An appreciative inquiry of a developing community of learning technologists
Rhona Sharpe, Patsy Clarke
Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom
With the rise of social networking tools and participatory media, it has become all too easy to create a community around a particular field. This project examined the process of developing such a community using an appreciative inquiry approach. The community was initially created from 40 institutionally based teams from 28 UK HEIs and rose to include over 200 members. The community was supported for 28 months with face-to-face and online events and a broad range of social media tools (including Elgg, Second Life, Elluminate, Moodle, Twitter, Flickr), their use modeled and facilitated by expert users from the support team.The programme was keen to adopt a research led approach, where the whole programme had a research culture which informed its practice. The appreciative inquiry therefore ran throughout this process, encouraging a culture where evidence from the inquiry was used to inform and direct the community based model of support. It asked positive questions such as ‘what makes this community effective?’ and ‘what is the value of this community to you’? The iterative nature of the inquiry enabled the collection of data at multiple points over time and in various formats. The result was a large, rich dataset from twenty-five separate data collection points. Each was reported back to the community and the project management team to assist with forward planning of support activities including the use of social media.Based on the voices and stories of members, this paper outlines how the community developed and what its members found of value. The inquiry allowed us to make visible a wide variety of views on the experience of community engagement from full participation to marginalisation. The community provided tangible benefits for participants. There was evidence that the community provided networking opportunities, social events and opportunities for sharing which contributed to the development of a community which had a culture of openness. The value of the community to its members was seen to be opportunities for professional development, informal networking, collaborative team formation and crucially, improved practice.no references included