ARTICLE

mynetworks.org - an online environment for engineers merging community processes with continuing education

By A. Schoenborn* & M. A. Pereira

*armadillo media gmbh
Luzern, Switzerland
http://www.armadillo-media.ch


This article was presented at the 33rd International Symposium IGIP / IEEE / ASEE
Sep. 27 - Oct. 1, 2004, Fribourg, Switzerland.

A brief history of myNetWorks

MyNetWorks (myNW, www.mynetworks.org) is a rich, collaborative web environment developed for practitioners and academics interested in sustainable environmental technology and Ecological Engineering (EcoEng). It provides easy and fast access to resources, tools for communication and exchange, courses and workshops. A special focus is put on the collaboration with developing countries. The International Ecological Engineering Society (IEES) and The Network University (TNU) have co-developed myNW, with funding from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

Ecological Engineering has been defined as the "design of sustainable systems consistent with ecological principles that integrates human society with its natural environment for the benefit of both" [1]. EcoEng professionals are a distinct community of practice. They are few and often isolated within their country and within the other engineering professions. There is a general lack of continuing education opportunities in the field. This situation led to the call for a medium for collaboration and exchange as early as 1999.

The high interest in EcoEng technologies for development cooperation has resulted in funding of myNW by SDC. The project started in May 2002. First, a user survey among the 1200 subscribers of the EcoEng-Newsletter [4] and three focus groups with potential users were conducted. The work yielded the following main results:

• The main target groups are practitioners, NGOs, university members, and decision makers
• The highest interest was in a working environment for networking and exchange
• The highest rated option was "quickly accessing other people's experiences in dealing with similar problems"
• The most important restriction was "time to access the web environment"

Based on the result of the survey, a basic concept was developed and implemented in a demo version of myNW. In February 2003 a first two-week workshop was held in myNW. The positive feedback of our guinea pig users lead to the development of a full-fledged version of myNW. It went online in November 2003. Since then we held three online courses / workshops and took various measures to promote and facilitate community exchange. MyNW currently has 440 members (June 04). This report is based on the experiences gathered with eight months of community management and the four online courses.

A detailed description of the background, the conceptual ideas and the development process of myNW has been given elsewhere ([2],[3]).

Starting up the community process

Compared to a community of practice that meets face to face, an online community has a number of specific opportunities as well as risks. Concerning the opportunities, the availability of the information at any time, the potential for an unlimited number of members, the potential to tap distributed expertise in critical project situations and the potential to find and contact interesting colleagues can certainly be considered as such.

On the other hand, text-based communication (which is predominant in myNW, due to the low bandwidth connections of many of our members) is not preferred by all learner types. It may be difficult to express yourself correctly, even more so since the official language (English) is a non-native language for many. A certain anonymity of the members facilitates antisocial behaviour (e.g., being late at live events, not reacting to direct questions, or even using a rude language in discussion groups or chats).

We consider mutual trust to be the first cornerstone of successful community development. To promote mutual trust, every new member must lay open his / her identity at least in parts, so that anyone can look up at any time who the other one is. People who do not provide adequate information about themselves are removed from myNW. The second cornerstone is regular activities. When we started the community building process, all activities were focused on the large group of subscribers to [4]. We organized monthly live chat events with special guests active in EcoEng or related fields. Every chat event included the following measures:

• Publication of an online article related to the respective topic well before the chat (available for download)
• Arrangement of a 45 minute chat event in the public chat room of myNW
• Opening of a discussion group for a period of two weeks before and after the event (which was monitored by the host of the chat as well)
• Announcement of the chat event in the monthly myNW news bulletin and in a reminder mail the day before the event

The result of these efforts was rather sobering. Some of the chats attracted an interesting group of new users, but in general there was not much participation. It seems that isolated chat events are not very attractive to our target group, considering that most of them are active professionals with limited time.

In the future we will continue live chat events but will try to link them better to institutions and to events in the real world (e.g., conferences or on-site courses). We will also try to integrate the use of myNW into existing curricula of colleges and universities.

The third cornerstone for community development is to reach a critical number of members. We believe that once we have reached a level of 1000 - 2000 members, the community processes will start to develop much faster by themselves.

Designing courses and learning processes

Distance learning activities have driven the development of myNetWorks. It may, of course, also be used in a blended learning setting. In principle, the course concept is based on the concept of "reflective practice" and on the socio-constructivist approach (see [2] for details). MyNW courses are designed to have a straightforward practical approach, focusing on real-world case studies and on capacity building by using the participant's own experiences. The learning material presented just provides the context for the reflections.

For course managers of an online course, it is important to keep technological barriers as low as possible. Course material for myNW can be written in Powerpoint or Word. For publication they are converted to Adobe AcrobatÕs Portable Document Format (PDF) or the web-page language HTML. The crucial issue is to set up a course design suited to the conditions in the web.

With the four courses that have been held so far, we have tested and elaborated different aspects of this concept (see Table 1 below).

Course 1: Guidelines for effective ecologically engineered wastewater systems

This test course was held to find out whether the general course concept would work. The course was managed by members of the myNW team.

In week 1, participation was active and enthusiastic. Many of the topics planned for week 2 had already been discussed at the end of week 1. Thus, at the end of week 1 it was decided that a case brought in by a participant would be used for the analysis in week 2. This change was not well prepared and not fruitful. As a consequence, in week 2 activity was much lower. The "Guidelines..." document was not completed (which may in parts be chalked up to the workshop being a pilot). Still, about five participants took part until the end.

The final evaluation showed that the intensive use of live chats was counterproductive for some participants. The time demanded by them was too much for some of the participants. The discussion groups were therefore hardly used. Those that could not take part in the live chats were deprived of the best discussions. We concluded that a better balance of discussion groups to which one could post at any time and live chats was needed. Hardly any of the participants and none of the instructors had taken part in an online course before. Although there were no major problems for either of the two groups, the need for a face-to-face training workshop for the course managers became obvious, because the frequent need of assistance by them slowed down the production process.

Course 2: Ecological Sanitation

The 2-week course was structured similar to the test workshop but put less emphasis on live chats. Prior to this course, a face-to-face training workshop was held for the course managers. Forty five people subscribed to the course, and twenty participated actively.

The team of course managers worked together very well. The balance between asynchronous and synchronous elements was better in this course. The discussion groups and the assignments were actively used in this course. Some participants from Mali had serious problems joining the course, due to unstable internet connections. They also had problems with the course language (English).

At the end of the course, the course managers were content with the amount and the quality of participation, even though only about a third of the subscribed participants took part actively. This phenomenon coincides with observations made in the other courses as well as by The Network University ([5]). The pricing doesn't seem to influence participation very much. Even paying participants sometimes surpisingly don't become active during an online course.

Course 3: Sustainable Building Practice

Prior to this course, a face-to-face training workshop was held for the course manager. In addition to that, a member of the myNW team was present during the course as a tutor.

Nevertheless, this course never really took off. Discussion groups - several of them had been set up for the specific cases and for integrated assessment of them - were not used very much. The assignments were not submitted at all. The live chats were rather active, but people tended in late.

In parts this can be accounted to the Sustainable Building Evaluation Tool (SBET), which formed an integral part of the course and was still a beta version at the time. Participants had to get familiar with two different web environments: the SBET and myNW. Some participants were confused by the SBET and by too many discussion groups and felt that the course should have been longer.

We concluded that the commitment of the participants is even more crucial in an online course than in a face-to-face course and a set of measures must be at hands to react when a course doesn't take up speed.

Course 4: Impact Monitoring and Assessment

The course manager had extensive experience in face-to-face teaching of this topic. The course was adapted to myNetWorks in a coaching process guided by M.A.Pereira.

Interestingly, even though all participants had paid the full course fee, participation in the course was rather reluctant in the beginning. In the first three weeks, the course manager complained that people would not show up in the live chats, would not read the required documents in time, and would not respond to his emails. In a face-to-face workshop, he would have been able to get an intuitive assessment of the reasons. Halfway through the two-month course, the pace of participation increased considerably.

In the evaluation, the participants stated that the course was interesting, very useful and less time consuming than a regular course. However, they had had a time problem and found it difficult to get started. The course was much more time consuming and needed more commitment than they had expected. Coursework was in conflict with work at each participantÕs own site. It was concluded that distance learning cannot replace face-to-face courses, but can complement them in certain phases.

Summary of experiences

The four courses and workshops have shown that myNW is well suited to conduct online courses for a worldwide audience, even if internet connections are slow. We had live chats with participants from various time zones and developing countries. The stability of the internet connection is more critical than its speed.

The basic course concept works and is well suited to the conditions and limitations myNW has to offer. However, setting up the online course structure turns out to be a challenge even for experienced teachers. As intended, preparation of the course material did not pose many problems for the teachers, the Course Managers (which were, e.g., professors from universities or experts with many years of practice).

The social factor must not be underestimated: Participants need to be encouraged to work with each other and contribute often. Tutors need to work intensively in motivating participation. The pricing of a course is also crucial - lurkers who are admitted to a course for free, tend to stay in the background. On the other hand, too high fees are discouraging.

A clear limitation of myNW courses is the heavy use of written text. This can only be overcome with other technical functionalities (e.g., live audio, interactive whiteboard, etc.) which in turn may impair the usefulness of myNW in developing countries.

Merging courses and community processes

Our goal is to initiate a self-perpetuating process that leads to a continuous improvement and extension of community and content. Two elements are important here:

1. attractive courses and
2. attractive community activities.

Courses generate new and unique content and attract participants which bring in their own content and tend to take part in other myNW activities after the course. Course content is made public after the course in the myNW library. Active community management helps to generate a good atmosphere where newcomers as well as senior members can find interesting information and can contact other members on an informal level. The direct contact with the members, in turn, allows myNW to identify potential course providers for new courses.

At this point (December 2004), both elements are in place but the activities have not reached the level of self-perpetuation. Few participants use public forums (like the discussion forums or the library). We think, that myNW still needs to reach a certain level of acceptance within the ecological engineering community. Also, the number of community members must reach a critical threshold, estimated at 1,000 to 2,000 members, before the community will really start to come to life.

We think that in order to enhance the use of myNW it is essential to win well reputed institutions as partners. A vision might be that every student who completes a degree in Ecological Engineering becomes a member of myNW in the course of his classes, get acquainted with it and (hopefully) will continue to use it later on. For example, official masterÕs courses could use myNW groupware functions or organize interesting live chat events with senior myNW members for their students.

It will remain the task of the community manager(s) to observe and promote the development of this process.

Acknowledgment

Thanks to the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) for providing the startup funding of myNW, especially to J.-B. Dubois and M. Flury. Thank you to P. van Kampen of TNU who has developed the software of myNW and also to the team of TNU (L. van Druten, M. Hansen, S. Haramati, M. Caillat, V. Klabbers) for their continued support & good team spirit.

References

1. Bergen, S.D., S.M. Bolton,  and J.L. Fridley, , 1997, Ecological Engineering: Design based on Ecological Principles. Presented at the 1997 Annual ASAE Meeting, August 10-14, Paper No. 975035.
2. Pereira, M.A. and A. Schoenborn, 2003, myNetworks: Designing Networked Learning for Ecological Engineers, unpublished, available from the authors.
3. Schönborn, A. and M.A. Pereira, 2003, myNW - a Rich, Collaborative Web Environment for Sustainable Environmental Technology," presented at the 5th International Conference on New Educational Environments, Lucerne (Switzerland), May 26-28. Downloadable from: http://www.armadillo-media.ch/english/literature_e.htm
4. EcoEng-Newsletter, the all-electronic periodical of the International Ecological Engineering Society (IEES), available at http://www.iees.ch
5. M. Hansen, personal communication.