CW2001 Program - Computers and Writing

Friday
11:15 — 12:30 Session B.5
Netoric’s Tuesday Café LIVE:
The Evolution of an Online Community:
Creating and Sustaining Synchronous
Virtual Communities
RB 284
Tari Fanderclai, James Inman, Greg Siering, Cindy Wambeam
The Netoric Project uses a MOO to bring together geographically
distant colleagues to discuss issues related to computers and writing.
This year’s face-to-face Netoric forum will be conducted in the same
way as a Tuesday Café, with the coordinators facilitating discussion
of our selected topic, “The Evolution of an Online Community.”
Researchers in a rapidly changing academic climate need to be
in close touch with geographically distant colleagues, and more
|and more geographically scattered communities find they need the
immediacy of synchronous electronic meetings as a complement or
alternative to asynchronous forums. Many communities attempt to
establish synchronous forums, but only a few survive. The Netoric
Project is one of the success stories. As members of at least one
thriving community, as well as participants in some of those that
didn’t last, what have we learned about how a synchronous
electronic community succeeds
How do synchronous electronic forums help widely distributed
communities cross geographical boundaries What are successful
techniques for keeping members engaged and for remaining inviting
to newcomers while maintaining the sense of depth so important to
a community How can we assist groups within our field to establish
synchronous electronic forums in their specialty areas These are
among the questions we will pose to the Netoric Live participants. A
second goal in this event is to model the effectiveness of synchronous
discussion forums; the live event is a kind of demonstration of the
weekly online forum.
36 Computers & Writing 2001