The IFETS discussion model is, I believe, a powerful one which has been making an important contribution to academic debate and knowledge sharing online since mid-1998. Although there has been intermittent informal discussion about the process itself, I don't believe it has come up for formal discussion over the last few years. Therefore, given the pace of developments in the nature of online c...

There is a notable paucity of multi-level analyses of IT use in IS research. Often, analyses limited to a single level are problematic, as multi-level effects cannot be accounted for. For example, online communities, such as the one examined in this paper, build on network effects: they can provide more value to all members collectively whenever each individual member participates more actively...

This research-in-progress paper presents an outline of my research project. The purpose of the research project is to understand and explain how the process of transition to tertiary education among visually impaired students in New Zealand can be supported through the use of online communities of practice (online CoPs). A qualitative research has been chosen as the most suitable approach to ex...

In this paper we present our current conclusions about the performance of the Online Community Framework as an epistemic tool to help evaluators analyze and understand how social activity online is enabled and affected by technology.

Relating to the shifting role of users in becoming active contributors to the design process, in this paper we look into online gaming communities. A shortlist of conditions for such communities to exist is given, and potential benefits for designers are listed. From these, five guidelines for creating such a community are proposed, which are examined in the light of setting up an online commun...

Synchronous online communities for learning have been criticized because participant contributions do not seem to build on each other. But decontextualized measures of building do not adequately characterize the nature of communication in successful real-time interaction. Other factors, such as whether the participants understand the meaning of remarks, the light in which they are presented, an...

A wide range of behavior may be seen as destructive to online communities. Yet behavior that is ‘bad’ in one community may be celebrated in another. The work of community maintenance is therefore strongly contextual, involving complex choices due to differing norms, community cross-membership, and the need to invoke fairness. The experienced, “lived in” work of moderators; how they enact norms ...