Thread:Sections that make up a charter (9)

Hello Everybody,

First of all, apologies for coming in so late.

I have been reading through the wealth of great contributions by all. Sterling job!! I will do my best to share some of my thoughts and observations, so here it goes. I apologise in case I respond to comments that were made earlier on, trying to catch up and hope that I can bring some new thoughts to the table.

In response to the comments made by Ben and Wayne, let me say the following:

1. Listing participants skills pertaining to the tasks of working groups: I agree with what has been said. Because we are an open community, we should allow a person, who wants to join because s/he thinks that s/he has something to contribute, the option to follow through. Does it matter what type of background or skillset a person has, if contributions are appropriate to and for the outcome of our desired objectives? I think requirements if any should be made general and based on good will of the incoming new workgroup member, time requirements should be indicated and I think we need a "Workgroup Buddy" kind of person who takes up the task to make the transition for the newcomer easier. This could be done on a rotational basis within the relevant working group, so one perosn doesn't get stuck with this all the time.

If we are talking about participants skills in general, maybe a short paragraph at the top each working group page would help, informing about expectations and commitments for and to a working group if people wanted to join the group or attend a course as true participants (minimum requirements).

More working groups/Facilitators:

We need new ideas and people to come in and we should decentralise our efforts and have for instance workshop facilitators work in teams of at least two (based on the size of the group [which we are doing], facilitating consecutively and concurrently, depending on what we are looking at, whereby the tasks should be more evenly distributed, so the overload on one person can be minimised.

I think we need a catalogue of distribution of tasks to be done when facilitating online (creation of another working group perhaps), and I am not referring to the facilitation guidebook on how to... The way workshops are run depend very much on the individual faciltiator(s) and technological expertises as each person has their own style when facilitating.

Boundaries: There is also a reference here on We values, overdominance, overzealousness, competitiveness (it suffrocates the others), and "not pulling "your" weight that needs to be looked at => WE guidelines Question is, where do you draw the line. What is enough, too much and what isn't and who is to tell?

For me flexibility is the key word, this within parameters that are designed to support the established processes, which we are looking at, if this makes any sense.

I also agree with Ben's suggestion to harness the power of the user page. I have been thinking about this myself. How could we find a creative way of using these pages more effectively, other than just using it for our own personal ideas, purpose and content. I would rather like to see them used in addition. Maybe another type of working group is required, for instance, for the compilation of expertises that are really hidden within these user pages, listing them somewhere by category or area of expertise, so when we are looking for people in specific areas with certain expertises, we have a pool of expertise to fall back on. These WikiEducators can be contacted and will not drown in the great mass of wonderful WikiEducators. We would be pulling them back in this way as well and can make them our strength. All this falls under the WE community Improvement working groups. Two ideas.

I reciprocate Peter's thoughts re not always getting email notifications, and/or receiving emails long after they were sent and I am on the system every day. Also not sure what to do about this.

Evaluation: How do we want to capture lessons learned? Surveys? is this enough? and how real is the result if we are asking more specific questions. Feedback pages don't always seem to work. People are apprehensive about saying something critical publically.

Let me stop here for now.

Cheers,

Patricia