SUPPORT NEEDED

The above processes can affect the functioning of VC, and can act as indicators of the kind of support that may be necessitated in a given situation. This will be illustrated below with the aid of several scenarios. We will show that the support to be provided to a VC has to be tailored to the community’s needs and serve the needs of both newcomers and oldtimers (Wenger, 2000). Furthermore, intelligent support should add value to the creation and sharing of knowledge between members in addition to facilitating the functioning of the community as a whole.

2.4.1 Support to Newcomers

Newcomers are newly joining members who need to identify their role in the community and what their gain will be from participating in that community. Support is needed in order to effectuate the quick integration of these members in the community’s knowledge processes. This would improve their sharing experiences and can bring about a positive effect on the overall functioning of the community. For example, consider a person named Chris who is interested in social tagging for e-

learning and is joining a VC where members share information about technology-enhanced learning. Chris has no background about what was previously happening in the community, does not know about the interests and knowledge of other members, is unsure whether there are any relevant resources on the topic he is interested in, and does not know what he contribution can be towards the community. Help should be provided to Chris enabling him to identify people or knowledge important to him in the community under consideration. Furthermore, Chris should be given assistance in order to identify the kind of knowledge held by him while at the same time the other members become aware that Chris holds valuable knowledge, referred to as TM and SMM. Such assistance facilitates his introduction in the community. Moreover, given that social tagging is identified as a peripheral topic for this community, Chris may be encouraged to elaborate on its relation with personalised learning, which is the main focus, i.e. CCen, of this community. This will be beneficial for him (he may discover relationships he was previously unaware of and may become a more central member of this community) and for the community (new topic will be connected to the community’s domain which can improve the processes of knowledge sharing and construction).

2.4.2 Support to Oldtimers

Existing members (oldtimers) should be given help in order to integrate and become active participants in the community’s knowledge processes. For example, consider Jane who is an existing member of this community and is interested in intelligent tutoring systems. She is regularly uploading and downloading resources and is actively engaged in discussions with other members. Jane is one of the cognitively central members of this community. We assume that another member – Mark – is interested in student modelling something which Jane is familiarized with (as she has participated in discussions dealing with this topic and has uploaded relevant resources). Mark and Jane should be given help and support in order to discover that they have joint interests. In this way, not only themselves but the other members of the community as well can benefit by combining their knowledge and consequently extending the community’s TM.

Jane is now working on a new project and needs to find information on ontologies - a topic she is not very familiar with. Assistance can be granted to her in order to allocate relevant resources within the community and establish contacts with members knowledgeable in the area, all these being related to the community’s TM system. Jane may also be encouraged to upload more resources on ontologies and examine the link of this topic with technology enhanced learning. If this new topic is of interest to many members, it will move close to the community’s CCen.

The community has to adapt to changes in its environment. This may lead to a shift of the central area of interest as well as to transformation of participation (Wenger, 2000). Consequently, active contributors may become passive members, while others who used to be peripheral participants may become CCenM (Kerr and Tindale, 2004; Ilgen et al., 2005). For example, Jane may gradually reduce her participation or even stop contributing to the community. If such changes are detected, CCenM like Jane who are moving towards the periphery can be encouraged to participate more actively in the community’s knowledge processes.

2.4.3 Support to VC as a Whole

People categorise and organise their resources differently according to specific characteristics, diverse conceptualisations, searching habits, etc.(Berlin et al., 1993; Indratmo and Vassileva, 2005). Confusions may occur and disagreements are inevitable (Indratmo and Vassileva, 2005) and these can have an impact on the effective functioning of a VC (Berlin et al., 1993; Wu and Gordon, 2004; Golder and Huberman, 2005). Consider for example several members of the community who are interested in the use of context in systems of technology-enhanced learning. Each member uploads resources perceived as important to them and relevant to the projects they are engaged in. Jane considers context from an Artificial Intelligence perspective and links it to encoding different viewpoints in an ontology.

Chris associates context with the conditions in a learning environment, while Mark is engaged in a mobile learning project where context is used to represent location-based information. Appropriate support for effective knowledge sharing would encourage members to develop awareness regarding these issues, which can form part of SMM.

People participating in VCs share an information space and may be engaged in active communication. These are preconditions for collaboration often associated with effective VCs, where members either work together on a joint project or share a common desire to produce better services (Dillenbourg, 1999). Collaboration among community members can be encouraged in two ways. Firstly, support should be provided to help members build a common understanding as to what constitutes the purpose of the community, who is involved and what their interests are, what tasks people are undertaking, what is happening in the community and how it progresses over time. These issues relate to building SMM and developing a good TM system. Secondly, interaction between community members can be encouraged in order to create more opportunities for collaboration. Situations where members will possibly benefit from communication with others can be identified.

To sum up, TM, SMM and CCen relate to the effective functioning of a community and are critical in defining intelligent support tailored to the needs of the community as a whole. TM is effective in promoting the quick integration of newcomers to the community, improving the benefits of oldtimers so as to motivate their participation, and encourage further collaboration amongst all members. SMM is a pre-requisite for effective knowledge sharing and is directly linked with awareness and information localisation; it is also a key factor in facilitating collaboration between community members. CCen can be helpful in putting into perceptive and relating to the community’s domain the knowledge of newcomers and existing members, as well as monitoring the changes which occur within the community over time.