Sound Planning CoP: the future lies in stratification?
Dear all,
I've found very interesting and full of suggestions about how to improve the effectiveness of a communication platform, the evaluation report of our community of practice, published by Monica a few weeks ago.
Reading the report, I've highlighted some questions: what do we learn from the implementation of this CoP? what can we do in the future?
According to the authors of this report, the CoP soundplanning has shown "...the indispensable character of face-to-face activities, especially demonstration workshops and training activities, for learning, take up and transfer. The virtual platform has acted more as a complementary resource centre so far, than as a stand-alone platform."
Whereas, with regarding to second question, in the authors opinion"..the future of the CoP lies in its partial ‘customisation’ (designing specific activities and products for specific target groups or on specific themes or adapting existing activities/products for this purpose) and ‘stratification’ (setting up closed spaces of exchange and communication for certain categories of actors)."
What do you think about It?
Personally, I'm quite convinced about the relevance of building a "stratification strategy" if we want to encourage CoP members to take part in collective activities and check common interests. For instance, thinking about the exclusive use of English as an obstacle to participation, maybe offer a "language-based" stratification, e.g a part of the online training materials in other languages or the creation of homogeneus groups of participants, targeted to issues emerging in the daily practice, It could be a way to increase people confidence in the system.
Dear Frank,
Dear Frank,
thank you for sharing with us your experience in this field!
I agree with you, a blended solution is more effective and perhaps it could be a right way to overcome the language barrier in a Europe-wide community of practice.
Your question about the OST approach is a good starting point: I don't know it very well, I think OST is a powerful meeting methodology above all, but in the context of e-learning communities our goal is to involve people in the learning process, combining tools, contents, digital and tangible events, through the use of the right (= effective, sustainable, measurable) teaching methodology.
Are you sure the principles of the OST could be applicable in these kinds of training contexts?
learning online
Hello Laura and Frank
I read with interest your discussion on face to face or virtual working or a combination of both. In my opinion, as long as we can afford to travel a combination is the best option. With the huge advances being made with virtual technology I find using skype and similar virtual conferencing very useful, inexpensive and very carbon natural.
As some of you may know we at Local Livelihoods have been developing a new type of online live technology where people from any location in the world can work, via a secure server, independently or simultaneously with colleagues on the same database and documents. We call this combine.live. One of our first applications has been to create a PCM application, which we call project.live. project.live has 16 forms within the six stages and covers the entire cycle in one system from problem and objective analysis, through designing the logframe and budgets, writing the project proposal, appraisal, and monitoring to the final evaluation. project.live not only enables people to work virtually, but stores all project data which creates a project audit trail, permits aggregated date across any number of projects or programmes, and offers 3 type of access, admin, management and read only for stakeholders.
project.live can be used alongside skype and similar, and enables working together, mentoring and training using the same system. The technology is multi platform so it can be run on any PC or laptop and is ergonomic so it has very few commands or optional ways of doing the same thing, for example you just type text and it automatically saves.
Because most projects are short term we distribute project.live via annual project licences and you only pay for the licences, we host the server and manage the technology and continually upgraded the software.
If you would like to look at project.live and play around with it please go to
http://www.uk.locallivelihoods.com/Moduls/WebSite/Page/Default.aspx?Pag_Id=145
for a free demonstration. We are currently experiencing a problem with some corporate firewalls so if you are in a government building you may not be able to download it without getting your IT administrator to open an outgoing connection to pass through the firewall (we suggest 1000 upwards). Otherwise you will have to use it outside the building. This problem will be fixed very soon.
And finally, if you are interested in buying licences for a single project the cost is €190 for a year and for multiple licences the cost for each reduces to as low as €95 a year.
You can find a user guide in the help menu and for any further information please get in touch.
I think that project.live would make a very useful contribution to the PCM Blended training being run by Formez and we would be very please to assist in applying project.live to the blended training programmes. Over the coming months we will be creating multiple language versions to be used in any country.
Regards
Freer Spreckley
info@locallivelihoods.com
www.locallivelihoods.com
+44 (0)1497 831770
On Communities of Practice
Although I do believe that face to face meetings are useful or essential, there is some research which suggests that virtual teams can operate without the benefit of such meetings just as effectively. Nonetheless, I would personally prefer a "blended" solution with meetings as well as online (virtual) work.
Having also participated in the online seminars (using Skype conference call) , I realise that we are just at the beginning of making these effective. The lack of visual cues, and the difficulty of managing a discussion when you have no eye contact with others, makes these virtual seminars rather difficult to run.
And then the language question: I guess that if there are enough people in a language community, it would not be a problem to work (possibly face to face) in that language. However, if the community is Europe-wide (or wider) then the numerous language pairs involved make translation of contributions difficult to achieve, if not impossible.
Perhaps we should apply the principles of "Open Space Technology" (OST) and just let it develop as it happens. If people want to meet, they will meet?