Now that me.edu has been running for several weeks we can start to get a feel for how it works. Since all users of edna services are automatically registered with me.edu we cannot take the nearly 2,000 current members as meaning that all these are active users. However a large number of members have indicated Interests and are therefore are members of Communities. But quite a few Communities are inactive so far. There are some quite lively Communities, despite the distraction of the Christmas - New Year break. Among these are Digital Storytelling, Web2, Social Networking.
There is an interesting blog entry from Bradley Horowitz who is head of the Technology Development Group at Yahoo! Search Marketplace about levels of participation in social networking sites. He says that in Yahoo Groups,
- “1% of the user population might start a group (or a thread within a group)
- 10% of the user population might participate actively, and actually author content whether starting a thread or responding to a thread-in-progress
- 100% of the user population benefits from the activities of the above groups (lurkers)”
But me.edu is a different sort of site from Yahoo Groups, and makes comments easy to make (we think) but these numbers might still apply. It remains to be seen whether people’s willingness to contribute is evolving, as the tools become easier to use and the communities (of various sorts) become less threatening. I wonder if there is a desirable balance of contributors and observers in a community? If it is 5 out of 100 and the five are having a healthy exchange and the observers are benefiting is that OK? I expect that the number of contributors is the critical number. Once there is a sufficient number to make the exchange lively, it is not important how many reader-only member there are in a Community.
An upgrade to how Communities are rated in the Communities listing will make selection of active Communities easier. At present the Communities with the largest number of members are shown as large. In the upgrade, next week, greater account will be given to the level of activity in each Community. So big means busiest.
4 Comments
One of the things we’ll find John is that there will be lots of “lurkers” - people who find the community useful but are for one reason or other not confident in making a contribution
What the communities need though is people who are active without necessarily being recognised as the “community owner”.
There must be a critical mass for a vibrant community: if too few dominate, people get put off.
Some interesting stats:
Number me.edu.au users: 1951
Number of people to add a whiteboard message: 251
(251/1951) * 100 = 12.8%
It’s worth pointing out that this includes people writing on individual’s whiteboards. While communities are important, direct person-to-person communication and learning is an important feature of me.edu.au.
The other thing to bear in mind is that the potential audience of contributions to me.edu.au is much higher than the number of registered users. Once a contribution is made it can potentially be read by non-registered users who find it via a search engine years later.
I reckon that if people are encouraged to subscribe and play an active part in the community, then they will have a sense of ownership and will probably have the confidence that these sites does help.
This balance between writers and readers is an endless conversation. I’ve been having/seeing it for the past 9 years as things evolved (from rotary eclubs to the geeks paradise at sitepoint). But the rough guide is about right (although the “100% of the user population benefits from the activities of the above groups” sounds like a marketing statement to me)
One thing I should register is that if a newbie sees that a number of people have read their first post, then they’re encouraged to get more involved. We don;t expose this around the edna domain and I think we’re missing out by not revealing the “page views”.
“me.edu is a different sort of site from Yahoo Groups” (or Google, etc) Depends which group you’re talking about. I’ve seen lots of .edna type groups around the global traps. Many of the wiki centric wouldn’t feel at home at edna just as much as many Moodleites wouldn’t feel at home on wikispaces. wikieducator is one example. (they use Google for their group. We’re still at the point that most communities are app centric.
Re the question, what can we expect? I think me.edu.au will open up so many discussions, especially if edna can take off its “professional educator” hat. It IS the logical place for a citizen’s learning account, which you’ll find hinted at on the Summit 2020 suggestions. You haven’t seen what happens when an event triggers eyeballs in a big way, so I hope the servers can stand the attention:)
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