Potential improvements

Once the development work on linking the Ning Validation Support Network to the University’s HIVE repository (where all outputs from validations will reside) is completed, the practitioners will be able to search validation documents through Ning platform via a “self-service” approach. This will increase the chance for members to visit the community network and participate in the discussions. The incentive will be that we are giving them a service to help them with their jobs; hence there will be more likelihood to add threads or respond to queries.

New methods created to enhance the traffic

Fleur Corfield a community member created a group for those who are interested in Validation around Foundation degrees or involved in Enable JISC project. This hopes to bring together thoughts from those in the university and partner colleges about the experiences around curriculum design. This may create an opportunity to get them engaged in the validation activities.

A Validation Administration group was created for people who are involved in organising validation events (e.g. collating validation documentation, organising validation panels, writing validation reports or tracking the completion of amended documentation) within the Faculty/School or at a University level to discuss administrative issues with other colleagues.

Community Recession

It looks like we are having a ‘contribution crunch’, some community members seem to be saving their thoughts, ideas and experiences for themselves. As a remedy we need to inject some motivation and enthusiasm in order to get the wheels in motion again. The community atmosphere has been quiet the last few weeks, even though the discussions were part and parcel of validation process and taking place every week only core members engaged.

The majority of the participants fall into wolf, mouse and mole types according to Gilly Salmon 5 stage model, as they visit the community with low or no contribution to the resources.

Few reasons could be behind this:

• Lack of time, practitioners could be busy with their work schedule and not have time to follow the discussions
• Newbies may have seen the community as a source of information and best practice, rather than a participation environment. Perhaps they do not feel confident to raise their queries or they are too shy to ask questions fearing that these questions might be naive or stupid, so they keep quiet.
• Expert users may be hesitant to add a forum, start a blog or link an existing blog, as they may feel like they are show-offs
• People are not feeling comfortable, especially when they know that managers and directors could view their questions, opinions and views , so they become reluctant to open up
• Members do not find the subject interesting and motivating, the validation topic in general could not be a task they enjoy practising.
• People look at the Validation Support Network as new initiative which used top-bottom approach, so they perceive it as another tool they need to use.
• People who are technology phobic do not prefer to collaborate and interact using social network software, they prefer other methods of communication i.e. talk, phone and email. Faculty members seem to rely on their colleagues in answering their queries or using their personal approach to contact other members in other faculties and schools