Answer Geek

Answer geeks (and we use that term with great respect): Where would we be without them? They help guide us through the challenges of online learning, the Internet, courseware development, and those other intersections of learning and technology.

QUESTION

How can we deploy chat rooms and discussion boards for e-learning and generate interest in them?

ANSWER

Yakimovicz: Computer-mediated communication (CMC) was occurring before the development of the Web, so there's quite a bit of information on it available. My favorite references include four leaders in the field of CMC: Zane Berge, Mauri Collins, John December, and David Woolley.

Berge and Collins offer this Website on e-moderating: www.emoderators.com/moderators.shtml. Although they work and research in higher education, their principles of encouraging and managing discussion can be applied widely. This article, www.emoderators.com/moderators/winograd.html, provides techniques for moderating online conferences so that people continue to participate over time.

John December has been examining CMC since 1992 and has an amazing variety of references on his site at www.december.com. One book that December recommends is Stephen Doheny-Farina's The Wired Neighborhood, which discusses the nature of online community. (Search for the book's title in the Amazon.com box on December's site.) Understanding the basic concepts in this book will help you implement specific online strategies.

David Woolley is an expert in designing computer conferencing systems. See his site at www.thinkofit.com/webconf/index.htm. A company I once worked for decided to add asynchronous conferencing to our e-learning and used David's expertise to customize the software we purchased.

And finally, check out a new book I discovered recently: Amy Jo Kim's Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities. Web strategists are now moving beyond launching online shopping carts to creating experiences that can lead to stronger customer relationships and customer involvement. The ideas discussed in this book could be translated wonderfully into e-learning.

Murphy: ITrain has used both phpBB and GossamerThreads software with success in creating communities. Go to http://phpbb.com and www.gossamer-threads.com .

To see examples of how we used those applications, visit http://itrain.org/msg (phpBB) and http://itrain.org/class (GossamerThreads).

Published: September 2002