Web-based Learning Solutions for Communities of Practice

ing its course. During an extended event, a range
of trade-offs may take place, including formal
and informal, explicit or ambient interactions in
no specific order. There is a lack in appropriate
synchronous tools to support such unusual patterns,
avoiding at the same time the disruption of
the workflow, by leveraging the use of foreground
and background channels.
Finally, this study clearly indicates a need
for a better model of how to effectively combine
communication channels, such as multi-party
videoconferencing, video presence, instant messaging
and audio chat, that together may form
an appropriate collaborative virtual space for
community members, managing the challenging
switch between foreground and background
communication.
CONCLUSION
The concept of an extended event is introduced
here as a challenging scenario which requires a
set of tools to allow for multi-party, prolonged
and multi-channeled communication. Online
communities of practice often participate in
such events driven by activities such as collaborative
proposal writing. However, there
are no platforms integrating the features that
can effectively support the activities held in the
context of these events. Due to the lack of such
platforms, different tools are used in different
phases of extended events.
The community studied uses the combination
of the audiovisual channel as the foreground communication
medium and the text chat channel
as the background communication medium in
pre-arranged meetings or opportunistic communicative
events resulting from ambient awareness
interactions. The audiovisual channel has been
dominated by a moderator in arranged meetings
and was also used for impromptu one-to-one interactions.
The qualitative analysis of the text chat
has shown that the community members used the
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Live Virtual Technologies to Support Extended Events in Online Communities
text chat channel effectively in interactions related
to work as well as to denote social presence and
enhance their group sense. The text chat favoured
multi-party communication in both videoconference
and video awareness applications, allowing
everyone to communicate anytime without interrupting
the speaker’s flow.
The selection of synchronous tools is not
random. It is identified by the needs of the group
at different temporal points during the course
of the event. The group meets in a pre-arranged
setting with a moderator who ensures that work
is delivered on time. Once tasks are assigned, all
participants go back to work, running ambient
awareness applications to be able to communicate
with peers in case they need to ask a question or
make a quick decision, but without interrupting
their workflow for longer periods as they would
in a videoconference. Every time the users have to
decide what to select for their prolonged collaboration,
whilst each time they may use a different
tool or a combination of tools.
Awareness and disruption trade-offs were not
a main issue in the current context of an extended
event. This is due to the goal driven nature of
the event, with shared tasks that need to be accomplished
in a short time periods with group
collaboration. The well-defined goals and duration
of the collaboration can lower the barriers
for acceptability of background communication
systems. In extended events, users need to be
in continuous contact either using pre-defined
meetings or ambient awareness to collaborate
with their colleagues or make a decision, without
considering this sort of communication intrusive
regarding their privacy.
The main inconvenience of using a set of tools
to support extended events was that the users
had to switch from one tool to another. When for
example a videoconference event was reaching
its end, participants were discussing the use of
another tool to continue working together, not
necessarily in the context of a set meeting. On other
occasions, users were discussing the experience