April 2006

Developed as part of the Information Management Resource Kit (IMARK) learning modules by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) , this resource covers the approaches, methods, and tools used to build electronic communities, and covers the various steps and procedures for developing and facilitating electronic communities. The total curriculum consists of 29 lessons, ranging from approximately 15 to 90 minutes duration, grouped into five units, for a total of about 16 to 22 hours of self-paced instruction.

The module has been designed for coordinators and facilitators of established or incipient communities, as well as groups of individuals with shared interests in agricultural and rural development.

Contents:

Unit 1 - Online communities - new opportunities
This unit covers the benefits and opportunities offered by online communities to facilitate knowledge and information exchange, and describes the key factors for a successful online community.

Unit 2 - Understanding needs and assessing opportunities
This unit explains how to conduct a needs analysis for an online community, how to develop a team and define goals, and looks at the technical, financial, institutional and social issues involved in designing an online community.

Unit 3 - Options, choices, tools and applications
This unit illustrates a wide range of interactive tools and applications for building an online community, their strengths and weaknesses, and how they affect the nature of the community.

Unit 4 - Designing an online community
This unit provides guidelines for the design of an online community including introducing online communication in your organisation, the professional roles required, the technical choices to be made, and how to plan for marketing, training and evaluation activities.

Unit 5 - Online facilitation
This unit provides guidelines on how to facilitate an online community and introduces the basic concepts of facilitation, compares traditional and online facilitation, and illustrates a wide range of facilitation tasks and techniques.

The training may be accessed by registering online (which is free) or requesting the CD-ROM.

Click here to request a copy of the CD-rom online.