3.4 Patterns of participation
In this section, you will look at patterns of participation in online conversations and explore the best ways to react to these.
Activity 6
Timing: (Allow 15 minutes)
- Think about your own patterns of participation in online conversations. When, why and how often do you participate, and how intensive is that participation?
- Look at Table 4 below, which is a collation of common patterns of online participation identified by Gilly Salmon (2002). Have you found a pattern that applies to yourself? Do you recognise the pattern in others that you come across online?
- If the course you are facilitating has affiliated guides and/or guides, you can also see in Table 4 how their roles are designed to support you.
| Behaviours | Facilitator response | Affiliated guide/guide response |
|---|---|---|
| Visits once a week, lots of activity, then disappears again until next week, or even the week after! | Nudge by email to encourage them to visit again and see the responses that they have sparked off. | Comment positively on the learner’s posts resulting from facilitator encouragement. |
| Steady – visits most days for a short time. | Congratulate. Ask them to encourage and support others – especially those who post very little. | Post positive comments when learners support others. |
| Always catching up: completes two weeks in one session, then disappears again for some time. | Nudge them with an email to suggest that they will find the course easier to follow if they access it more regularly. Check on other commitments. Provide regular summaries and archiving to enable them to catch up and easily contribute. | Join in posts from the facilitator’s summaries of topics. Comment positively to encourage learners’ contributions. |
| Visits once a week, reading and contributing little. | Check that this learner can access all the messages; check also language difficulties. They may need boost of confidence – give them a specific role. | Help to boost the learner’s confidence with positive, encouraging and friendly comments. |
| Inclined to post disembodied comments in a random way. | Try to include relevant comments from this learner in summaries and invite responses. They need support and e-stroking. | Help to support the learner with relevant responses. |
| Lives online; a prolific message writer who responds very rapidly. | This learner may need counselling to hold back and let others shine through. Give them structured roles, such as summarising after a plenary. | Support by including references to relevant comments from other learners to help integration. |
| Tendency to dominate discussion at certain times. | Invite this learner back frequently. Offer a structured and specific role. | Support and encourage the learner to reflect on other learners’ comments. |
| Steals ideas without acknowledging. | Foster a spirit of acknowledgement and reinforcement of individual ideas. Warn them directly if necessary. | Actively include these learners when posting comments that acknowledge others. |
| Intelligent, a good communicator and playful online. | Ensure they acknowledge and work well with others. They may annoy participants who think it’s all very serious. | Support the facilitators by helping to keep the learner on a relevant topic. |
Footnotes
(Adapted from Salmon, 2002)Discussion
It is important to bear in mind that these participation types are a way of understanding a vast array of different online behaviours, and so are inevitably very simplified. As such, you may have come across other ‘types’ than those mentioned above, or have found that the same people exhibit different behaviours at different times.
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3.3 Maintaining the conversation