Facilitating Online Communities Assignment One

Facilitating online communities

Assignment one

April 2011

Overview of the online community
New Zealand Flightsim Forums (NZFF) is a public forum open to anyone, designed to give a friendly, supportive venue to visit, ask for help and enter into discussions that relate to the members shared interest in flight simulation (flying aircraft simulators on PC). As the name would suggest, it is predominantly for New Zealand flight sim enthusiasts. The purpose of the community is to share ideas with like minded people, review new flightsim products, share news related to flight simulators and New Zealand aviation in general. It also is used to help members solve various technical problems relating to flight simulation and computers in general.

“A community is the clustering of similar areas of interest that allows for interaction, sharing, dialoguing, and thinking together” (George Siemens October 17, 2003)

The community membership

The registered membership of the forum is 1674, although since joining the forum I would suggest that only a fraction of these are active members. 180 members have more than 100 posts which would indicate activity levels. Interestingly only one registered member is female. Clearly flight simulation is a male oriented hobby. From the membership list it’s difficult to identify any distinguishing characteristics. They come from all ages, occupations, and ethnic groups. Access to the forum is open but when I registered I did have to apply and wait a day or so before I could post etc. Once my registration was accepted and I was given permission to post, it was pleasing to get welcomed by so many other members. This helped me feel that I had joined a helpful friendly community.

a sense of community is an essential component of collaboration, and that collaboration in turn supports the development of a community. (Palloff and Pratt 2004) (as cited in Paul Left Facilitating Online Comunities)

What online tools are used

The main online tool is an open forum. This is where members of the community communicate, at times very frequently. Although the type of communication on a forum is asynchronous, the rapid response to some of the threads makes it almost synchronous. There is some use of Blogs; however this appeared to be limited, with only a few members making use of this feature.

One excellent use of this forum is the monthly screenshot competition. This is a focus area where each month a topic is generated. For example in February the topic was “a screen shot of some form of agricultural aviation over New Zealand”. I was amazed at the skill, imagination and artistic ability of members who posted in the screen shots competition. When viewing some of the screen shots, I found it difficult to identify if the images were ‘real photos’, or in fact screenshots taken from a flight sim programme. At the end of the month all community members get to vote on the best screenshot. The winner usually gets a prize donated by a commercial flight sim development company. The winning screenshot is proudly posted as the BANNER on the NZFF main screen for the next month. In the screenshot thread, members are able to comment on the posted screenshots; these comments are always good humoured, positive and encouraging.

“The social interaction within a community increases student satisfaction, the collaboration provides a real opportunity to 'extend and deepen learning experiences, test out new ideas... and receive critical and constructive feedback”. (Palloff and Pratt 2004) (as cited in Paul Left Facilitating Online Comunities)

As a new member, I admit I have not yet posted a screenshot in the competition (also mine always look so lame compared to others), but it is a focus activity of the forum and I look forward to viewing the screen shot thread each time I visit.

Rules and guidelines
As mentioned above, when joining the community, my application had to be approved by the moderator, which took about one day. A link to the forum rules and guidelines is included at the top of the main page. All forum rules and guidelines are clearly stated including the reasons for the rule. For example, “this is a public forum, open to anyone, including children. As such, there are both general online forum etiquette and our own rules to consider before posting”.

This page also gives an indication of what will happen if the rules and guidelines are not followed. I feel this is good practice as stating the reason for a rule helps to make the rule valid. However in keeping with the friendly, supportive nature of the forum, most of the rules and guideline page is taken up explaining how the forum tools work, how to make a new topic, post a screenshot etc. Overall, this is a good example of how to make the community friendly and supportive whilst explaining what are inappropriate behaviours and the consequences of not following the rules.

Community Management

As previously stated, when joining the community my application had to be approved by a moderator. The forum is administrated by 5 members identified as administrators and 16 members identified as moderators.

The main forum is divided into 3 main topic areas “New Zealand flightsims”,” NZ related addons” and “Non flightsim related topics”. Each of the main topics is then further subdivided into topics. Each topic has threads which are generated by members. This is where the discussions take place. At least one moderator is given responsibility for one of the sub topics. It was only when analysing NZFF for this assignment that I bothered to look at who were the forum moderators and noted that many of the moderators are active members of the community. This is also in keeping with the friendly nature of the forum.

The dividing and sub dividing of the forum follows a logical manner, it is easy to navigate, making It is easy to fine areas of interest or to find technical help if needed.

“Structured communities can have quite clear protocols for who is responsible for moderating discussion. Some communities can be self-managing, although there is almost always a core group of members who accept particular responsibility for the health of the group”.

(Australian Flexible Learning Network)

Community effectiveness

Although I have only belonged to this forum for a short time, I feel it is a vibrant online community. It succeeds in bringing together a wide selection of the male population who share a common interest in flight sims.

Although I doubt many members “physically” have met, I observed evidence of members showing concern for each other. After the recent Christchurch earthquake several members who are based in Christchurch were, for obvious reasons, not posting on the forum. Several other members went to the trouble of contacting the Christchurch based members and posting news on the forum. I feel this demonstrates several features of a community.

NZFF meets the needs of the community by providing a meeting place for members to discuss, analyse, and share resources for their hobby, flightsiming.

“A community is the clustering of similar areas of interest that allows for interaction, sharing, dialoguing, and thinking together” (George Siemens October 17, 2003)

The community is also effective in providing a venue for members to discuss their hobby. I feel flight simming is probably not a mainstream hobby. Without this “virtual community” most members would not get to share their interest with other people. Hence the community is symbiotic. It needs the members to survive, and the members need the community to enhance their hobby.

A connection that is beneficial to all members of the community...needed in order for the community to survive. George Siemens October 17, 2003

Community Design
I feel the overall layout of the forum, the displaying of the monthly screenshot competition winner, and the logical dividing and sub dividing of topics add to the effectiveness of the community.

The community appears to be basically self moderating with community members always treating each other with respect, providing positive feedback, and suggestions to their ideas, screenshots and questions. The only time a moderator has seen the need to moderate was regarding an issue of software piracy. This supportive environment encourages people to try new things and experiment with new ideas.

References

Left P (2011) Facilitating Online Comunities
Downloaded 2 April 2011 from http://foc2010.pbworks.com/w/page/21049167/Learning-communities

Siemens G (2003 17 october) Learning Ecology, Communities, and Networks Extending the classroom
Downloaded 20 March 2011 from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/learning_communities.htm

Backroad Connections Pty Ltd 2003, What are the conditions for and
characteristics of effective online learning communities? (Version 1.00),
Australian Flexible Learning Framework Quick Guides series, Australian
National Training Authority.
Downloaded 2 April 2011 from http://pre2005.flexiblelearning.net.au/guides/community.pdf