Pros and cons of Google+ Communities vs Yahoo Groups

Please revise and update if you have more information. 

1)There are basically four choices when creating a G+ community: 1).Totally public anyone can join, 2). Public but membership requires approval, 3). totally private and hidden from search engines, 4). Private but it can be found for people to request access.  Totally free self-enrollment invites bots and spammers. There is no space for a person requesting to join a G+ community to present themselves so you have to assume they are bone fide EVO participants. Remember, you are looking at 50-100 requests in the first 2 weeks so you have to decide how to set your notifications for the week. In Yahoo, too, you approve members who attempt to self-join, and you can also approve a whole batch of requests daily from one place without clogging your email box. You can ensure that potential members write you something to indicate they are human. So in YG we can quickly find spammers or bots and boot them out.

2) In YG when people join, you can send out an automated welcome message that can be fairly complex. This could include the syllabus, PWs, and site links for a wiki or other resource venue. In a G+ community you have to put this info in the description of the community so these other addresses may become more vulnerable to spammers/bots.

3) In the first weeks of a session, there are usually email and PW problems. In YG, we can trace "bounced" emails and help participants with their mail settings. I don't see those features in Google+, which is more open-ended. New members may get lost.

4) With notifications from your G+ community "ON," you have only the option of individual messages and not a "daily digest" as you do for YGs. Both allow a direct click "reply" from the email for individual messages which goes into the "thread" of the original message. 

5)  Any participant can start a new, separate discussion thread on both platforms. Over the years in EVO we have found that having one uniform e-list, as in YG, is far better for building community and cross-seeding discussions in the short time allowed for our sessions. Yahoo messages can be "threaded," in effect, by searching for a topic or key words, which produces a list of all messages containing the words as well as those words in subjects/topics.

6)  The frontpage of a G+ community is confusing, since it show "all posts" chronologically. It is necessary to click on one of the topics listed on the left to see the threads posted under that topic. This is not as welcoming  as the YG frontpage, which can be edited with html, and include your logo, information about moderators, calendar, etc.

8) Another reason we have used YG in the past is that the Yahoo ID is the same as for Messenger, which we use as a back channel for chats, so this means the participants need only one ID to remember. Of course we now use many different venues, and participants usually are more used to handling IDs and PWs for multiple sites.

 Here is the address of a G+ communities quick starter guide. For more info on using Yahoo Groups, check our YAHOO HELP FILES page, created specifically for issues in EVO.

 Summary Table - YG and G+ Communities

Some comments on Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups can be made private, so you won't get odd comments.

Topics for discussion cannot be threaded, so this is a disadvantage, as opposed to Yahoo Groups, where you can use a Daily Digest and thread by topic in the Messages section itself. In Facebook you'll have to hunt for earlier discussions (although there is a search function).

Edmodo

In 2013, we used Edmodo for communications with our moderators, but felt Yahoo Groups had more advantages and was easier to access, and held the group together better.

For information on using Edmodo for your session, see our Edmodo help file.

Pros and Cons of Moodle

Some people seem to have a real problem in getting into Moodle, and seem to get discouraged. From one mentor/moderator:

"...we had a specific problem with Moodle in that many participants never joined! Our wiki had 132 users and our Moodle had 99 participants. They didn't use any other means of communication, so many participants asked questions at the bottom of the wiki or were notified in mass mailings via the  >Contact all users in this group when referencing a particular item on a wiki page. This year, [the moderators] are considering other venues, too."

Other Groups to Try

Wiser Groups sounds promising. It's free and has lots of Web2.0 tools.

See other options at the Alternatives to Ning Google page (You must request access to see this page).

EVO is a project of TESOL's CALL-IS

revised 29 September 2013 by E. Hanson-Smith

updated  29th Sept 2013 by Elizabeth Anne