What is an online community?!
Community August 5th, 2008Leigh, this is a very hard question to answer…!!!!!
I thought this was going to be a easy, relaxing course…after all it’s summer time!
Just kidding. Although this was my immediate inner-response.
Defining online communities is not as easy as it may seem. Despite all the theoretical background, how do you define, or better, explain a community? Leigh Blackall is definitely not making our lives easy, but this is definitely a challenge to take!
Well, I can only report about my own reality and experiences, and I totally agree with the text provided in the wiki, which is supposed to prompt this piece of writing…reflection.
Lately, and especially since I started working in the UK, I have heard people talking about communities – and especially about communities of practice – as if it were the latest cool thing. There isn’t one conference or academic gathering I have attended in which people don’t mention something about setting up a community – what a great idea: Let’s all create a community? Why haven’t we still established a community of Practice in our department/University? I think we need to set up a community….and so on. It almost gets ridiculous, if you ask me.
Communities cannot be forced and tend not to work when people decide to start something as if it were merely a fashionable thing to do. Let’s face it: people don’t like to be pushed into one more thing they have to do, and I think people are starting to be put off by this intention of constantly wanting to create yet another community. Communities are more successful when they develop spontaneously, and people tend to engage better when they volunteer to do so - it shows personal willing to be part of it. However, we can argue that we can seed and provide support for a unity of people with common interests and hope it will grow into a community. Generally I would call this “unity of people with common goals” a group of individuals who bond together because they share similar common points of views, and/or needs, habits, purposes, aims; etc, but today I felt like playing with words…
The way I see it, a community never starts as a community. It is rather a group of individuals who have the desire to construct/create/do something together because they agree on something and feel that they might be able to achieve it better, or faster, or which ever reason made them bond in the first place, when they do it jointly. They don’t usually think of themselves as a community …at least, not until they have gone as far as to examine their performance as such in retrospect.
Now a bit of sociology: Individuals are not islands – we work better in groups and most time we perform even better when we collaborate. We like to communicate our ideas, seek for support and provide and get feedback about what we are thinking/doing. So it is only natural we bond in these unities of people based on common interest.
The advantage online is that it can be easier to find more like-minded people to work with, because we no longer are restricted to our local time or space. The web has opened up the doors to a wider world where individuals can come together and interact independently of their whereabouts. Living proof of that is this course. As individuals allow themselves to get involved and interact inside those groups they frequently get attached to other like-minded individuals. As those interrelationships intensify, the group becomes more and more meaningful for them. And as it impacts on their learning, career, performance and/or even life in general, the individuals usually become more attached to each other – their activity as well as the contribution of others is valued.It also keep the individuals united in their purpose. Hence that unity grows stringer and eventually people connect as a community.
This is of course a very simplistic way to try to explain online communities, but what I think I want to say is that communities are the result of the joint effort of a group of people who come together for a reason. As interactions, members’ contributions, collaboration among peers, support, etc intensify the group also grows more coherent and eventually into a community.
I think a community is the result of a metamorphic process. It takes time to achieve the community level. It requires work and joint endeavour too. It depends on how the (learning) relationship progresses. It also depends on the members’ support and effort to keep communicating and working together. It is relation with the evolution of the learning interactions.
When compared with groups, I feel that attached to the community concept there is a stronger feeling of belonging and sense of identity. The feeling of being part of a group is more loosen and disperse.
In short, groups can evolve into communities, as support, communication and care grows more consistent as part of the individuals’ exchanges and commitment to that Unity of people who have something in common.
The MSc in Advanced Occupational Therapy

