Research Findings 1 – confidence and diversity in communities

I assumed, when I began my research, that having a balance of experts and novices was important to engender the sharing of knowledge and experience. What I found was that more confident community members would share more readily regardless of how long they had worked in their roles.

The apprenticeship model assumes that a “master” can and will teach an “apprentice” what they know. We generally assume that the length of time in a role dictates the level of ability – this may be the case, but the ability and willingness to pass on skills requires a degree of confidence.

In terms of an online community, attempts to ensure that membership includes those with differing levels of seniority alone may not be the best tactic for ensuring skills are past from master to novice – if the “master” is not confident, they may be less likely to share their knowledge. Confidence AND ability are required to ensure skills are passed on within an online community. Face to face sharing may be different, as the level of confidence required to share may well be less in such familiar situations, and many of us have techniques for encouraging participation in even the quietest individuals.

Confident people may share more readily, but that doesn’t mean what they are sharing is good practice. Encouraging the more reticent members of a community to take part is important for diversity of opinion. Those with less confidence may be less willing to share online and may need support to develop confidence and trust prior to sharing online.

Managing the diversity of a community then is more complex that merely having a balance of novices and experts. Just as we see in meetings, training, any group gathering, quieter less confident members have valuable contributions which balance debate and enhance the knowledge being shared. Where there are no face to face opportunities, then techniques such as encouraging individuals to contribute by contacting them personally, by a phone call or an email, recognising their value, may give them the incentive to take part.

Who is participating in social media and how

Thanks to George Siemen for highlighting this chart from Business Week, showing participation in social media in the US

Another Business Week chart shows that although use of social media has grown enormously, creation of content is still the domain of the few

In the 22+ age range, there are more commenters and readers than there are creators (those who write blogs, publish web pages, upload videos.

This is reflected in terms of my research, in that there are more readers and commentors than creators.

Barriers to sharing 2 - fear of repercussions

I've been thinking about why participants in my online community were discouraged from posting on their shared blog. They felt there may be repercussions if they did so, and they wanted to remain anonymous.

I initially thought the reluctance to post was due to a lack of confidence, but responses show that this is not the case, they were pretty confident with posting, commenting, sharing experience. I've considered their reponses in terms of Nolan's model which indicates that the balance of the elements of trust influence participation, which told me they were only partly participating due to this balance, but fear of repercussions is clearly an issue, which I feel may be due to a large extent to the impact of the organisational culture.

Almost half of the participants responses to the statement "I believe I can say what I want on the blog without repercussions" were negative. They really did think what they said may come back to haunt them. They were also very keen to remain anonymous.

This is a worrying response if online communities are to be effective for learning and knowledge sharing. I started to think of Big Brother (the BOOK, not the god awful reality TV programme) and the impact knowing you are being watched has on behaviour.

The majority of us, when pulled over by the police, will feel guilty, even though we've done nothing wrong. It's a feeling brought on my our perception of the police, that they are in control of us and can punish us for our actions if they so wish.

In terms of participation in an online community, considering the same effects, posting and commenting is open for review, which is great if you are in an environment which encourages learning, reflection, and questioning. If you feel however you are being policed, that's a whole different ball game. It means every time you present yourself through your posts and comments:

• you have to think about what you do against the culture you work in
• you are aware you may be questioned or assessed

The fear of "not doing it right" is overriding the desire to learn. Acknowledging that you need help with something is one thing, asking for that help is clearly another.

A post entitled Learning Disabilities on Leonardo Mora's blog, reminded me of what Peter Senge said in The Fifth Discipline, that most managers find collective inquiry inherently threating. I'm not sure this is true, but I do think organisations with a particular culture can find collective inquiry threatening. Leonardo also reminds us of something Chris Argyris noted,

If we feel uncertain or ignorant, we learn to protect ourselves from the pain of appearing uncertain or ignorant. That very process blocks out any new understanding which might threaten us. The consequence is what Argyris calls “skilled incompetence”– teams full of people who are incredibly proficient at keeping themselves from learning.

The initial fear of repercussion felt by my participants I feel may to a great extent be driven by the perception talking about anything that went wrong, any negative experiences, may be picked up by the media. However, the positive effects of sharing failure can be phenomenal - we can learn so much from mistakes, that not sharing them seems almost criminal.

This fear may also be due to the espoused theory, theory in action element of people's survey responses. They may say they are confident about posting, but the pain of appearing uncertain or ignorant prevents them from actually participating. Without further research I can't say if this really is the case, but I suspect there's some truth in it.

What I can say, is that for whatever reason, wishing to be anonymous and fearing repercussions from writing something online are not condusive to online participation, and that gaining people's confidence by showing that there will not be any repercussons, even when posting as yourself, seems the only way to increase online participation for this group.

Again, it all boils down to trust...and that means it's going to take time...

Trust and Participation - leaning toward a community of interest

My dissertation research has ended (see Communities of Practice, Knowledge Management and Learning for background on the research project), and I've discovered some interesting findings in relation to trust and participation.

Once again I need to point out that the size of the sample I have for my research is not statistically valid. What I do want to point out is that participants are self-selected, and interested in being part of an online community of practice - one would therefore expect results from the study to be indicative of people who WANT to be involved, rather than those who feel they SHOULD be involved.

I believe this makes the findings worth reporting.

In terms of responses, it appears that people are

• fairly confident about posting and commenting (more confident with comments than posts I should note),
• feel the shared blog has been useful for learning and knowledge sharing
• feel the information they have received through the blog has been useful for their work.

However, particpation levels have been lower than one would expect from the above responses.

Why is this? I analysed the responses using the model described in Trust and Participation - and there's more. This model considers pairs of variables that will dictate the level of participation.

On mapping the participants survey responses to Nolan's model, it became clear that generally speaking, the participants are showing only a partial level of participation due to the following:

Participants perceive the blog to be more interesting than useful
Utility value being greater than interest would, according to Nolan's model, result in greater participation. If participants dont think it's useful for their job, they won't bother to get involved. This is a community of interest, rather than a community of pratice.

Participants percieve their power to influence is less than their interest in the subject
Participants are interested, but not engaged - the extent to which they feel their knowledge has an impact on others is less than their interest in the area. This again, reflects a community of interest, and would explain why levels of participation in terms of posting and commenting are lower than one would hope.

So results, whilst limited in sample size, suggest that key elements affecting participation are:

• Trust
• Confidence (perceived power to influence)

Unless of course Nolan's model is way off the mark. With more time, I would more fully research the validity of the model. As it is, it does indicate that my initial gut feelings about the influence of trust and confidence over participation, as indicated by the semi-structured interviews I conducted, is correct.

Again, as I said yesterday in my post Enterprise 2.0 - same problem, different platforms , if we are to leverage benefit from online community, we need to attend to the shortfall behaviours (lack of trust, lack of confidence) which prevent the realisation of the potential of Enterprise 2.0.

Blogging from the Backroom event, CILIP event

Tomorrow I'm speaking at an event run by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, Blogging from the Backroom. I'll be talking about my experiences with the Project Managers Knowledge Cooperative shared blog. Also on the programme are Drugscope, St. George’s Medical School, University of London, Home Office and the National Library for Health (NHS). You can see the full programme here.

I'm looking forward to being able to enthuse about the power of blogging, after all, I think blogs are the notebooks of the 21st century, a fantastically flexible tool, but I'm also keen to point out the problems of using blogs for knowledge sharing and learning.

My key points are that

• Knowledge alone is nothing, it's how it's applied that matters, so a blog is merely an enabler for improved practice
• A blog can aid reflective practice as by the very act of writing about experiences, people create a concrete example onto which to hang theory
• Collaboration is key in a group blog - if only one person posts, and few people comment, the value of the group element of the blog is lost and it becomes a different animal
• Trust and confidence are vital for participation, if this is lacking, and a culture change is required, it will be an uphill struggle to gain benefit from a shared blog

I'm sure it will be an interesting and thought provoking event and despite a few nerves (I've not presented on this area before, as my research isn't complete) I'm looking forward to it.

Trust and Participation - and there's more

Another model, developing the theme of trust and it's impact on participation (see my post on Time, Trust and Participation for 3 level model of trust), this time from Terry Nolan in his paper Individual trust and development of online business communities. (again, can't find a free link...)

It aligns with the economic based, information/knowledge based, identification based levels of trust, but looks at it from the standpoint of the component parts of trust, rather than the types of trust behaviour which align with participation.

Nolan identifies what sees as the component parts of trust. In his words:

• Risk - associated with providing information to unknown participants and acting upon information received from them



• Benefit - an overall perception that involvment will provide individual gain



• Utility value - measured by high information quality such that it can be absorbed into immediate practice



• Interest - indicating an inherent interest in the system and the information available



• Effort - the effort exerted to acquire information



• Power - an individual's ability to influence others
  

He believes that participation is dependant on the combinations of variables, ie

Interest vs Utility value
If interest exceeds utility value, then you have a Community of Interest, rather than a Community of Practice

Risk vs Utility
If the risk of participating outweighs the usefulness of the information, the likelihood of participation is lessened

Benefit vs Effort
If benefit outweighs effort, the individual is more likely to participate

Power vs Interest
Power gained through the possession of expertise that influences the practice of others. To participate fully, an indivual must have more than a mere interest in the topic


So the following diagram, reproduced from fig 7 in Nolan's paper, shows that the interaction between the above variables will determine how much an individual participates.




Assessing individual perception of the component elements of trust in relation to an online community appears to be a great way to identify barriers to sharing, but I'm still no further on with a strategy for facilitating the change of an individuals position from one of non or part participation to one of full participation and membership of an effective community of practice.

Time, Trust and Participation

If someone came up to you in the street, and you had a packet of crisps in your hand, would you let them have one?

If you wouldn’t share your crisps, why not?

Maybe because we generally don’t share things with people until we know them (or we’re just plain greedy/hungry).

Maybe because we don’t generally share things with people we don’t trust – you don’t tell someone a secret unless you know you can trust that person not to then tell your secret to everyone they’ve ever met...

In this very simple scenario, the two dimensions that clearly affect sharing are knowing someone and/or trusting them. The fact that degree of trust in information, individuals and technology and length of time people have known one another can affect knowledge sharing shouldn’t be that much of a surprise.

If we are to engender trust and encourage participation in online communities, then:

• On the time side – we need to develop relationships, sustain them, and not assume that people who don’t know each other will share.

• On the trust side – we need to be honest and transparent in our dealings with people, trust is a delicate thing – who is going to trust someone who keeps things back? Who is going to trust a system that isn’t secure. Who is going to believe information when the last thing they read was untrue or inaccurate?

• On the relationship side – trust is developed between people, organisations can only leverage relationships that are trusting.

As Kevin Dwyer from Build Your Own Business notes

Trust is personal. It is between two people. When organisations “trust” each other it is a result of trust between individuals in the organisation.

An interesting article from WeMedia says

From the consumer's perspective, it's easy to place trust in an established institution such as The Wall Street Journal or even MTV, but how does the audience learn to trust a stranger (or group of strangers), to evaluate the information they are providing, and to collaborate with them?

Thinking primarily about business based communities, it seems to encourage participation, we need to more fully understand how we can cultivate trust whilst at the same time acknolwedging that it takes time to build.

Maybe the first step is to assess readiness to share in terms of trust. Hsu, Ju, Yen and Chang from Taiwan have developed a very interesing model (sorry, can't find a free link to this paper) based on Social Cognitive Theory which measures multi-dimensional trusts.

• Economy based trust – based on economic benefit or violation of trust ie the termination of a relationship or the likelihood of retribution
• Information based trust – knowledge based trust, the belief that behaviour is predicatable and and uncertainty is reduced
• Identification based trust – parties understand one anothers wants and mutual understanding is developed

They found that certain trust dimensions have a positive effect on others ie

• Economy based trust has a positive effect on information based trust.
• Information based trust has a positive effect on identification based trust
  

Taking the crisp sharing scenario as an example:

• Economy based trust – sharing must give you some sort of benefit ie not being hit
• Information based trust – to share you believe what you expect will happen – and they won’t give the crisp to their dog
• Identification based trust – you share because you can see they are hungrier than you

To examine the level of trust someone has toward a particular group or system would help identify the barriers that continually prevent sharing. Individual differences are clearly important in understanding why some people share quickly and without pontificating, whilst others need to see individual benefit to take part.

I feel this model may help us to understand what it is we need to do to encourage diverse participation in our online communities. All we need to do then is work out how to help people move from where they are to where they need to be to effectively share and learn.

Shouldn’t be too hard...