[Air-l] SIGGROUP No; Special Issues Si & Conferences Si

[Barry Wellman]

 _____________________________________________________________________

  Barry Wellman         Professor of Sociology        NetLab Director
  wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman

  Centre for Urban & Community Studies          University of Toronto
  455 Spadina Avenue    Toronto Canada M5S 2G8    fax:+1-416-978-7162
	     To network is to live; to live is to network
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I have recently received the sad news that SIGGROUP is no more: the
Special Interest Group on Group stuff of the Association for Computing
Machinery (ACM).

The group's Bulletin (an informal journal) has been shaky for some years.

SIGGROUP's shakiness is puzzling, because I found lots of life at the
ACM's recent CSCW conference (that's Computer Supported Cooperative Work,
literally; Group and Social Network stuff, more generally) and reportedly
at their annual GROUP conference (which I haven't attended in a while).
Fortunately, both conferences are continuing.

Also good news is that two more Special Issues of SIGGROUP Bulletin will
be published in the first half of 2005, although I don't know in what
order:

1) Less of You, More of Us: The Political Economy of Power in Virtual
Communities. Editors: Jason Nolan, Knowledge Media Design Institute,
University of Toronto Jeremy Hunsinger, Center for Digital Discourse and
Culture, Virginia Tech
	The goal is to bring into the dialogue a number of researchers on virtual
community who are looking at the borders and peripheral locations that are
ignored, unknown or explicitly overlooked. Within the notion that
community, often the walls we build around ourselves form mechanism of
power and preference, this issue will examine online communities that are
excluded or self-excluding from the dominant forms, norms and discourses.
For example, there are a large number of researchers inquiring into the
recent blogging phenomenon, but many explicitly exclude
technologies/communities such as LiveJournal.com with his 3.8 million
users (1.7 active), and discount the value of teenage bloggers, who are
mostly female (67% of Livejournal users). Because researchers tend to
cover familiar territories, we encourage authors to explore alternatives.
Our issue will provide researchers with the opportunity to expose the
readership to a wider sense of virtual community and what is going on at
the edges of the event horizon.

	Some of the themes are: hacking virtual community; the overlooked, broken
down, subverted or reconceptualized virtual communities; borders and
breaches, the ordering of virtual community; hacktivism; sexually focused
virtual communities; questioning the value of online community; collective
intelligence is just the fordism of the mind; the Slash Fiction
communities; MOOs the early forgotten virtual communities; and the code
beneath the community - exploring programmer and system administrative
communities.

	2) Online Learning Communities. Edited by Anabel Quan-Haase University of
Western Ontario, Canada).

	As we spent more of our time on the Internet sending and receiving
emails, talking on chats, and surfing through the web, we learn from
others - informally from family and friends, formally from online classes,
and as apprentices in communities of practice. Learning via the Internet
is not a lonely endeavor but consists of exchanging information with
others, debating current issues on chats, and participating in listservs.
A wide range of online learning communities have emerged from the wide
range of opportunities the Internet makes possible, for example, grass
roots communities based on shared interest, informal interaction, and
voluntary participation; knowledge communities and communities of practice
which support information exchange, knowledge creation, and sharing of
group practices. Other learning communities are more formal in nature.
These communities are often set up by institutions, such as colleges and
universities, who offer learners the opportunity to obtain a degree
through distant education. Learners often prefer online learning as it has
the potential to overcome many of the traditional barriers encountered in
face-to-face settings such as distance, time constraints and combining
work and study. Thus, online learning offers a flexible, alternative to
traditional learning settings. However, critical analyses of social and
psychological issues including access, literacy, personality, group
interactions, temporal aspects, and online conversation are needed to
better understand the nature of online learning communities and to make
informed decisions for supporting and developing practices that best suit
the needs of online learners.

	This special issue contains papers that examine online learning
and knowledge communities, both formal and informal. Papers are empirical
and theoretical in nature. The authors explore the nature of online
learning communities, key characteristics of online learning environments,
major challenges for creating and sustaining online learning communities,
and best practices for online learning communities among other possible
topics.

Authors:
1. Leila Alem & Simon Kravis: Design and evaluation of an online
community: a case study at CSIRO
2.      Michelle M. Kazmer & Caroline Haythornthwaite: Multiple
Perspectives on Online Education
3.      Michelle Kazmer: How technology affects students' departures from
online learning communities
4.      Christopher Hoadley & Peter G. Kilner: Using technology to
transform communities of practice into knowledge-building communities
5.      Kirk St.Amant: Distance Education in a Global Age: A Perspective
for Internationalizing Online Learning Environments
6.      Anthony Papargyris & Angeliki Poulymenakou Learning to fly in
persistent digital worlds: The case of Massively Multiplayer Online Role
Playing Games