Invitations   Goals/Participants  Definitions/Issues Tools/Media
Principles/Structure  Practices/Techniques  Implications/Next Steps

Challenge, Goals, Direction,
Participants, and Activities
for BCCOOC Activities

Challenge
Use new information technology and media resources as the excuse and the means to build the kinds of communities we want and need.

Vision(s) Worth Working Toward for BCCOOC
   Rationale

Goals
1.  Develop better ways of building community online and on campus - especially using information technology and media resources;
2.  Do so in part by building community online and in face-to-face meetings among the participants (the kind of community in which everyone can usefully contribute something); and
3.  Define more clearly the kinds of "community" that we seek and how we will know when we have found or achieved them.

Participants, Direction, and Activities
We hope BCCOOC activities can include many current and potential leaders of The TLT Group’s online activities who will be invited to reflect about the meaning of “community” and different kinds of communities as well as the strategies and tactics, hopes and dangers, of creating functioning groups that do much of their work and interaction online.  We'll try not to get stuck too long in arguments about the meaning and appropriate use of the term "community."  Rather, we'll articulate the important characteristics and dimensions of affiliation that are possible and desirable for different kinds of groups under different circumstances.  We'll identify or develop ways to support efforts to achieve and sustain those community-like kinds of affiliation, especially using new options made possible by new information technologies, information resources, and telecommunications media. 

“Community” is a term that is especially important, and especially problematic, in education today.  We can use computers, the Internet, and other means of telecommunications to link more kinds of people, in more kinds of ways, than ever before.  But these distributed groups are often composed of people who are distant from one another (at least some of the time), different from one another, and somewhat unfamiliar to one another.  The preceding sentence is not a bad description of a traditional campus, with its many departments and offices.  But it's an even better description of what online interaction makes possible:  “communities” of professionals and learners whose specialties are diverse, whose potential is great, whose engagement with one another is only part-time - but extended over years, whose face-to-face interaction is occasional, and whose ability to make connections and decisions with each other has been limited by these conditions.   The support of "coalitions" - groups held together by a single common purpose for a limited time - will be of less importance to us than the support of "communities" in which participants feel connected with each other in multiple dimensions, for many purposes, for longer periods of time.

We'll discuss technologies that we use, and the personal and group strategies for thinking together, criticizing our work, and making choices.  We'll talk about getting things done, how this all feels, and what it means for us as professionals and human beings.