Stephen Asunka

Issue Entrepreneurship … Still Going …

For my Issue Entrepreneurship Project, I had this huge ambition of single-handedly creating an online community that will bring science teachers and other educators together to share ideas. My rationale for this was that most science educators in the developing world do not have access to the most relevant and up-to-date information especially pertaining to scientific facts, principles and discoveries. This forum was therefore to serve as a one stop shop for educators who are both seeking knowledge and also willing to share their knowledge, ideas and expertise.

So I started my ambitious (albeit empty) Science Demystified Wiki and sent out e-mail notices to persons I felt will be willing join the forum. I was however was quickly humbled after receiving a few responses, most of which were surprisingly discouraging. However, after reading some literature - especially Barabasi's book: Linked - and being enlightened on how sustainable networks are created and maintained, I realized why creating such a forum from scratch was going to be virtually an impossible task. The best option for me then was to join an already established network, participate actively and meaningfully so as to gain credibility, and possibly move towards carving a niche out of that network which will then ultimately grow to become a formidable resource as earlier envisaged.

So I joined MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) http://www.merlot.org, and have been reviewing some articles submitted by other members, even though I am yet to submit one myself! In the meantime, I will be focusing more attention on my wiki (which is woefully incomplete) and hope that my interaction with other members of MERLOT will at some point make them feel that a visit to my forum will be worthwhile.


Lessons Learned

1. Creating an online community involves much more than simply having access to connectivity and social software. The issue to be addressed need not be only unique, it should also resonate with the potential participants' thinking and aspirations.

2. Communities formed by "bottom-up" processes - where individuals spontaneously congregate (in cyberspace) and prescribe lines of action - are more likely to be vibrant and sustainable than those formed by "top-down" approaches in which users' roles and activities are determined by an external person and rigidly conceived software mechanisms.

3. The affordances of social software - one-to-one communication (e.g., email and instant messaging), one-to-many communication (Web pages and blogs), and many-to-many communication (wikis) - ought to be used in combination if one hopes to build a community in cyberspace.

4. Still Learning...

posted by Steve @ 3:55 PM