Towards Systems Design for Supporting Enabling Communities

Abstract

Communities and community support systems should be designed to enable participants to work effectively towards conducting both collective and individual activities and achieving their goals. Such communities are called “Enabling Communities”. Our focus is the “systems” that support community members in doing whichever tasks or activities they need or want to. These systems include processes, technology, information and people. This paper provides a framework for Supporting Enabling Communities (SEComm) in two major components: (1) Participant Support Systems (PaSS) and (2) Community Participation Levels (CPaL). Three case studies apply this framework to an emerging virtual community and a community of practice.