Online Virtual Communities

Our faculty development group in the CIT is participating in a book club. This month we read an article titled "Examining information exchange and virtual communities: an emergent framework." The article focused on the components of a successful virtual community. The article was very timely as the CIT is planning to cultivate an online community at JMU. I believe that building a thriving online community can be very challenging. The authors discussion of need fulfillment and level of interaction in the community seem like obvious components of a successful online community.

Everyone sets priorities in their work and personal lives. Those priorities revolve around necessity and fulfillment. As the CIT begins to build an online community, I think it is important for us to plan and evaluate why it is necessary and fulfilling to be a part of our community. What will our community offer that is useful and interesting to the higher ed culture? In an evaluation of your own online development, what components attract you to participate in online communities?

I think we are entering an interesting and exciting era involving online personalities and identities. The possibilities seem endless as social networking evolves and we experiment with the usefulness of the available tools.

Hersberger, J.A., Murray, A.L., and Rioux K.S. (2007). Examining information exchange and virtual communities: an emergent framework. Online Information Review, 31 (2), pp. 135-147.

Widgets and My Voice

I have been playing with my blog to see what interesting things I can do. I have always wondered about widgets and decided to include one in my blog- notice the neat little clock in the lower right hand corner.

A web widget according to Wikipedia "is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page." There are tons of widgets that have been created and can easily be dropped into a web page or in my particular case a blog. Try looking at widget box which includes widgets for Blogger, Wordpress, myspace, facebook and several others.

In my brief experience I had to try several widgets before I found one that fit easily into the design of my blog.

On another note, just for Rich- I am literally trying to find my voice this week, which will be evident in class this evening! :)