Week 3 Prompts and Answers

• What uses might a collaborative wiki or blog have in your chosen (current or desired) work environment?

At present I am consulting to two clients. I believe that each of them is too small to successfully create and maintain a usable wiki. One of them makes significant use of day-labor, where literacy itself is not always assured, never mind internet access. For the other business I am actually speaking to them right now about trying a blog! I think that the main initial use would be as a combination of community service and indirect advertising.

• How would they support learning and/or performance?

I think that client education may in fact be the initial goal--helping potential clients figure out what they seek, and equipping them with the information they need to select a provider.

• What would be the design and implementation challenges if management tried to do this? What would be the design and implementation challenges of a user-initiated effort?

There are presently seven licensed professionals in the business, each acting as an independent contractor, so for the purposes of this proposal they are collectively management and users in one. All of them are sufficiently strong writers so as to be capable of contributing positively to a blog. The business already has a website to cross-link with a blog. Should they decide to try it, they will likely find it easy to each contribute a post each week or so. I would likely be asked to serve as “blog-master” to maintain standards and schedule.

We will likely try this in a few weeks.