Developing guidelines for effective online facilitation  (Wednesday - Friday)
http://wiki.p2pu.org/facilitating-http://h3manth.comhttp://h3manth.com//dilemmas

There are so many books and articles about facilitation in general  and  online facilitation in particular. What have  we learned that can  help  us to become highly effective online facilitators? We will share  what  we think are the most important aspects of online facilitation. 

Task: Read the article ‘The art of hosting good conversations online’ http://www.rheingold.com/texts/artonlinehost.html by Howard Rheingold. 

After reading Rheingold's text, what do you think are the most important aspects of online facilitation? (Please feel encouraged to also draw on your own experience and any other articles that you have found useful).


re: gift economy, Anne Goldenberg has an article that contrasts the idea of "gift" with the idea of "donation".  Dust off your french and head over to http://anne.koumbit.org/node/240 for your own copy of "La participation dans les communautés épistémiques : don ou contribution".  (Do you perhaps get the sense that I am donating this paper to further the conversation, not gifting it?)

re: Well performed voluntary cybrarianship is contagious.  Hm... maybe, but then, maybe it is really hard to do voluntary cybrarianship well.  I've been a documentarian for several projects and found, yes, others contribute, but often most of the writing ends up being mine, and when I stop writing, the documentation work ends.  Maybe I just wasn't doing it "well" -- or maybe there are other factors to consider.  (Sometimes everything has been said, for example.)

re: Within months, each community will want the tools and opportunity to  make their own rules. This can be facilitated by means of a process  handbook for democratic decision-making. Good idea...  I actually think building "democracy" can be pretty hard, though.  Again, as above, there are often some pesky bottlenecks that get in the way (e.g. "the" documentarian, "the" programmer, etc.).

re: You need to be cautious about learning by trial-and-error because errors  at the beginning can set long-ranging reactions in motion. Nice!

re: HOST BEHAVIOR.  This whole section is solid gold.  I think this document should be strongly recommended to anyone doing group work of any kind.  At the same time, I think it would be great to get permission from Howard Rheingold to wikify the list and build a community around *it* (if that hasn't been done before).  Yah who!

Reflection: Amazing to note the currency of this document 12 years after it was published

re: Making rules after launching, or changing them from the top down is a mistake. This is interesting. It makes sense, but I haven't taught a class this way, nor attended one which was conducted with such explicit rules. I have seen this in the Open Source community with Dreamwidth (http://www.dreamwidth.org/legal/principles) for example.

I really like Rheingold's advice to "catalyze, facilitate, nurture -- and get outta the way". If we can facilitate indirectly through the agreements and culture of the group and the structuring of activities then its easier to facilitate with a light touch during the day to day work of the course