Building a Virtual Community
Feb 14th, 2012 by Michele Brannon-Hamilton
Welcome to my virtual community reflection blog. Currently, I’m designing a virtual community for students to interact in a college environment. I’m using this blog to reflect on the process and share my experience.
So far, I have covered the following topics: Designing a Virtual Community and Conducting an Environmental Scan.
Today, I’m looking at the context of the community.
Once you have analyzed the environment around you, you need to determine how your educational institution fits into the bigger picture. What is your school doing now? Is there a gap in your services? What are your current strengths and weaknesses?
Determining Your Current Situation
Create a list of your current services and speculate how you could add value to those services using technology. For example, if you offer face-to-face writing services are you fulfilling the need at your school? Are you reaching everyone or is there a gap?
Perhaps you determine that you have students who don’t use your services because of time or travel constraints. You now have a gap you need to fill.
Online services provide students with choices and new opportunities to connect. Besides time and travel factors, many students have work and family commitments that make visiting services difficult. You can meet these students online.
Will this hurt your current services?
In a word – no. There will always be students who prefer face-to-face help and there will always be students who will never use face-to-face services. Creating a virtual community gives students choices and gives you a chance to reach a new group of students.
Once you determine how your community fits with current needs, you will need to define the scope of your project.