Stephen Thorpe

I think its intersting
hello there! Thank you for a wonderful website. I like it a lot! Good work, keep it up.

Posted
by: mamorter
(02nd of March 2007)

Hi all! I AM impressed with the site, thanks! Ciao'

Posted
by: Antizware36
(29th of November 2006)

See also what's coming up

See also what's coming up (http://www.onlinestory.net/docs/coming.htm) for our research interests and plan.

Posted
by: Stephen
(23rd of May 2006)

5.+6. Best Practice, effectiveness

Mark Scholz did a good study called Characteristics and Best Practice of Successful Technology Virtual Teams. He interviewed 8 technology experts and came up with things like clear goal, commitment, objectives, results driven, organisational structure, leadership, accountability and trust. I’ve put his thesis up in the resources section of our website: http://www.onlinestory.net/lib/scholz.pdf Two suggestions: a) We could take the members of our
research group as experts and do interviews. b) We could each create our list of the top 10 best practice use of story in online groups – we could see what elements are common amongst us all. Then see how our individual list changes
over time as we experience more stories and do other aspects of research.

Posted
by: Stephen
(25th of April 2006)

8. Creating community

As Community means different things to different people, I think we could create a definition of ‘community’ that will work for us – an example arrived today in the GFSC newsletter - Any identifiable set of activities pursued by a community in order to increase community social capacity. If we used a definition like this we could then see what activities we have done using story (or could do with story) that have and haven’t created social capacity. This approach would also get us away from the psychological aspects.

Posted
by: Stephen
(25th of April 2006)

3. social functions of stories

I know of one view of social functions (by Buhrmester & Prager 1995). They include self-clarification, self-expression, social validation, relationship development, and social control. Jon, can you talk a little more about your understanding of social functions? (So I can get on the same page)

Posted
by: Stephen
(24th of April 2006)

lets combine some of these areas

Thank you Jon, Does anyone object if we combine some of these that are similar? Engaging and inspiring participation & engaging people (2 &11). Best practice & facilitation effectiveness (5&6). Focusing group energy and attention & motivation (7 & 16).

Posted by: Stephen (24th of April 2006)

research interests

1. Which of the below are you interested in? (can be a single topic, or multiples, or a new topic, or you might just want to join in) 1. feelings of connection, integration and belongingness (not really)
2. engaging and inspiring participation (Some but more enabling participation rather than inspiriing)
3. social functions of stories (yes very much)
4. belongingness (no)
5. best practice (of online facilitation and eliciting stories yes)
6. facilitation effectiveness (what works and what doesn't) (Yes but not clear how different from 5.)
7. motivation (No)
8. creating community (the social rather than the psychological aspects of creating community)
9. building trust (again the social aspects and not the psychological)
10. the power of storytelling (Yes)
11. engaging people (No clear how different from 2.)
12. relationship development (depends on how it is defined)
13. reaching out to a faceless audience (Don't know what this means ???)
14. strengthening teams (yes)
15. online leadership (not really)
16. focusing group energy and attention (Ok but how different from 7. motivation?)
17. sharing our story vs sharing our information (OK)
2. Do you have ideas for a project to research the topic/ topics? (if you don’t have any ideas that’s ok – we
can help each other to create something) (Help!!)

Posted
by: Jon
(19th of April 2006)

Using the blog...

Use the blog to post your ideas for research projects on our topics of interest

Posted
by: Stephen
(18th of April 2006)