Web-based Learning Solutions for Communities of Practice

Live Virtual Technologies to Support Extended Events in Online Communities
and collaborative contexts for over three years.
Workers situated in the same location use ambient
cues to interact more effectively, e.g. to check
their colleagues’ availability. Students can interact
with other students or tutors using the video for
opportunistic learning interactions. The system
was offered to various multinational enterprises,
European research projects, UK-based organisations
and educational institutes. The Hexagon
server has hosted over 20 rooms since its launch.
Most groups only meet in the context of specific
events, with concrete communicative goals, after
their initial trials. The tool is used on a daily basis
by at least two of these communities for daily video
presence and social networking and to enhance
the sense of community for workers from remote
locations, who interact with co-workers. The other
communities may present some minor activity,
such as summer school events and collaborative
document authoring.
The Study
This study focuses on the research question of
how different tools can support social presence
and interaction in online communities, by discussing
quantitative data logged on the Hexagon and
FM servers. This data indicates the number and
duration of user connections during one extended
event in Hexagon, as well as visual representations
of the user participation in broadcast and chat in
time-limited events held via FM. A qualitative
data analysis of synchronous chat in FM was
conducted to refine the description of the meetings
and measure social presence.
Qualitative feedback is used to provide insights
into the research question of what parameters affect
the choice of tools for extended meetings. A
questionnaire circulated in September 2006 and
completed by 20 members of one community, who
have used Hexagon for at least 5 times and FM
many more was supported by a set of 9 interviews.
The interview feedback is used in this study to
explore into issues regarding the choice of tools
supporting extended events, as well as views on
the trade-offs between awareness and privacy
in foreground and background communication
channels.
The respondents’ feedback, as well as their
synchronous chat messages indicated that they
used a rich mix of tools and technologies in support
of their work and community engagement;
email for asynchronous communication and file
exchange, telephone for informal conversations,
FM for formal meetings and Hexagon for ambient
awareness and impromptu encounters. In this
analysis, we will focus on the use of just these
two tools as representing a primarily foreground
communication channel and background channel
respectively, to draw conclusions on whether tools
need to be redesigned or integrated in order to
support extended events.
The Community
We have selected to analyse a community which
has held regular meetings for a long period of
time and which includes members who use a
range of online communication tools for their
daily interaction regarding the writing of project
deliverables and reports, or research proposals.
This community was funded by the FP6 Network
of Excellence Prolearn, which focused on innovative
aspects of technology enhanced professional
learning, with researchers from several European
institutes in a variety of countries. The members
used social presence and ambient awareness
tools for events of varied duration, depending
on the goals to be achieved. The co-authoring of
a proposal for example might have taken weeks,
while the organisation of an event could last a
few hours.
The Prolearn community is composed of
academics, researchers and PhD or post graduate
students who have often used the FM tool
for limited video meetings, while they have used
Hexagon more rarely for longer events. During
four years of activity on the FM server, the Pro-
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