Promoting Online Collaboration and Virtual Community: Benefits For The Web Team [A4]

Abstract

This workshop will be an opportunity to develop ideas about how to increase ICT supported collaboration, for example, among departmental Webmasters or across institutions. It will build on our common knowledge about the effectiveness of familiar forum software such as JISCmail, or YahooGroups. We will look at the theory of community of practice, which suggests some key processes that need to be supported for collaboration, and criteria for evaluating the success and health of online knowledge sharing communities. The session will also look at what value less obvious collaboration tools such as blogs and annotation tools can contribute to the mix.