digital amalgam:technology, education and community

This Blog Has Moved!

2007-07-09T16:47:00.001-04:00

I've consolidated all my old blogs into a new one, which hopefully I'll be able to keep up with more regularly! Please visit Jim Woodell's Knowledge Common. See you there!

Online Classroom as a Hybrid Place

2005-09-04T16:08:00.000-04:00

From Cats in the classroom: Online learning in hybrid space, posted on FirstMonday:

It is not necessary for all of us to look at the same ugly carpet to create knowledge together successfully.

In this article by Michelle Kazmer, there's an interesting exploration of the idea that people who are learning together online are sharing an online space (or "place," as Michelle prefers to call online classrooms) while at the same time all occupying physical spaces. She points out that these physical spaces have an effect on what the virtual learning space becomes:

students occupy online space at the same time they are occupying and engaging with their local physical space; and the circumstances of their physical surroundings shape the shared online space.

This article made me think of my previous post, in which I pointed out that I cross paths with all these people who are busy doing other things, but then we all end up in a meeting together. People in online classrooms are crossing paths, too. And just as our awareness, in the physical world, of where people have been and where they are going can help us shape community, I suspect that awareness of others' physical spaces can contribute to community building, too. I wonder if Nancy White would call this another community indicator?

I'm not sure I do this anymore (or if I'm just not conscious of it), but in phone calls I used to always picture the place where the person on the other end of the line was while talking to me. If it was someone who's home or office I hadn't seen, I'd sometimes get flustered not being able to "see" the person in their environs. Other times, I've just made up their home or office. (As I type, I'm realizing that I do indeed still do this--and every poor telemarketer or customer service person I talk to shares the same boring cubicle with every other one.)

Don't know what all this means. Maybe we really need to have a sense of physical space. Actually, I think Michelle's got it right in saying that it's not about space, but about place.

In any case, it's fun to think about the online classroom as a kind of virtual nexus of physical worlds, and what the implication is for community building.

(Here's an idea I posted in my e-teaching coach blog related to this.)

Technorati tags: community_indicators, online learning, virtual space, online community, online classroom

Awareness as a Community Indicator

2005-08-30T07:15:00.000-04:00

Inspiration this morning came from discovering Nancy White's liberal use of the Technorati tag 'community_indicators'. I enjoyed reading a blog entry she pointed to about "community of the path" (Debra Roby) and it got me to thinking about how I cross paths with so many at work, usually in meetings, and how we all get intertwined through a few overlapping responsibilities, and also how we choose to interact with one another at those crossover points.

I've been very aware lately of the ways in which I'm interacting with others, and sometimes not liking what I see in how I've chosen to interact. But as I've become more aware, I've started to notice something. Somehow, my interactions feel more "connected." I guess what I mean is that I don't feel as much (with some of the folks with whom I'm interacting) that I'm just crossing paths, but that I'm seeing more of where they're coming from and where they're going (what those other responsibilities are), and how that plays a role in how they choose to interact with me. I'm more aware, too, I've where I'm coming from and how that helps determine the choices I make in interaction.

This all got me to thinking that maybe "awareness" is a community indicator. (Indeed, this may be something that Nancy's already explored--I'm going to have to get through reading all of those community_indicator-tagged entries...) In the "community of the path" blog entry, Debra talks about acknowledgement of one another as a form of respect, and how the acknowledgement also shows dog-walkers crossing on the path are aware of each other's, and their common, routine.

As an indicator of community, I guess awareness would have to be clearly present. I think that the kind of acknowledgements that Debra points to illustrate such an awareness. At work, in those meetings where we connect with people, I think awareness is illustrated through language that's used, like "I know you've been working on...," "I think this will be of interest to...,"--those kinds of things. You know when people are aware when they're adding words that connect their ideas to others'.

Because I'm interested in online community, especially as it relates to learning, this has got me thinking about how awareness expresses itself online. At the beginning of course-related discussions, too often there's a tendency for individuals to get wrapped up in writing about "what I think about this topic..." (you know these posts--they usually end with "...my two cents.") But as discussion matures, hopefully people begin to make connections between their own ideas and others'. They begin not only to be aware of others' thinking, but also aware of how that thinking is changing their own ideas and experience. That is, if community is really developing.

I've already written too much, but I want to write more about this. For now, though, I'll settle for doing some more good thinking about awareness and community indicators.

Technorati tags: community_indicators, awareness

Top Myths about Online Learning: Disembodiment

2005-08-26T07:12:00.000-04:00

A few months ago, I was reading the book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach. It's a great book, and has nothing to do with educational technology, but the word "disembodied" appeared in it a lot. The use of that word was quite literal in this book, but it kept reminding me of the less literal use of the word as it's often bandied about in describing the experiences of online learners.

I did a quick Google search for +"disembodied" +"online learning" which at the time turned up 597 hits. Today it's turning up 677. Are there more skeptics out there? Or more people fighting the skeptics? Only digging through the search results will tell. It's worth looking at a few of the hits. One is a book review of book called On the Internet, which takes a negative stance on the Internet in general and on online learning in particular, which at one point draws on the same philosopher as the author does to refute the idea that engaging in the Internet is an act of disembodiment:

For Merleau-Ponty, there can be no experience outside the body and he would conclude that any warning about the dangers of disembodied experiences are pointless because such a thing is not possible.

The reviewer's overall point is that any new technology goes through this long period of misconception and myth. Can we please move beyond this period soon for online learning? It makes my job difficult when I discover that many of my colleagues have a mental model of online learning as I talk to them about how we might advance our goals related to it. As I'm talking with them about which courses and programs we might offer online, I often forget that in their mind this is a second-rate learning approach, and one that will end forever the close, personal relationships that students and faculty will have.

When I finally snap out of it and remember what they're thinking, I do my little song and dance reminding them that in online courses most students and instructors alike report that they're able to develop closer and mor meaningful relationships with more of their classmates/students. I try to explain that the asynchronous nature of onling learning does worlds to enhance interpersonal contact, plus reflection and critical thinking. I expound on the wonder of the tools in helping to better facilitate collaborative learning. And still, I know they're thinking that online learning is about disembodiment.

I think the best thing that can happen for these folks is that they take, and then teach, an online course themselves. But not all of them will, so I'll keep doing my song and dance.

Actually, more an more I can already begin to see a shift in thinking, and the myth of embodiment seems less present among my colleagues. However, I'm still mindful when I'm talking to someone who's never experienced online learning to deliver the "elevator pitch" part first--trying to make sure we have a shared picture of what I mean by online learning. Every time I do this, I confirm that the myth was alive and well because as I describe my view/experience of online learning I get a lot of "really?" and "oh, I didn't realize that."

So practice your anti-disembodiment elevator pitch. Let's see if we can kill off this myth in short order.

Blogs versus Discussion Boards, Continued

2005-08-24T06:50:00.000-04:00

I've been enjoying a current thread on the EDUCAUSE Instructional Technology (INSTTECH) listserv about blogging versus discussion boards as tools for teaching and learning. The whole thread harkens back to posts (see posts on 9/8/2004, 9/12/2004, and 9/14/2004) here and elsewhere about this topic. I remain fascinated by the thinking going into the use of blogs as instructional tools, and also tools for development of communities.

(Maybe this interest will be enough to get me back to blogging regularly! I've been away from this for so long.)

A colleague of mine had a great insight about this thread, when I sent her a link to it. She pointed out that there might be something missing with regard to the "blog culture" when folks are comparing them to discussion boards. She points out that blogs can't be looked at just as a tool. She has an interesting point here, I think--that we have to consider the weight of the "cultural shift" that might be necessary to use blogs effectively.

But then, can't the same be said for using discussion boards effectively? More exploration of this to come...

Re-Invention and Diffusion of Innovation

2005-01-10T07:22:00.000-05:00

A while back, a colleague of mine and I wrote about Diffusion of Innovation theory and how it might relate to faculty development. Truth be told, we were familiar with Everett Rogers's work on diffusion of innovations and read a lot of secondary sources related to it, but neither of us had ever picked up the book Diffusion of Innovations and read it. I finally bought it recently, and I'm finding it infinitely readable for an academic book. And the most recent edition just came out, so it's got lots of up-to-date examples and includes references to recent adaptations of the theory, including Malcolm Gladwell's stuff (Tipping Point) and others.

One of the pieces I missed by not having read the book before is the idea of "re-invention." This is how an innovation is changed or modified by an adopter in the process of taking on the innvation and implementing it. Rogers says in the book that many researchers have largely ignored re-invention (so I don't feel so bad for missing it), and that much diffusion research has focused only on innovations that are adopted as developed.

What's interesting to me, working with teachers who are famous for "adopting and adapting" is that it's virtually impossible to track diffusion of innovations among faculty if you don't pay attention to re-invention. Teachers develop their own way of using an innovation so that it fits with their own approach and students' learning styles and abilities.

But it's not just that we should pay attention to re-invention. I think we should encourage it when pushing to have an innovation adopted. I think for the latent adoptors (which Rogers calls "early and late majority"), knowing that re-invention is an option may make the difference between adopting and not.

Let me take online courses as an example. I think most people who haven't taken or taught an online course have a mental picture of what an online course is, and that picture is either wrong or it's very fuzzy. Because early adopters have a high tolerance for ambiguity, they jump in and do an online course even though they aren't clear. For those other folks (I'm talking about teachers of online courses now, not students), we try to develop specific models and formats and templates for an online course--this helps give them a better picture and helps make adoption easier. But once adopted, a good teacher isn't going to want to stick with that format or template. The level to which re-invention is encouraged here could make the difference between that teacher sticking with it or not.

The more I write, the more I feel like I'm stating the obvious here. But this is a new insight that's emerging for me.

Earlier today, I was reading about "folksonomies" versus controlled vocabulary, and I think there's a similar re-invention dynamic here. But I'll have to write more about that later. Gotta get to work!

Back at 'em...

2005-01-09T20:21:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year!

Man, did I ever get consumed at the end of the year! Between the new job and the holidays... Yikes! Has it really been six weeks since I last posted an entry? Well, here's my first resolution for the year--get back to blogging!

More to come...

Ending the Tyranny of Online Discussion

2004-11-17T20:10:00.000-05:00

Something that's occurred to me during online teaching stints is that not everyone prefers to engage in developing knowledge by talking or discussing issues. This is why there are so many who never raise their hand in class. Are these people not learning? Well, maybe some of them aren't, but I suspect that many of them are. They're just processing information and building their knowledge in a different way.

I know there's all that stuff about the social construction of knowledge--Lev Vygotsky and all that. But does one really need to be a talker in order to learn? Is it possible that some talkers, and some discussion, actually create barriers to learning? I think so. And one of my great frustrations about teaching online is that, while I know online discussions are vital to building community and creating connections between and among students and facilitator, some people just won't get anything out of having to post to a discussion--these are people who feel oppressed (no, I don't think that's too strong a word) by online discussion and who we risk losing if we insist on forcing people to "talk" so much in online courses.

Unless... Maybe we can create discussion guidelines and rubrics that are more sensitive to different ways of processing information. I don't think I'm talking about Multiple Intelligences or Learning Styles here. I'm talking about different ways that people prefer to work with or process information and ideas. This processing is but one path to learning.

So what do I propose? A few years back, I experimented with an alternate model for discussions. Instead of having one rubric for discussion participation, I had four. I tried to recognize that people would have different approaches, and different strengths, in the discussion boards. This experimental model is by no means fully developed, but I described it to some faculty I'm teaching about online facilitation in a discussion board post the other night. I thought I'd share it here.

Please let me know, via the comments link below, what you think. If you decide you're going to give this, or some modified form of this, a try in your own teaching please drop me a note about how it goes. Let's find a way to end the tyranny of online discussion!

Subject: An Experimental Participation Model

Message no. 204 [Reply of: no. 201]

Author: Jim Woodell

Date: Monday, November 15, 2004 8:59pm

As an online instructor, I have also struggled with the

notion that not all students want to participate in the 

same way. However, I've also found that students need 

to be present in the online course and I've found the 

discussions an invaluable assessment tool (so much 

so that I've lightened up on other assignments and 

made participation a huge part of the grade).

But, I developed a model once that I hoped would 

addressthe issue that not everyone wants to 

participate by "talking." Unfortunately, much of my 

documentation of this model disappeared when I 

lost a hard drive, but it went something like this:

At the core of the model was the idea that there 

would be four different types of participation, and 

students should select one of the types based on how

they felt they would be most likely to engage with the 

content. Each type of participation had a rubric to 

provide students with characteristics of that type, and 

also an example or two.

The first type of participation was for the "talkers"--

people who liked to engage in conversation and who 

learned a lot through this kind of interaction. This type 

of participation looked very much like what we've done 

in this course--exchanges of messages, back-and-

forth and tying ideas together.

The second type of participation was for "thinkers"--

people who were more reflective and who liked to look 

at a lot of different ideas and consider their own 

perspective on those ideas. This kind of participation 

required students to go out and seek new ideas to 

introduce to the discussion. The ideas could be from 

web sites, articles, etc. They could even choose to 

highlight an idea that had been presented in an assigned 

reading or in the lecture notes, but that wasn't seeing the 

light of day in the discussion. Thinkers were not required 

discuss the ideas--only to post the ideas and to say how 

it changed their thinking. 

The third type of participation was for "workers"--people 

who were most engaged when they were trying to apply 

an idea or concept to their own experience. Again, these 

folks didn't have to get involved in the discussion, but 

they did have to post something to the discussion board. 

What they were asked to post was and example of how 

one of the concepts we were talking about had played 

out in their own experience--how it applied to them.

Finally, the fourth type of participation was for "lookers"

--people who liked to watch the trends and patterns of 

what others were talking about (or thinking, or working...) 

and to point out the trends and patterns. These folks were 

required to post analyses of the discussion or the course 

content, using tables or charts or simple outlines. 

That's the idea in brief. Unfortunately, I've not had a 

chance to test this but for a brief period of time in one 

of my courses. One thing I remember discovering was 

that, surprisingly to me, everyone ended up trying out all 

the different kinds of participation. Though some 

claimed to be solidly in one camp, they were often 

inspired to try the other participation modes.

Beyond Content

2004-10-12T19:33:00.000-04:00

...and beyond teaching?

Yesterday, I said that I thought that too much emphasis does seem to be placed on getting the content out there and not enough, perhaps, on the teaching or facilitation around that content. While I think there's no replacement for a good teacher to help someone progress through their learning, Derek Morrison at the Auricle blog introduced me to a different way of thinking about the "content problem" that Sebastian Fiedler wonders about.

Auricle: "But we all know (don't we?) that a load of content online, no matter how prestigious the source, does not e-learning make; a fact recognized by David Wiley's Open Learning Support (OLS) project, a pilot research project launched last April in collaboration with MIT."

As I said, it's not the content that makes MIT. Then I said, "it's the teaching." Well, that was probably a simplification. It's the teaching and learning. And while we can't re-create the MIT experience around it's content, the Open Learning Support project fascinates me as a way to at least create some additional, and I think needed, piece of the puzzle--a learning community. What a great idea to create an open space where those folks who want to take advantage of the MIT content can also engage with other learners!

We educational progressivists like to tout the notions of learner-centered classrooms and constructivism, and maybe this project, with its "self-organizing" learning communities will end up showing just how powerful such ideas can be. But will these open communities really take us not just beyond content but also beyond the need for teaching?

I don't think so. Derek also references Gilly Salmon's 5-stage model, suggesting (I think) that this kind of progression may be missing in some of the OLS project communities. In order for a learning community to advance, it needs someone to tend it. It may be that effective self-organizing learning communities can be successful if someone (or a few someones) in the community take on a facilitative role.

But it does feel to me like content plus community are still not quite enough. Facilitation seems to me to be key. I'm eager to see what the OLS tells us about this!

From Seblogging: Do we have a content problem?

2004-10-11T07:20:00.000-04:00

Thumbing through my blog clippings this morning, came across this post on Sebblogging back in July:

Seblogging: "So, I keep asking myself: what is wrong with you? everybody else seems to be really concerned about quality content and its delivery... what kind of distorted mental world are you living in?"

Sebastian goes on to quote Oleg Liber and his article Cybernetics, e-learning and the education system:

"higher learning is concerned with worldviews, with the acquisition of the concepts and distinctions of a discipline, its discourse; and this is best learnt through practice, though engaging in the discourse. This requires a form of cognitive apprenticeship [25], where a rich conversational engagement between learners and teacher can take place; it cannot be achieved just through the learning of facts."

This made me think of a lesson I learned when I started work at SNHU--I hope I can take parts of this lesson with me to my new job at NSCC. What I discovered when I got to SNHU, where hundreds of course sections are served up online each year, was that there was virtually no course/content development going on--instructors were handed a syllabus and an empty course shell in Blackboard. Importantly, though, instructors are given significant training in using Blackboard's discussion tools and a huge emphasis is placed on how to create that discourse that's so vital.

It does seem to me that most schools have a content problem--they get so wrapped up in how the content is going to be presented that they forget that what really matters is how that content is taught. People I've talked to are scratching their heads about the Open CourseWare project at MIT--why would they want to give away all that content? Well, it's not the content that makes MIT--it's the teaching.

The internet does indeed give us some amazing tools for discourse. Can we shift our emphasis in course development and delivery toward that end of the spectrum?

Going Wide or Going Deep? Blogs or Discussions as Pedagogical Tools

2004-09-14T07:18:00.000-04:00

Michael Feldstein tripped across Cole Complese's blog for his class, and mused on the possibilities of the blog for class discussion.

From Michael's e-Literate blog: "I’d like to see a unified tool that enables the professor to choose display and permissions settings based on pedagogical goals. For example, if you kept the blog display (i.e., showing the full text of all starter posts in chronological order) but reversed the permissions, so that any student could post to the main blog level but only the professor could post replies, then you’d have something like a Q&A or FAQ interface."

I really, really like the idea of either discussion tools or blog tools that give the instructor some ability to manipulate display based on pedagogy. I'll have to do some thinking about what this might look like if the instructor wanted, say, problem-based learning to be happening. Could the instructor have the display organize posts by steps in a problem-solving process?

And I know that the goal isn't always discussion. Some instructors have a tough time imagining how "discussion" can be used effectively to have students work through their content. I'm pretty confident that discussion can be used for just about any topic, but sometimes the goal is not discussion. And it doesn't have to be discussion to be social meaning-making, either, in my view. Those of us reading each other's blogs are engaged in social meaning-making without necessarily being engaged in discussion.

But here's my thought about Cole's class blog: it doesn't seem to be about discussion for me--students only seem to post one comment per blog entry, and it's hard for it to be about discussion if everyone's just saying one thing. But the other thing that I notice is that it doesn't seem to be about depth to me--there's a lot of territory covered in these comment posts, but is it going deep? is it possible to go deeper and not just "wallow in the shallows" if you're not really facilitating a discussion?

Or maybe depth isn't the goal, either.

Thanks, Michael, for giving me lots more to chew on with regard to discussions versus blogs as pedagogical tools.

Diablogging: Reflective AND Social Sense-Making Through Blogs

2004-09-12T20:46:00.000-04:00

Sebastian Fiedler wrote a couple of items recently about "Webpublishing as a reflective conversational tool." He concludes one recent entry:
"By explicating some of the 'phrases' we set in a verbal, retrievable, archived, and accessible way on a global network we appear to gain one more tool to 'discover the bases for likenesses and differences,' " reflecting on writing of one George Kelly.

In another entry of Sebastian's, he details his views on the idea of a reflective conversational tool.

I'm intrigued by what Sebastian has to say, but I can't help but think that the idea has to extend beyond "reflection" and into the realm of social sense-making. It seems to me that Blogs can and should serve as social sense-making tools, too. I'm certain that Stephen Downes must have some thoughts about this, and will have to go digging through his stuff about educational uses of blogs.

Earlier today, I created a new blog in which I want to offer advice about online teaching. I don't, however, want this to be one-way advice column, so I invite others to make it a "diablog" by contributing comments to my pieces of advice. I was pretty proud of that word--"diablog"--but of course have since learned that it's not all that original. A Google search for the word turns up 3,500 hits. So I guess this idea is out there--the use of a Blog for exchanging ideas, not just espousing them.

Earlier in the week, I responded to a blog article by Lee Lefever at CommonCraft on the differences between message boards and Weblogs. My read of the article was that Lefever doesn't see Blogs as social in the way that message boards are. I think they can be, though he's right that they are differently social.

In any case, I'm just doing some internal dialog here. Trying to tease out the idea of a Blog as a social meaning-making space. Of course, it can only be social if someone reads and responds. Anyone there? Care to share your thoughts? Click "comments" below!

It's Not What You Know, It's Who You Know: Work in the Information Age

2004-09-03T07:08:00.000-04:00

This article poses an interesting way of thinking about the development of work-related social networks. What most interests me about the idea of "intensional networks" presented by the author is the notion that these networks are "ego-centric"--entirely driven by an individual's needs and their own development of connections. Since part of my work involves trying to get faculty in various disciplines to come together and share resources, these "ego-centric" idea caught my eye...

From the conclusion of It's Not What You Know, It's Who You Know: Work in the Information Age: "The reduction of corporate infrastructure means that instead of reliance on an organizational backbone to access resources via fixed roles, today's workers increasingly access resources through personal relationships. Rather than being embraced by and inducted into 'communities of practice,' workers meticulously build up personal networks, one contact at a time."

This is true in academe as well as the corporate world. Especially at a school like the one I work at, Southern New Hampshire University, which relies on the work of a lot of adjuncts. And the adjuncts working in distance education are far flung.

So finding ways to help instructors "build up personal networks, one contact at a time" seems to be an important part of our strategy to foster communities among our adjunct and full-time instructors, within and across disciplines.

The Librarian and the Instructor

2004-09-02T07:26:00.000-04:00

We've just begun discussing ways we can get our librarian involved helping our online instructors get students oriented to all of the resources that are available to them through the online databases and such. Far too many of our students report in evaluations that they don't even know the library resources exist. Knowing about those resources is important to helping students' complete research and work of quality and substance.

I tripped across the article linked above, and quoted here:

Embedding online information resources in Virtual Learning Environments: some implications for lecturers and librarians of the move towards delivering teaching in the online environment: "if the librarian is to impact upon this new environment it seems that he or she may need to heed Burge's advice (2002) to, 'introduce yourself as an innovation to make their (lecturers') lives easier and their academic reputations bigger.'"

There's definitely another role that can be played when the librarian meets the instructor--helping to vet the online resources that the instructor has chosen. If only we can set up that consultation in a way that makes it feel like the introduction of an innovation.

There's one other objective we'd like to reach with the librarian consultation--educating students and instructors about plagiarism and what's okay (and not okay) when citing other people's work. But that's a topic for another blog entry.

Common Craft - Online Community Strategies: What are the Differences Between Message Boards and Weblogs?

2004-09-01T07:41:00.000-04:00

Common Craft - Online Community Strategies: What are the Differences Between Message Boards and Weblogs?: "Weblog topics have comments and message board topics have replies. This subtle difference in syntax reveals a difference in the roles. The word comment for weblogs implies that the author does not need further participation to reach a goal- comment if you want. Reply, on the other hand, implies that participation is explicitly requested by the poster. A discussion is not a discussion without a reply."

But blogs can still be a community builder, can't they? And message boards can be just that--message boards. I'm not sure I agree 100% with Lee Lefever on this stuff. I think communities take different shapes and go through different kinds of interactions. Discussion and dialogue are one form of community connection, I think. But somehow I also believe that people who've all commented on the same thing--who've all shown an interest in that thing and made a connection through it--are somehow a community.

Still, this is a great article and contributes a lot to my thinking about online communities.

Arthur C. Clarke Gets It. Can We Figure It Out?

2004-09-01T07:17:00.000-04:00

elearningeuropa.info: "Adult Learning and ICT": "'We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40 -- and half the things he knows at 40 hadn't been discovered when he was 20?' (Clarke, Arthur C. The View from Serendip)"

Pleased to find this quote from one of my favorite authors included in this article on approaches to adulty learning. The article covers some of the basics about what we know regarding how adults learn, and why our approaches with them need to be different than they are with traditional college-age students.

My colleagues in continuing education at SNHU and I are having a discussion about how can we make our courses, adopted from the "day school" programs for traditional college-age students, more vital and relevant to adult students. Some of it is just good teaching instincts--many of our faculty (especially the aduncts) adapt their approach to make sure they are tapping into those qualities of adult learners that make them unique.

I think one of the benefits of using online tools for these learners is that these tools can make it easier to incorporate things like problem-based learning. Rich, broad, and deep conversations about real-world applications can flourish online. While good teaching instincts can help us develop some of these approaches, I think some course re-design is necessary to help create some models. Now where's that funding source to make this happen?

What Inspires Participation?

2004-08-16T20:33:00.000-04:00

As I talked with my friend David K. today, he told me that he's become active in a review board of some sort or another in the town in which he and his family live. I asked him why he got involved and he said that it's because the issues the board is dealing with "have a direct impact on me and my family."

As we struggle to build communities online and to foster collaboration among students or employees, it's important, I think, to keep this in mind. It's the old idea of "WIIFM"--What's in it for me? All the talk about building online community seems to resist such a selfish notion, but the bottom line is that people will get engaged when there is a direct impact on them and their work, yes?

I'm reminded of Etienne Wenger's work on "communities of practice." I think that part of the idea is that such communities form around a common interest. But I think it's more than an interest--I think that people join communities of practice when they feel that there will be a payoff.

In creating online communities, whether for a class or for a group of co-workers, or just some sort of affinity group, we should keep in mind the need to articulate the payoff. Or maybe we just need to create the opportunity for participants to express what they want in terms of payoff?

Effective for Whom?

2004-08-16T20:22:00.000-04:00

I'm reviewing this online course from University of Vermont called "Teaching Effectively Online," designed to help UVM faculty make the transition to online teaching. As I read the assignments and reflect on this idea of "teaching effectively," I struggle with the idea that "effective" means something very different depening on your context.

We lead instructors to read what others' have done--"read these 'best practices'," we tell them, "and you'll know what to do yourself." These "best practices" (I prefer the term "effective practices") are in all the articles and on all the web sites that we use as resources for this kind of thing (among them, the Sloan Consortium web site and Educause).

What I find lacking in these listings and descriptions of effective practices, though, are contextual descriptions and things to help the reader understand the circumstances under which the practice was effective. Even when the effective practices resource includes some contextual information, few tools are given to the reader to help them examine their own context in comparison and make some decisions about how to migrate the effective practice to their own environment.

For institutions, such contextual information might include student demographics, financial resources, staffing, etc. For faculty members, such contextual information includes content area, number of students, type of technological tools, teaching style. Without comparing these contextual factors--between the effective practice example and the target school or class--it's difficult to figure out how best to integrate the practice, and impossible to predict whether the practice can be successful.

What's needed is a set of tools that allows for more in-depth analysis of effective practices, and thoughtful planning for integration of such practices.

Walking Before We Can Run

2004-08-11T21:34:00.000-04:00

Do we need to be using technology effectively in the day-to-day administration of the school--in student, faculty and staff transactions, etc.--before we can really effectively integrate technology into teaching? I think the answer is "yes," it seems I'm on the same page as the strategy folks at SNHU.

As part of a discussion regarding the schools strategic plan, one of the strategic objectives was outlined as doing a better job of making use of technology to support the administrative enterprise. As President LeBlanc pointed out, this kind of objective isn't really strategic--more operational--but if we don't get up to speed with the right software tools and availability of the right kinds of information online, we can't really move forward with a number of really strategic plans. One of these might be doing a better job of using technology for teaching.

What's the connection? For me, it's a cultural thing. If effective use of technology becomes part of the day-to-day activity of the school, a culture grows up around that. It's a culture of information and knowledge management, communication and collaboration. It's a culture that recognizes that technology can free us to spend more of our thinking and time on higher level activities rather than pushing papers. It's a culture that is less about force-feeding information through the pipeline and more about generating and creating information together.

This kind of cultural shift, I think, helps set the stage for truly effective use of technology in the academic enterprise. I'll have to be on the lookout for resources related to this and update this entry with links...

System Dynamics and Distance Learning

2004-08-08T18:14:00.000-04:00

Fred Saba, of Distance-Educator.com, gave a presentation at last week's 20th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning, reflecting back on 20 years of research in the field. I was intrigued to find out that Dr. Saba uses a system dynamics framework in his own research, and that he sees the fundamental system dynamics concept of a negative feedback loop as central to much of distance learning research in the last 20 years.

As one example of these dichotomies, he pointed to the idea of "transactional distance," developed by Michael Moore, explaining the negative feedback relationship between structure and independence (as structure goes up, learning independence goes down). He also talked about some other dichotomies: between instructor centeredness and learner-centeredness, between asynchronous and synchronous communication, etc.

Dr. Saba explained that the field now needs an overarching philosophy that brings the dichotomy of ideas together. Fascinating idea.

And all that talk of system dynamics got me to thinking about my plans for a doctorate--gotta get those applications going! Maybe I'll think about how to apply system dynamics to my research...

Learning Community at the BBC

2004-08-08T17:50:00.000-04:00

Absolutely inspired last week by a keynote address (at the 20th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning) by Nigel Paine, head of BBC People Development. Mr. Paine showed off an impressive set of online community and learning tools, including the BBC intranet (called "Gateway"). Elegantly, he pointed to the need for learning resources and tools to be embedded in the everyday work of employees.

He also made a point about online communities that echoed something I've been thinking (and saying, to anyone who'll listen)--that you can't just expect people to show up at an online community like an intranet. You have to remember that it's the everyday transactions and interactions that will draw people and create traffic--not necessarily big ideas, invitations to discuss topics, or even resources. He used the example of arranging taxicab pick-ups at BBC--a transaction that people conduct a lot and that the intranet facilitates.

Paine's presentation started with a viewing of the short film called 405 (not a BBC production). His point was that the challenge of creating a learning community at BBC is one of keeping young, energetic, creative people engaged while they grown and learn, because if they're not engaged they're likely not going to be patient enough to hang out until they're in the role they want to be in.

Inspiring!