Virtually+speaking...what+are+FLC's+like+for+us?

Community Names should be relevant to what they do
We currently host two "virtual" learning communities each week via Elluminate Live. On Tuesdays, we have the Elluminate "Show and Tell" which has morphed from simply a way to help people learn Elluminate into a learning community centered on instructional strategies. The Tuesday sessions are an example of not having a clear name for a learning community.

In contrast, the Thursday sessions are titled the ANGEL Learning Community or (ALC). The name alone tell the community members and anyone curious about the group exactly what the community is about. This is a good example how a learning community should be named.

Using signatures to help establish identity
This is a brief video clip from an Elluminate learning community session where Eric demonstrates how to setup profiles as participants and how to make participant profiles visible to all participants. (Click the image below to launch the video)

Promoting the communities for discoverability and sustainability
Designing a learning community so that it can be discovered by people who might want to participate is extremely important. We make sure to send emails out to announce the learning community sessions but have also been employing technology to help with our weekly tasks and increase the discoverability of the community. To automate the publishing of recording links Eric has set up a label on his [|del.icio.us.com] account for "tagging" the Elluminate recording links. When Elluminate sends out the recording link (as it does upon the successfull publication of any Elluminate Live recording, we simply "tag" the recording link with the tag "ANGEL-Learning-Community-Recordings".

We have taken it one step further to make our weekly tasks easier by setting up connections to our local College's training websites via [|RSS] so that as soon as we have "tagged" a recording link, it will automatically show up on our training sites. Here is a link to the Peninsula College Training site for and example. This allows other people participating in the community to bring the content into their institution with ease and sustainability in mind.

Have a handle on the content area
Sharing expertise is what learning communities are all about, this is especially important with fascilitators. The following example show a clip from a learning community session where Eric demonstrates a skill with the Elluminate tool before Lesley brings in her expertise with instructional strategies. (click the image below to launch the video)

Welcome messages are a must
We make sure to introduce and welcome the participants to each and every learning community session. This is a great time to give an overview of the topics for the session as well as welcome newcomers and break the ice. Below is a sample of one of these introductions with a sample of how we share links and remind people how to find the recordings and general information about the community. (Click the image below to launch the video)

Exchanging electronic links is important for knowledge generation
Elluminate allows us to easily paste links into the chat window during sessions for quick sharing. We plan to take this to the next level by setting up a del.icio.us tag for each learning communitie's resources that get shared during sessions. By sharing a common tag in del.icio.us we can share all of the links used during a given session while making it easier for others to find and use the resources.

Even when questions have been asked before... you should answer them again
One of the key advantages when using Elluminate is the ability to record and share recorded sessions. This makes it so that frequently asked questions, when they take a long time to answer, can be directed to previous recordings. In general, we answer questions from the community as they come up as an important aspect of the community orientation of the sessions.

Remember that it is all about the community
Always keeping it in the back of our minds that the true benefit of the community is when the community organizes itself around common goals and questions. In the example below we had a breakthrough moment where a community member jumps in and shares some expertise while guiding the fascilitator who is controlling the screen. (click image below to launch the video)