Community Plumbing in Action: The Story of BEAT and the Campus Commons

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Community Plumbing in Action: The Story of BEAT and the Campus Commons
This is a very good paper outlining the development of BEAT (the Business, Education, and Applied Technology program, which is an inter-disciplinary, inter-institutional program that takes an applied, integrated approach to IT training) and the Campus Commons at UPEI. There's a lot going on in this paper, so read closely, but the core for me is the conceptual view of a self-organizing academic community and the key lessons: adopt an open strategy, encourage and allow freedom, attract a diversity of members, allow emergent communities to grow, and take an applied and integrated approach. More...