In search of design principles for tools and practices to support communication within a learning community

Abstract

Introduction This paper describes research into how to improve learning within communities through the introduction of new commu-nication tools and practices. The focus of this work has been the design and development of an on-line community newspa-per. It was designed to act as the news component of an intranet -a server based repository of information kept within a com-munity[2]. The Newspaper provides a web-based presentation of news in a classic newspaper format. Community members contribute stories by simply sending email to an address dedicated to the newspaper. Software running on a server automatically stores, formats and re-displays the sender's mail as an HTML news article. The newspaper can thus be viewed from any web browser. In addition, the frontpage of the Newspaper is pro-jected on a wall in a communal lounge area which can be viewed conveniently by all community members who pass through the area during the course of their workday, as well as during tea time, a daily scheduled time when people gather in the lounge area. In this paper, we first present the motivation behind the project and describe our approach. Next, we give an overview of the key design decisions that led to our final use of the Newspaper, in combination with the public display and daily tea time gath-erings. Feedback collected from users at each stage of the design development is also reported. Finally, we summarize les-sons learned thus far, and suggest a preliminary set of design principles for supporting communication within work groups, through tools and practices suggested by the Newspaper project.