Unit 2 - Brainstorming possible topics for the team project

Instructions
The instructions for this assignments say, "You will need to examine your current teaching or work situation. Decide if an online community could benefit the learning or the work situation. Then also decide what you would need to know to create this online community."

Brainstorming
This first post is more of brainstorming session than a formal presentation of my idea for the team. My work environment is decidedly corporate, and online communities are notoriously difficult to build in my department since the technicians in this department are more often at customer sites than at their computers. So, for me the challenge is to imagine a community that is compelling enough for techs to login in and participate willingly, rather than being required to do so by their manager, as previous attempts at online community have done.

I guess that one idea might be "methods for developing an online community in a corporate environment." One difficulty that may arise is that while a pretty free-speaking environment would be conducive to building relationships and rapport among a geographically scattered work crew, the department managers would not be supportive of an environment that lets users be disparaging or critical of management, for fear that th aforesaid management might read the site! A discussion board based community could be built outside of the corporate network, but that would not protect anyone from repercussions. Therefore there would have to be rules about what is and is not allowed to be discussed on the boards. Just thinking about this makes me tired!

Another idea about online community is how to encourage the use of the boards within the confines of a class. Though that would have seemingly less impact than an ongoing discussion board, it may still serve to develop relationships among the users.

A third idea I have is about developing a discussion assignment that requires techs to pair up and ... I don't know what. Design a problem. Develop an idea for improving service for a particular problem. Brainstorm a software tool that they'd like to have. Though I have been allowed to add discussion boards in the last two courses I was not able to make them mandatory so participation was sparse and limited to praise or criticism for the course. Incorporating small teamwork exercises would create some more interaction, but I'm not sure it would be approved by management. They are very set on the self-study model.

Maybe I need to think about how to develop community in spite of a self-study model? This is clearly something that will need further thought.