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Executive Summary

Clients purchase online community software for a variety of reasons such as providing their customers with another support avenue for their products or services, gathering research on their customer base, creating brand awareness, etc. ABC Corporation (fictitious company name) develops an online community software product to sell to clients for this purpose, along with offering online community management services if clients would like to outsource that role. ABC Corporation’s online community managers are trained in managing online communities. Some clients who decide to take community management in-house sometimes choose employees who have limited experience with managing online communities. As a result, the online communities are not managed properly, the communities fail to thrive, and ultimately the business objectives for the online communities are not fulfilled. In order to support their clients, ABC Corporation's solution to this problem is to create a course on managing online communities for clients' in-house community managers.

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Aim

The overall aim of this project is to ensure clients who purchase ABC Corporation’s online community software and choose to take management in-house are as successful as possible by providing their selected online community managers with skills necessary to manage an online community.

Target Audience

The primary target audience would be the person(s) selected by the client to manage their online community, and any back-ups.


Learner Characteristics:

  • Age: 18-65

  • Gender: 50% male, 50% female

  • Work Experience: 1 week - 25+ years

  • Education: HS diploma - Graduate degree

  • Primary Language: English

  • All community managers are located in the US

  • Prerequisite Knowledge/Skills: It is a pre-requisite that community managers taking this course have already taken the course on administrator functionality of ABC Corporation's software product. Because every community is different, all community managers understand their company's unique purpose and goals for the online community.

  • Prior Experience: All community managers are familiar with the concept of an online community. All community managers have been currently managing their communities to the best of their abilities, but have not received formal training on online community management.

  • Attitudinal/Motivational Characteristics: Because each Community Manager is ultimately responsible for the success of the online community, motivation is high for most to learn about basic and common tasks involved with daily management and best practices. Some Community Managers feel they don’t have time to manage an online community because it is an added responsibility that was not originally part of their job and tend to push daily management tasks down on their To Do lists.

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The learner characteristics would affect design in the following ways:

  • The course will need to be delivered online and self-paced because learners are not all located in one central location and need learning at different times

  • The course will need to provide many authentic experiences to show learners why the content is important, how it is relevant, and how they can apply it in their jobs immediately

  • The course will need to provide many opportunities for success and feedback to build learners' confidence

Delivery Options

Online/Self-paced
The method was chosen for three reasons:

  • Providing an online option for this learning will decrease the cost associated with travel, either having a trainer going on-site at the client’s facility or having the client’s community manager travel to ABC Corporation

  • An online course can be repeated and used as a reference as questions about different situations come up at different times

  • Online training can be done on the client’s timetable and requires less coordination of multiple schedules

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