Usability and Design Expert Jakob Nielsen states that in large online communities 90% of the users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of the users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the actions. I sincerely hope that The E-Learning Council users will participate and break the mold. Some suggestions on increasing the amount of participation are:
- Make it easier to participate: We have forums, online pools, and allow users to create blogs. Use the Contact Us form if you are interested in having your own blog on this site.
- Make participation a side effect: E-Learning Council does track the stories that most readers click on and promotes them automatically. Users can also rate each story (including this one), book, etc on a 5 star rating system
- Edit, don’t create: After we get the primary E-learning Council site is up and going, we are going to work on setting up a E-Learning Wiki using PBWiki or MediaWiki that will let users edit existing content.
- Reward participants: As The E-Learning Council grows we hope that active participants are recognized and rewarded for their contributions
- Promote quality contributors: I am going to use this blog and the front page to highlight the best information on the site.
If you have additional ideas on improving participation please let me know.
via Useit.com
Or, in the words of Dennis Matthies of Vervago and the one who coined “Precision Questioning”, recently commented in my blog that “hearing [people] talk about why they are choosing to ask about one thing vs. another — ramps up the “metacognitive” learning.” I strongly believe there is a parallel to participation in a group. I’ve always found that contributing to the conversation helps me think better.
Speaking of which, he’d be a great speaker to have at an eLearning Council event.