to feel plugged-in into a social network and/or a
specialist interest or practice
2. Desire for emotional safety - ie a sense of belonging, identification and
validation by the community
3. Altruism - ie the pleasure gained from helping others by sharing something with
them. 'Dopamine over IP'
* Israeli tech entrepreneurs and bloggers

Stages of participation - some theoretical models

Stages of participation - some theoretical models
Gilly Salmon's* stages of engagement with eLearning (slightly
adapted):
1. Online socialisation - familiarisation and bridge-building
2. Information exchange - task-oriented knowledge-sharing
3. Knowledge construction - conferencing, collaboration etc
4. Development - making connections, widening perspectives & reflection
* Professor of Learning Technology, Leicester University

Stages of participation - some theoretical models
Dave Curtis and Mike Lawson's* 7 stages of participation:
1. Giving and recieving help and support
2. Exchanging information and resources
3. Knowledge sharing, explaining & elaborating
4. Giving and recieving feedback
5. Challenging and encouraging each other
6. Planning and engaging in small group collaboration
7. Jointly reflecting on progress and process
* Flinders University of South Australia

Stages of participation - some theoretical models
Ruth Brown's* affective model of online participation:
1. Supportive interaction - finding similarities about which to communicate,
and feeling good about this
2. Substantive validation - positive, detailed feedback from peers,
reinforcing desire to participate
3. Full engagement - coming together with like-minded peers & forming online
friendships
4. Earning of trust - by regular, high-quality, supportive input
5. Community conferment - general acceptance by peers as a valued member
of the community; veteran status
6. Camaraderie - elliptical, multimodal and enjoyable interaction with long-
standing peers
* University of Nebraska

Optimising for learning - some theoretical models

Optimising for learning - some theoretical models
Alfred Rovai* suggests 2 key factors in successful community
formation:
1. Transactional distance, or degree of psychological and communication
space between 'teachers' and 'learners', should be low. Community potential
increases as transactional distance is reduced. Learning communities are
egalitarian rather than hierarchical spaces.
2. Social presence - the amount of time learners spend online and engaged
with others - should be high. There is a network effect from numbers
participating.
* Regent University, Virginia; author of Building Sense of Community at a Distance

Optimising for learning - some theoretical models
James Gee's * Affinity Spaces:
• drawn from peer-group learning in online social games such as
WoW or Yu-Gi-Oh
• \"places - real world or virtual world - where people interact around
a common passion\"
• flatter and less structured than models drawn from formal
learning contexts
* Sociolinguist, University of Wisconsin; author of \"What Video Games Have to
Teach us About Learning and Literacy\"

Optimising for learning - some theoretical models
Affinity Spaces:
•people relate primarily in terms of common interests, goals or
practices
• newcomers are not segregated from masters: one space for all
participants, however inexperienced or expert
• anyone can generate material; everyone shares knowledge
• discourse made up of both 'individual knowledge' and 'distributed
knowledge'

Optimising for learning - some theoretical models
Affinity Spaces:
•encourage and honour tacit as well as explicit knowledge
•many different forms of, routes to, and levels of participation. A
single participant may be peripheral at one time and central at
another.
• many different routes to status
• leaders and mentors are resources. These roles are 'porous' - ie,
they are swapped around