Participatory Tensions in Developing a Community Learning Network Susan MacDonald Andrew Clement Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto 140 St. George Street, Toronto, ON Canada M5S 3G6 +1 416-978-3111 {susan.macdonald, andrew.clement}@utoronto.ca ABSTRACT This short paper reports on a study of St Christopher House (SCH), a community and social services agency that undertook an ambitious project to create a community learning network (CLN) based on a ‘home-cooked’ free/open source software (FOSS) content management system (CMS). The primary purpose of the CLN project was to provide adult learners with digital skills needed to secure employment in the knowledge-based economy. SCH also wanted to streamline administrative practices within the organization, reflecting an attempt to be inclusive and participatory. At the outset of the project there was an enormous investment of organizational energy, enthusiasm and participation. While this approach matched the various stakeholder expectations, the reality of transforming the CLN as an abstract ideal into practice produced internal tensions and stretched organizational capacities. This study examines the design and use of the CLN from the perspective of SCH staff in an effort to learn about how to reconcile conflicting organizational values and structures in the voluntary sector when undertaking ambitious participatory system development projects. Keywords Community networks, community learning, information and communication technology, participatory design, organizational learning, evaluation INTRODUCTION Since the 1990s community-based organizations (CBO) have increasingly adopted information and communication technologies (ICT) to support a growing range of organizational activities. Generally this has involved installing and configuring standardized hardware and software packages for common administrative and communicative tasks. Still relatively rare however are CBOs that undertake major software development projects for strategic purposes, aimed at significantly transforming their operations and the ways they relate to their constituencies. One such CBO that embarked on an ambitious ICT development project that promised fundamental capacity and service improvement is St Christopher House (SCH), an urban community and social services agency in Toronto. SCH is a well-recognized and long-established not-for-profit agency of the United Way in downtown Toronto. With more than 230 staff (80 full time; 150 part-time) and 800 volunteers, SCH offers a wide range of services and resources to disadvantaged community members of all ages. In 1999, SCH formally engaged with ICTs when they received federal funding to establish Community Access Program (CAP) 1 sites to provide public access to the Internet as well as computer support and training. Building on their successes and in an effort to enhance the financial sustainability of the CAP sites, in 2002 SCH received $300,000 in funding from the federal government to design and implement a content management system, or a Community Learning Network (CLN), to support organizational processes and the learning needs of the community they serve. Merkel et al [7] observe that community networking studies have tended to focus on the need for ICTs to provide democratic access to community information and to facilitate civic engagement, whereas community informatics studies tend to “foreground the ways that information systems can be built to facilitate organizational goals…” (p1). There is little research about what community members need and want from ICT initiatives designed to serve them. Participatory Design approaches in the community context have produced some results that engage community members in ICT-based projects. However, this knowledge is tempered somewhat in light of the notion that participatory development approaches do not necessarily lead to changes in everyday practice. [1] Building on previous collaborative work with SCH and experience with PD [6] this paper seeks to understand better the challenges facing CBOs when adopting new technologies. Simpson [8] in citing [4] reports that ICT initiatives in community settings typically confront a variety of challenges, including tension between commercial and community aspects of networks, poor 1 http://cap.ic.gc.ca/pub/about_us/whatiscap.html