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Ning for the XLi Conference 2010

Posted on August 14, 2009

Sometimes, it’s not easy to select the right tool for the job. If you’re planning a conference for example, the obvious (traditional) way to go is to setup a website. If you have the means, you may also want to include the ability for participants to enroll online and proposals to be submitted. For our annual conference on online teaching and learning, the Extended Learning Institute (XLi) 2009, we did precisely this. We added a new page for the conference (Dreamweaver), included enrollment capability, account creation, abstract submission and scoring  (in house), and administered the conference website using Contribute.

Anyone who has used Contribute will know what a frustrating experience it can be. It introduces random code into the website, crashes more often than not, and creates additional work for everyone involved. It is just too unstable.

In order to get away from these issues and address the lack of two-way interaction available on a traditional website, we are planning to use a Ning for XLi 2010. ‘Ning’ (’Peace’ in Chinese) is an online platform where individuals can create their own social networks (Wikipedia). It has a number of great features for promoting dialogue around shared interests.

A Ning provides:

• A forum for participants to get acquainted and interact around conference tracks all topics. Discussions can be threaded for ease of communication.
• The ability for individuals to set up groups of their own in order to focus on specific interests– We might imagine faculty establishing a group centered on applying web-based technology in teaching and learning for example.
• Blogs for every individual. Snapshots of the postings are automatically updated to the homepage of the Ning (latest activity) so that the whole community can see what individuals are focusing on.
• RSS feeds of the latest updates– a direct line to your inbox.
• A good degree of customization so that you can make the network tie in with your branding.
• Scheduling of events– and this is beautiful! Scheduled events can be downloaded directly to ICal or Microsoft Outlook, so individuals can have specific sessions at the conference identified in their calendars. What a great way to get a reminder to be in attendance!

These are powerful features for stimulating discussions and promoting networking before, during and after the conference, However, like every tool, Ning has limitations, and we can’t quite get away from the webpage for a couple of very good reasons:

1) The webpage provides a clean interface where key information can be readily accessed. A social network can be a rather chaotic experience for the novitiate.

2) We would like to keep the features that were developed in-house, so that we can more readily track enrollments and submission of proposals. While it is possible to see who has enrolled on the Ning, an additional document would probably have to be developed for concise viewing of this information. It is also not possible to submit documents to a Ning.

This month we will continue to explore the functionality of Ning in more depth as we explore its potential applications for XLi 2010. I would be very interested to know what other people’s experiences of using a Ning for holding a conference are, and what strategies you have used to promote interaction among members of your Ning.

Thank you,

Robert

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