Topic 6 Exercise 1 Designing for usability, sociability and sustainability

People	Purpose	Community Size
Users where the people that where a part of the ATTP, generally the same cohort used the forum for approximately 18 months (the length of the course). Users might leave if they dropped out of the course, the only new members may have been people doing the course part-time.	Accelerated Teacher Training Program Bed TAS and Bed Sec Maths – Forum provided by CSU for students to communicate with other students in the same subject	The community started out at approximately 120 potential users, some people chose not to interact on the forum. This number dropped down to about 80 by the end of the course
There was a high level of activity on this forum as a lot of people had come from trade backgrounds and where not used to the university environment. We had many questions that others would happily answer. The forum offered the support that the majority of the students required.	Belonging- As the course was only offered as distance education the forum was utilised to keep in contact with students and to give feedback on topics of conversation.	Satisfaction- An interesting note was when my cohort started on the forum some of the old cohort still had access to it. They briefly had the opportunity to come on and offer pieces of advice. At the time I thought this weird as I thought that they would have something better to do with their time. By continuing my studies at CSU I have regained access to this forum. Twice I have had a look to see what is going on but I haven't made a comment. There was a sense of loss for the 06 cohort forum at the end of the course. I do understand now the sense of belonging that those other users felt.
This forum is subject specific. The users are people at various stages of an ITC degree, with ranges in experiences.	ITIC510 Online Communities is a forum provided by CSU for students to communicate with other students in the same subject.	The community is relatively small (although my other subject only has six students) with approximately 28 students.
The level of activity on this forum is quiet low with there being gaps of days between anyone posting on it.	Belonging- The forum is used to co-ordinate meeting times for the cohort and for subject related questions.	Satisfaction- With such a low participation rate this forum does not provide much sense of community. The users have been split up into POD groups which have been encouraged to meet and discuss points of interest using other social groupware software.