Fostering online communication

I suppose I'd better get over my inherent dislike for mail lists, eh? ;-)

Unfortunately, the post-by-mail tools are not integrated with the e-mail notification module, so it won't be anything resembling seamless. In addition, I think it is limited to blog posts and does not provide for replies to forum or comment discussion threads.

I am currently a member of several mail lists. Mail lists do not bother me, but I prefer threaded discussions on a web site with RSS feeds.

MACEP - Metropolitan Area Computing Education Professionals
- Archives (Currently has an interesting discussion on Web Page Hosting for Students)

The other is found on the State Employee Information Center Mailing Lists
- the Super List. Many of the state's lists are moderated for the groups that they serve and do not have open membership.

Part of my reluctance to developing a mail-based reply mechanism is that further encourages participants to stay tied to the limitations of e-mail. I guess what I'm trying to say is: are we trying to encourage educators to use better and more powerful tools than plain e-mail? Or are we trying to tie as many of the communication tools to the lowest common denominator - e-mail?

Mail lists are a real pain - especially when you get into the issues like archives, accidental "reply all", and account management (users still have to manage an ID/password for yet *another* account for each mail list). A well-designed online forum delivers all the features of a mail list without a lot of the drawbacks, plus additional functionality. Yes, it means educators have to click once on a feed item or a link in a daily e-mail update, but once there they have access to all the features of the portal/forum.

As for the proliferation of accounts, IDs and passwords - one of the features I am working on is a single sign-on architecture based on OpenID that will allow users to log into the various OVSD resources (portals, Moodle LMS, etc.) with a single login. So whereas a user has a separate ID and password for all the mail lists and web sites they belong to, in the OVSD world there is one single login and password that works across the system.

I like the idea of single sign-on for ORVSD.

The reality that email is still the least common denominator for electronic communication among many educators is a good indication of how much ground there is to cover. There are still a number of technology people who communicate primarily with email.

I share your view that the forums should help develop staff technology and writing skills by using the new web tools. The end goal is not the cool new technology tools themselves, but what happens when they are used: teaching and learning. The idea that if someone, possibly ORVSD, builds it, they will come, not because of the technology buzz words we throw around, but because they recognize that something important is happening related to their profession that they want to discover and be a part of.

That said, the technology people will still throw around buzz words to communicate. ;)

I see that Paul is setting up a mail list for the 1:1 computing group using Zookoda. It would be interesting to hear how this works for him and his group.

I saw that. I don't think it'll provide much functionality (if any) beyond the existing e-mail notification tool built into Drupal, however. That said, if it works and gets people participating ... I'm all for it!

Ah. That's probably the element I was missing.

That then begs the question: if we are trying to encourage the growth of the community and lower barriers, why would we deliberately set up a tool that allows users to opt in to the system yet does not allow them to post replies? Instead of subscribing to the external mail list, wouldn't it be better to encourage them to go through the same amount of effort and get an OVSD account so that when they read something they can then reply?

I agree that there should be an emphasis on building the skills to use an online forum. I think there will always be the spectators. There are some people who have a similar fear of public writing that I have of public speaking. There are some who do not feel that they have anything they care to contribute, but would like to read what others are writing. If they are reading and learning, then something is happening. Yes, it would be better if they eventually write and participate in the topics that they are interested in. In the meantime, it may be a small step if they just get the information, even if you have to print it and send it to them by snail mail.

As far as I know, while there are some online forums available for specific groups (OETC hosts some of them), there is no Oregon specific forum available like we are discussing. 

I agree with the vast majority of what you said in your post. I think the access to archival posts is one of the key benefits to forums over listservs. I also agree that a "shill" or two seeding the forums with provocative (or at least interesting) topics is the best way to draw participants into a new system.

It sounds like your experience with your curriculum group is similar to what we are facing here. I had hoped that the daily e-mail notification of content with teasers and links directly to the new content would draw users into participating. Although, and this may be where I made a mistake, we did *not* automatically enable the notification.

You said: "In reality, since they were all subscribed to the forum, they got posts via email, so maybe that was a mistake." Why do you say so? Was it a daily digest message? Or was it the full text of every post? If it's the former, I don't see why that would be a bad thing. If it's the latter, I tend to agree.

However, where I disagree with you is the enabling of inbound posting via e-mail. If we want to draw users into using the system, why would we want to immediately give them a way to "cheat" and fall back on using e-mail?

Regarding your concern that: "The extra step of seeing the post in email and then logging in to a web forum was one more step than most of our folks in this group were willing to take." Likely it's my non-educator background, but I'm having a difficult time understanding how seeing a link to an interesting topic in a daily digest message and clicking on it to see the whole post and possibly reply is a barrier. It's literally *one* click. I'm already working on streamlining the login process so that users don't have to keep track of multiple accounts and logging in and out all the time. When a user logs into the system for the first time, they have the option of *staying* logged in. This means for any OpenID-enabled site they connect to (which will include all the OVSD Drupal sites as well as the Moodle server and hopefully many more resources), they're automatically logged in.

This seems to be the critical piece: I don't think that's necessarily the goal. IMO, the goal is to foster communication. If that requires using a web interface, then that's a secondary (although possibly vital) goal.

I emphatically agree ... if the only goal of OVSD was merely providing forums for educators to communicate. In that scenario then I'd swallow my techie-anti-listserv bias and fire up a few mail lists. But the OVSD goal is to provide far more than simple forums. Yes, the communication tools are a large part of it, but there are going to be many other resources on the system. I feel it is important to draw teachers to the OVSD sites so that they can take advantage of all the goodies we're offering.

Perhaps I was mistaken in my initial thinking that the forums would be a good tool to draw the users in and get them looking at the OVSD sites. They come for the forums, they stay for ... well, whichever of the OVSD offerings they find the most useful. Maybe I was backwards. Maybe I should have been thinking we draw educators in with the course repository or the podcasting system or the online professional development courses and then watch them get hooked on the forums - "Oh, look at all this interesting discussion ...."

It's all in the marketing, isn't it? :-)

"It's all in the marketing, isn't it? :-)"

If the goal is promotion, then yes; that's a big part. At some point, if we believe in the "Invisible Hand of the Marketplace," quality (or lack thereof) will likely enter the equation.

Robert Valiant - Umatilla-Morrow ESD - (541)966-3117