Live Virtual Technologies to Support Extended Events in Online Communities of Practice
Online communities of practice often require support for collaboration over extended periods of time, in what are effectively very long meetings. While there are a wide range of support systems for ‘foreground’ interactions, such as phone calls and video meetings, and a similar range of tools for ‘background’ interactions, such as email and instant messaging, there is a lack in tools that exclusively cater for extended events without switching to different platforms. The current study presents qualitative and quantitative data from a naturalistic insight into the use of two online synchronous communication tools, FM for videoconference and Hexagon for ambient awareness, to support an extended event in a working online community. A complex mix of planned and opportunistic interactions require a new set of working synchronous tools, managing the trade-off between awareness and disruption. Switching between foreground and background ‘meeting activity’ remains a very big challenge.