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101 Quick Ideas to Ignite yourOnline Learning Community

by Josh Little & Nemo Chu of Bloomfire

BASIC NEEDS

Remember Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs?” Your high school teacherprobably taught you that all humans have basic, foundational needs (e.g. food,water) and higher-order needs (e.g. love, success). Without meeting your basicneeds, higher-order needs don’t really matter all that much.Did you know that an online learning community also has a hierarchy of needs?It does, and believe it or not, you already know what they are. Just tryanswering this simple question: does it matter how many gift card raffles you doif management doesn’t support the initiative?Ninety-nine percent of the time, the answer’s no (if it’s yes, then I’d love tolearn more about your business). As you can see, gift card raffles don’t matter allthat much compared to top-down support. And that’s why it’s our first idea. Hereare some ideas for your pre-flight checklist.

Top-down support

– A company we know got a foosball table for the office.Over the next several months they noticed that the people being let go werethe people that played foosball most often at work. Don’t let the learningcommunity become your foosball table. Get leadership support beforelaunching to the general membership. Ideally, leaders should be activelyposting at least once per month, even if it’s a short 2-minute state of the union.It let’s everyone know that it’s OK to play foosball.

Bottom-up Support

– Kids don’t start dancing just because the chaperones aredancing. In fact, they’ll probably be freaked out if the chaperones start dancing.You probably want to find a group of grown-up “cool kids” (some salespeoplecall them “champions”) who will support your community initiative. Don’t startcalling the VP—the most effective champions are the ones who are just likeeverybody else. Use the “cubicle rule”: if you can imagine the champion sharingcubicles with your community members, then you’re good to go. Arm yourchampions with tools to infect their peers.

Purpose

– Remember when you first joined Facebook? What did you want todo? If you were like me, the first thing you wanted to do was figure out a way toremove the big ugly zero on your friend count. That gave you a mission, andFacebook cleverly used your mission as an opportunity to guide you aroundtheir platform. Although you’re probably not trying to start your own internalFacebook, what you do want to do is give members a purpose. When first-timers

join your community, they’re probably wondering, “OK, so what do we dohere?” Create a purpose statement for the learning community in as few wordsas possible. Maybe use that statement as your community’s tagline. Post it on allinternal marketing materials surrounding the initiative. Get creative and think ofsomething that will stick.

Rules of engagement –

Sometimes no rules can be scary, especially whenalmost every other part of the organization has rules and processes. Use otherrules to your advantage—especially if you already have policies that guidecorporate communications and behavior. Extend these policies to cover activityon the learning community so expectations are clear. It’s all about creating asafe environment for people to share without getting their hands slapped. Afterall, some learning communities are simply extensions of a classroom. Make it OKif someone gives a wrong answer or asks a dumb question. That’s how learningsometimes works.

Start a nursery

– If you’ve worked at a garden, you’ll know that expertgardeners get a head start by starting a nursery long before growing seasonstarts. To apply the nursery strategy to an online learning community, simplyinvite 10-30 of your champions in early to seed the community with greatcontent and activity before everyone else arrives. This way, when everyoneelse arrives fashionably late for the party, they can avoid looking awkward bysimply mimicking what’s going on around them. Have your early-bird championsmanufacture the first impression everyone else gets.

Make it fun

– Who were your favorite teachers growing up? The ones whomade it fun, right? There is no single thing a teacher can do to make theirmessage stick than by making it fun. This doesn’t have to be stand up comedy.It can be creativity, silliness, passion, or great insight. It was Mark Twain thatsaid, “People will forget what you say, but will never forget how you made themfeel.”

CONTESTS AND AWARDS

There’s nothing like competition to place focus on any initiative. However, becareful because extrinsic rewards can be a double-edged sword. Socialpsychologists will often say that in order for rewards to encourage long-lastingattitudinal and behavioral change, extrinsic motivational must eventually bereplaced by intrinsic motivation. In other words, community members shouldeventually participate in the community not because they want to win a reward,but because they want to participate for participation’s sake.

Focus on smallincentives more often for being helpful and creative.

Here are some ideas tohelp you.

Helium balloons (version 1)

– For each new post, the author gets to float ahelium balloon above their desk. First to 11 wins a prize. With helium balloonsfloating everywhere, you bet that the learning community will stay top-of-mind.

Top contributor (number of posts)

– This contest is better to be held monthlyor quarterly because of the average posts/person in a week is too low. Manyorganizations actually have “contribution” as a measurement on performancereviews. Bloomfire makes it easy to get that metric.

Most helpful post

– Every week or month, a small panel (not a single person) judges posts based on a pre-existing definition of what “helpful” is. Be sure thatevery community member knows ahead of time what the definition is. Onepossible definition may be the type of organizational impact the post mightmake (could be big).

Most creative post

– Similar to the above—just be sure to define what“creative” means. If the winner digs public recognition, put the person on apedestal and make him or her a model for what great looks like. Maybe one wayto do that is to feature the person in your organization’s monthly newsletter.

Best production value

– Have your panel define and publish a scorecard forproduction value, and judge posts once a week or once a month. Although wepropose that “gd enuf is good enough” we do appreciate what production valuecan do for learner buy-in. Besides, it’s fun to play director.