The skills required for maintaining a successful online learning community.

Maryanne here;
My thoughts and feelings as a participant: The skills required to maintain a successful online community for me are to participate, give honest non offensive feedback and to keep up with the flow of communication. Communication and developing a social community, whether verbal or written are the main skills required. According to Wenger (1997) sharing and developing a community is paramont. F2F classes contribute that body language also has significant bearing in developing a community. Where in an online virtual world body language according to Karen Swan (2003) can be replaced by emoticons to reflect the way someone is feeling at the time or what kind of response was given. "Cohesive verbal immediacy behaviours build and sustain a sense of group commitment to support the development of a discourse community". (p157).
To build a successful online community I felt there had to be a level of trust established between the members. This allowed me to write in a less restrictive way. Non judgemental responses and lively postings of encouragement boosted the ego and smoothed the way for me to open up to the group. I wanted to give feedback to postings. Trust takes time to build and this can be fostered by the facilitator giving timely words of encouragement.
Having an area of socialisation to discuss different forum was very useful for developing a community.
Towards the latter part of the course however, it became less important to use. The community had been formed. What was important was to keep up with the communication and flow of topics, to develop meaningful responses to posts.

My thoughts and feelings as a facilitator: According to Chris Kimble and Adisorn Na Ubon (2000) the sense of social presence must be created. This encourages students to actively collaborate and interact, "thus increasing sense of belonging and social cohesion" (p1). Dede (1996) mentions that a "strong community will produce more information flow, learning support, group commitment", (p2) collaboration and ultimately learning satisfaction.
The facilitator needs to norm the group (persona) the group will form as a whole. Timely postings of encouragement and positive feedback aids in establishing the sence of community. My previous posts of moos muds and a book reading support this.
Use names when posting responses, use greetings when addressing the community. e.g. Hello Gerome, I wonder whether you have thought about the implications of ... and sign off with your name.
Finally here are some thoughts some past posted and some new:

1. Have a relaxed quiet tone to read email
2. Use correct netiquette
3. Encourage students to share ideas
4. Phatic - greetings and closeures
5. Introduce oneself to the community. Break the ice
6. Have a base where the students can 'see' you. Have your available hours posted.
7. Set and encourage group work (have individual work then pairs then groups)
8. Have a 'community post' (someone from the group posts a reflection)
9. Try and stay clear of ambiquity in your postings
10. Keep clear of culturally sensitive material
11. Try and build trust in your relationship
12. Asynchronous text based CMC allows students to use at a time suitable for them.
13. Have formal and informal activities.
14. Keep the interaction going and keep a controlled eye on the flow/direction.
15. Keep humor in your postings.
16. Try and encourage the silent ones in the community to post and participate. Assign a buddy system to give peer to peer support.
17. Ask for feedback and keep judgement out of the 'voice' (your answer).

References

Dede, C. (1996). The evolution of distance education: Emerging technologies and distributed learning. American Journal of Distance Education, 10 (2), 4-36.

Kimble, C. and Na Ubon A. (2000). Supporting the creation of social presence in online learning communities using asynchronous text based CMC. UK: Dept of Computer Science University of York, (1).

Swan, K. (2003). Developing social presence in online course discussions, Ch 10 (p157). Learning and Teaching with Technology. Kogan Page. USA.

- Maryanne