Community-wide Workgroups WAS Wikieducator live online wiki skills and collaborative learning at WiZiQ

[Alison Snieckus]

Ben,

Glad to *hear* your thinking out loud on the topic of community-wide workgroups. My thoughts following your comments:

Any prescriptive guidelines or rules that
are established from the start of an idea (i.e., OER content or
community-wide content) must facilitate this process and not bog it
down.  Particularly for community-wide content, we must find that fine
line between facilitating and bogging down the process of idea
development, which is an issue being discussed in WE.

I can't agree more. I added this point as a specific requirement of the guidelines produced in the draft charter for Workgroup: WikiEducator Workgroups.

Just thinking out loud here (sort of), what would happen if there were
no guidelines (excluding the general rules and values set up by WE) to
community-wide content.  Would more experts and newbies contributed as
a result?  What would this process look like?

This is an important consideration. Whatever we do has to be better (more effective without negative side effects?) than doing nothing, that is, allowing the inherent self-organizing process to attend to community-wide concerns (the reasoning on this might be that if they are truly concerns, someone (or many) will surely attend to the needs).
 

 Is there a single
process that could be followed that could apply to both OER content
and community-wide content development?

I hadn't really thought about this option. We've been pursuing the creation of guidelines for the creation of work groups to attend to community-wide policy, guidelines, tools, processes, etc. My thinking (at least at the moment) is that OER content is best pursued according to self-organizing principles. hmmm.
 

If we did establish guidelines to community-wide content development,
would one set of guidelines apply to all types of community-wide
content?  

We need to think this through.
 

Will the individuals that establish these guidelines be the
only individuals that participate in the community-wide content
initiatives? I´m still trying to get my head around this notion.

I certainly hope not! The guidelines should include mechanisms to encourage participation from both experienced and new members and maybe also consider ways to encourage members to join established community-wide workgroups.

Ben, please stop by to check out and comment on the work we are doing on the proposed guidelines for community-wide Workgroups. We have implemented a charter (one of the steps you proposed for inclusion in the guidelines) for our group so we can experience it first hand. Your contribution to the discussion thus far has been invaluable.

And anyone else interested in contributing to the process/discussion, please drop on by:
 http://wikieducator.org/Workgroup:WikiEducator_Workgroups

Warm regards,
Alison
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:ASnieckus

The discussion above relates to Wayne's earlier post describing a proposed distinction --

I think we should distinguish between two major categories of
content:
  - OER content developed by individuals or collaborations between
  educators. As long as this content aligns with the filters of the
core
  values stated on our home page, I think folk should have the
freedom to
  develop this content. This does not necessarily imply a consensus
opinion by
  the community -- unlike Wikipedia, we are not developing
"objective"
  encyclopedia content and I think we should encourage a diversity
of
  pedagogical approaches.
  - Community wide content, like policies and guidelines. As
suggested
  above -- I think that we should strive for community consensus on
this
  category of content including guidelines of how we should manage
the
  consensus process.

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Everyone,

A brief progress report and update on our Workgroup to develop
guidelines for Community-wide Workgroups. The aim of this workgroup is
to draft a set of guidelines on the formation and functioning of
community-wide workgroups to be considered by the September WE council
meeting.

We have suggested that the convenor of a Wikieducator workgroup should
provide regular updates on the Community list -- hence this
posting :-)

1) We announced the concept of forming workgroups on this list on 31
May 2009
2) Seven active WikiEducators with wide and diversified experience
have volunteered to assist with this important task, see:

http://wikieducator.org/Workgroup:WikiEducator_Workgroups

3) Valuable discussions and inputs have been posted. This has helped
to refine and focus our thinking. These initial discussions have been
invaluable, informing the structure and content of our draft
guidelines:

http://wikieducator.org/Talk:Workgroup:WikiEducator_Workgroups

4) Early on, we realised the value of developing a Charter for a
workgroup and we are using this first WikiEducator workgroup as the
basis to trial the development of a Workgroup charter so that we can
specify the corresponding requirements in the guidelines.

We encourage all WikiEducators to take a look at progress so far. If
you have any suggestions, please post these on the relevant talk page.

In the case of comments on the evolving charter:

http://wikieducator.org/Talk:Workgroup:WikiEducator_Workgroups or

comments on the guidelines under development you can post your
thoughts here:

http://wikieducator.org/Workgroup:WikiEducator_Workgroups/Guidelines

5) If you would like to participate as an active member of this group
-- you are most welcome to add your name to the list of participants.
(Note that the deal is that if you put your name on the list - you
agree to helping out on this important task :-) )

Lets make the future happen!

Cheers
Wayne

> Alisonhttp://www.wikieducator.org/User:ASnieckus

[Ben]

Hello Alison,

Thanks for your comments. I´ve made a few suggestions on the
structure of the charter, so I´ll await feedback and comments.

Best Regards,
Benjamin
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Bnleez

> Alisonhttp://www.wikieducator.org/User:ASnieckus

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hey Ben,

Thanks for your comments -- great suggestions and I've already posted my thoughts and responses.

Crossing fingers that you will add your name to the list of active participants on the workgroup -- you're free to join :-). You would be a valuable member of this group!

Cheers
Wayne

2009/7/5 Ben <bnl...@gmail.com>

--
Wayne Mackintosh, Ph.D.
Director,
International Centre for Open Education,
Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand.
Board of Directors, OER Foundation.
Founder and Community Council Member, Wikieducator, www.wikieducator.org
Mobile +64 21 2436 380
Skype: WGMNZ1
Twitter: OERFoundation, Mackiwg