This study explores the potential factors promoting participation in a Web-based Knowledge Community (WKC), a kind of Virtual Community (VC) aimed to support interaction among a distributed team of researchers. The focus of this study is related to the need, in organizations operating in global contexts, for software that provide a technological infrastructure able to deliver, in a single web-based environment, various services for communication and coordination of activities among working groups on-line. Although literature on VC is quite extensive (Davidson, & Shivers, 2001; Koh, & Kim, 2003; Blignout, & Trollip, 2003; Koh, at al., 2007), relatively few studies have been published concerning participation in the WKC and few studies have identified factors that contribute to WKC success (Lin, Fan, & Wallace, 2007). Our objective is therefore to investigate the factors that increase the level of participation in these new communications environments.
In order to investigate the potential for participation in such communities, three different conditions were developed using a prototype of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) environment. In the first condition participants interact in a synchronous context (chat system), whilst in the second and third conditions participants engaged in an asynchronous moderate (forum) and asynchronous non-moderate (forum) respectively. Fifteen students/trainees with an average age of 23.73 participated in this study. The sample consists of 7 men and 8 women who were randomly divided into three groups of five people. Participants were trained in the use of the CMC environment and were requested to solve tasks interacting within the environment for one week. Both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection were adopted: while the former was used to assess the indices of participation, the latter was used to analyze the factors of participation through analysis of the processes of interaction.
Results show an interesting use of technological artefact not so much related to the kind of communication it offers (synchronous vs. asynchronous), but depending on the tasks and stages of solving a task, such as the use of synchronous interactions in the forum. A second result shows how the presence of a moderator in an asynchronous context enhances the participation both in a quantitative and qualitative manner. The presence of a moderator facilitated a process named: "living the spaces" which is related with the ability to modify the interactive context depending on the task participants are facing. This research represents one of the first attempts to empirical analysis of WKC, and especially goes beyond the widely discussed notion of usability with an emphasis on the participants and on the processes of interaction, also on social constructs that make it possible to increase the level of participation to these communities.
References:
Blignout, A.S. & Trollip, S.R. (2003). Measuring faculty participation in asynchronous discussion forums. Journal of Education for Business, 78(6), 347- 353.
Davidson-Shivers, G. V., Muilemburg, L. Y., & Tanner, E.J. (2001). How do students participate in synchronous and asynchronous online discussions? Journal of educational computing research, 25(4), 351-366.
Koh, J., & Kim, Y.G. (2003). Sense of Virtual Community: A Conceptual Framework and Empirical Validation. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 8(2),75-93.
Koh, J., Young-Gul, K., Butler, B., & Gee-W