Evaluating online communities

Thoughts on Ke & Hoadley (2009)

 

Important point to consider: do we expect online learning communities (OLCs) to appear spontaneously or through design? Study inherently seems to favour studies of those that are well-defined in terms of support & structure, so either well-designed or evolved.

Taxonomy of online learning community evaluations

Recognises that this is a divergent research area, attempts to categorise studies in terms of four key components:

1. Evaluation purpose
Notable distinction between proving and improving purposes – convincing organisations that the community has a value at all, versus looking for ways of systematically enhancing the interactions within it. In my case the interactions don't yet amount to a community, so the emphasis is on making interactions sustainable and of benefit to participants.

2. Evaluation approach
Approaches were sometimes summative, usually for proving, or formative for improving, sometimes with elements of both of these. There are also the participatory and responsive approaches – a choice of whether to include participant evaluation or not. Oliver (2000) and Patton (1997) are cited as primary references here. My approach will be based entirely on participant responses, with a view to formative evaluation of the interactions.

3. Measures for evaluation
Outcome vs process measures. The outcome view looks at the community as a static system, evaluating the raw technical set-up of the environment and the learning outcomes. Process evaluation takes an in-depth look at the factors that facilitate or impede learning within the system. My study will need to focus on the process, with a possibility for pairing this up with outcome evaluations from colleagues.

4. Evaluation techniques
The authors seem to use the term objective in place of quantitative; they also refer to qualitative and mixed-method approaches. An important distinction between the two main forms is made – objective approaches deliberately remove context from the data, focusing on what could be directly comparable between other studies. Qualitative studies allowed for more direct insights for the learning processes within a community. I will be focusing on qualitative approaches, although there is potential for identifying the best factors to use in future studies for building up an objective measure of communities in future.

Conclusions

This gives a very good critical analysis of the factors at play in evaluating OLCs, and can serve as a guide point relating to the higher level discussions of Newby (2010), Cresswell (2009) and Colquhoon (2006). The authors also point out a good number of shortcomings in current research. Partly these are due to the constraints of researchers performing their studies for their own purposes, rather than to sit conveniently into the wider body of research. They also point out that the offline interactions between participants play a large role in the actual learning process, and these are very difficult to find any record of. There are also no studies that show how a community has evolved over time.

Long term goals of the researchers are to establish a framework for understanding OLCs, possibly towards a central theory. They make no reference to the five stage model identified by Salmon (2003); they do refer to phases of community development (Palloff and Pratt, 1999). It will be useful to pursue this systematic approach for research to inform my own understanding, and note if any similarities or contradictions with Salmon’s model emerge, which has previously been central to my understanding of online learning interactions.

Reference:

• Colquhoon, D. (2006). Research Methods in Education Contexts. University of Hull.
• Creswell, J. W. (2009). Research Design: qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches. (3rd edition) Sage.
• Ke, F. and Hoadley, C. (2009). Evaluating Online Learning Communities. Educational Technology Research and Development, 57(4), pp.487-510.
• Newby, P. (2010). Research Methods for Education. Pearson Education Limited.
• Salmon, G., 2003. E-Moderating: The Key to Teaching and Learning Online. 2nd ed. London: Routledge-Falmer.