This document summarizes Professor Marilyn Leask's presentation on making online collaboration work through examples and challenges. It discusses communities she helped launch for educators in the UK and Europe from 1995-2010, funded by various government and university sources. Key lessons included ensuring communities have a clear purpose that engages members, easy-to-use technology, facilitation of high-quality content, and integrating use into members' work through appraisals and job descriptions. The document also briefly defines the evolution of the web and concepts like semantic web and augmented reality, and provides statistics on communities launched for public services and education.

1. Making online collaboration work – examples and challenges OECD workshop, Paris Professor Marilyn Leask University of Bedfordshire , UK 17thMarch 2011

2. Experience: initiating, launching, quality assuring, commissioning, publicising, censoring… 1995 initiated TeacherNetwww.teachernet.gov.uk - initially designed to meet educators need to access information (eventually funded and owned by central government, cut by incoming government 2010) 1997 founder member European School net www.eun.org (funded initially through subscription from EU governments and EU projects) 2002 initiated Teacher Training Resource Bank www.ttrb.ac.uk and accompanying sites for main subject specialist organisation in education (funded and owned by central government) (cut by incoming government 2010) 2006 launched Communities of Practice for Public Service www.communities.idea.gov.uk (funded through central government and local government subscription organisation) 2010 launched Education Communities www.educationcommunities.org (funded through university subscription) 12/03/2011 University of Bedfordshire 2

4. monthly summary newsletters with click through links went to every member and therefore every local authority;

5. use prior, during and after conferences included all documentation so those unable to attend could engage;

6. all policy staff expected to demonstrate they are working through the communities for their area (appraisal forms and job descriptions).12/03/2011 University of Bedfordshire 3

7. Lessons Purpose, purpose, purpose - irrestible to the audience: model on living communities, allow cross-connections, people finding, start and finish, sporadic communities, stimulate relevant activities Technical: usability of software, effective technical help desk, ease of use, ease of retrieval of passwords, reliability, scalability Quality of experience: trained facilitators are needed, taking responsibility for freshness of content, archiving, newsletters, engagement Sustainability: change of leadership in the parent organisation Who is it for?: whose community? Sustainability of funding Engagement: proof of concept first with innovators and early adopters, understanding of push pull factors, clear purposes so people want the service, then publicity, publicity and training. Build use into the day job – appraisals, job descriptions 12/03/2011 University of Bedfordshire 4

8. Definitions Web 1 – mostly read only…directories/taxonomies Web 2 –user-generated content (read and write)…tagging/folksonomies Web 3 – the portable personal web … user behaviour driven/me-onomy…personalisation (Source: Agarwal, A. (2011) Web 3 concepts explained in Plain English http://www.labnol.org/internet/web-3-concepts-explained/8908/ Accessed 2 March 2011) Also Semantic web (intelligent machines) – Tim Berners-Lee Augumented reality – Prof. Carsten Maple – Univ. of Bedfordshire 12/03/2011 University of Bedfordshire 5

9. Online communities for the Public Service established 2005 – 80,000 members, 1500 communities 12/03/2011 University of Bedfordshire 6

10. Education Communities 2010 – 20 countries…48 communities, 250 members

11. Goals of Ed Comms encourage the development and sharing of new ideas and strategies enable people to connect locally, nationally and globally to run joint research projects support faster problem-solving cut down on the duplication of effort provide potentially endless access to expertise 12/03/2011 8 University of Bedfordshire

12. Current use of Ed Comms Not just knowledge exchange or benchmarking as for local government communities Writing collaborative articles and books– no need to communicate via email and lose documents Networking Research groups Project management People finder for expertise and project partners Self organising networks 12/03/2011 University of Bedfordshire 9

13. Self Organising Networks Allow 21st century models of research and academic practice which policy makers andeducators have yet to grasp for the most part. Impactful research Researchers networked to do research -> efficiencies, distributed knowledge, collective knowledge building Users contribute to decisions on topics and co-research Rapid publication Publications in a usable form for users, large scale, can be built on 12/03/2011 University of Bedfordshire 10