Sustaining Computer Use and Learning in Community Computing Contexts: Making Technology Part of “Who They are and What They Do”

Abstract

In this paper, we describe our work promoting technological sustainability among community organizations in Centre County, Pennsylvania (USA). We define sustainability as a dynamic process in which IT professionals, designers, and researchers work with community groups in ways that give them greater control over technology in their organization. Promoting sustainability involves finding ways of encouraging technology learning and planning in community groups. We report on the efforts of a community organization (CentreConnect) that works with area nonprofits to promote IT adoption and a participatory design research project (Civic Nexus) aimed at helping community groups use technology to solve problems that they think are important. We report on a joint effort to provide web design training for area nonprofits using this shared experience to consider ways of bridging research and practice when addressing sustainability in community computing contexts.