Group items tagged

Very interesting blog post by David Griffiths, July 4, 2012. It's interesting because he took the release of an analysis of American Intelligence in Afghanistan and used it to surface issues in online CoPs. Excerpts: "What I find interesting is that I have had very few conversations where organisations have described their need for CoP to be driven by a need to become more dynamic, agile or adaptive - a major concern for organisations today ..." "Many CoP are far too large, much like a sprawling metropolis, it is difficult to find the boundary for the community; this results in low levels of trust and sub communities that create their own 'neighborhoods' with interesting sub cultures. Others are devoid of purpose, well intentioned in their conception, but reduced to a shell, tumbleweed blowing down dried up knowledge flows; a creaking sign blows back and forth over the community portal:" "This CoP was presented as a panacea for problem solving, but it was built upon community leaders who were chosen by the organisation for their high level of expertise, which in this case also meant they had been with the organisation for a long period of time. I was left to wonder whether this was a community at all, or whether it was just a problem solving network. I asked how they surfaced new ideas, how they encouraged variety, how they used signals from the front line to make wider strategic or operational decisions? Did they use the community to monitor the type/nature of problems that were emerging and how community leaders were responding? Were the problems signalling disturbances in the environment that required a strategic response?" "The lesson to be learned for those operating CoP in organisations is to by all means use community 'leaders', but use them not as community police, or regulators, but as catalysts to surface relevant intelligence for the organisation. I would argue that you will start looking for different types of people, with differe

Great blog post by Jane Hart at Learning in the Social Workplace on Enterprise Community Management for managing and supporting learning within the workplace. It takes the comments by Donna LaCoy in 2012 discussion about how learning is not always a recognized component of work to show that in fact, someone has to manage and support such learning in ECM. Excerpt: his emerging practice is known as Enterprise Community Management (ECM), and is much wider than just supporting one small team or community of practice within an organisation, but is about having responsibility for building and sustaining a community across the whole of the organisation. In fact as ECM can include a significant range of responsibilities, in a large organisation it undoubtedly needs to be undertaken by a number of people. Screen Shot 2013-03-17 at 08.14.02ECM activities are likely to include integrating all social and collaborative initiatives into a common platform planning the new community's strategic approach promoting and supporting its use within training (both online and face-to-face, but particularly within induction/onboarding) helping to support its use for team knowledge- and resource-sharing supporting individuals as they build and maintain communities of practice and other interest groups developing an ongoing programme of both face-to-face and online activities and events - to encourage employee engagement on an ongoing basis helping to model social and collaborative working and learning behaviours as a major part of helping workers use the technology building the new personal and social skills required for productive collaboration in the organisation measuring the success of community in terms of business performance (not just in terms of social activity) Whoever takes on these ECM responsibilities is going to have a significant influence and impact on the business. But more than this, as face-to-face training goes out of fashion an

Nice resource that analyzes the purpose of online communities--see excerpt below distinguishing between outcome- and process-oriented groups. The SLI could be a process-oriented purpose for students; more outcome-oriented for teachers? Excerpt: What are the group's specific outcomes or process goals? Please describe them. (i.e. an outcome oriented group may be compiling a set of useful practices for use in the field. A process oriented group may be about building relationships that can then be deployed in the field, such as a group of emergency relief workers, building relationships before disasters so they can better respond and relate in the field.) This isn't a ChangeMOOC find but that is the group-container for us three (Lisa, Brenda, Doris)

Article in The Chronicle of HE, December 17, 2012 "Coursera and its devotees simply have it wrong. The Coursera model doesn't create a learning community; it creates a crowd. In most cases, the crowd lacks the loyalty, initiative, and interest to advance a learning relationship beyond an informal, intermittent connection." Excerpt: Interactivity and customization are the fundamental advantages of online education. By using technology, we can bridge geographic divides while creating a continuing learning relationship between faculty and students, students and students, and students and the greater society. "Our goal should be to design a customized program that matches technology with a student's day-to-day objectives, not just course objectives or weekly learning objectives. We need to operate on a small scale where the online course or program is calibrated to meet the need of the individual student." Excerpt: "The MOOC model is fine for the informal student or academic dabbler, but it is not the same as attaining an education. Whether face to face or online, learning occurs when there is a thoughtful interaction between the student and the instructor. If the goal is attaining knowledge for a purpose beyond mere curiosity, then the model for online learning has to be a more complex, interactive experience. For that reason, we should be happy to cede the territory of the massification to Coursera. The business school at my institution is developing an online M.B.A. program that emphasizes the critical nature of interactivity in learning. Our next step is to design a dynamic and agile customization component that emphasizes student preferences while advancing the objectives of our institution. We are looking for partners who want to build a platform that allows for profound customization. We want to bring together institutions interested in thinking deeply about the promise of online education for delivering a remarkable learning experience, one that equals-

Article in MindShift, KQED, April 24, 2012 by Nathan Miton. Fabulous because it recognizes that content is one leg of learning stool. Excerpt: But at such a huge scale, what are the digital methods of teaching that work best? Philipp Schmidt, founder of the free online university P2PU, preaches three building blocks: community, recognition and content. Endorsement of peer learning potential Excerpt: The Stanford professors readily admit that some of the students who participated in their online courses provided their peers with deeper, more comprehensive answers than they were able to. The exponential explosion in opportunities for learning. Excerpt: in the past 10 years I've heard people say campus-based education better look out, that this will be threatening to their business model, and I've never really felt that until the last six months. The pace of change in open education is qualitatively different than it was even a few months ago." A new breed of digital pedagogy/andragogy/heutagogy Excerpt: "We probably haven't fully made the transition to digitally native pedagogies and learning approaches," Carson said. "The first generation of distance learning is basically an attempt to move the classroom online, and I think that part of the scalable learning of these massive courses is the breakdown of that model."

Description of a course offered by the Hague University of Applied Sciences, Fall 2012. Nancy White is one of the faculty. "The intersection of technology and social processes has changed what it means to "be together." No longer confined to an engineering team, a company, a market segment or country, we have the opportunity to tap into different groups of people using online tools and processes. While we initially recognized this as "online communities," the ubiquity and diversity of technology and access has widened our possibilities. When we want to "organize our passion" into something, we have interesting choices. It is time to think about a more diverse ecosystem of interaction possibilities which embrace things such as different group configurations, online + offline, short and long term interactions, etc. In this course we will consider the range of options that can be utilized in the design, testing, marketing and use of engineering products. In this course, we'll also begin to pay attention to "The Four i's of Innovation." You'll be learning a lot about these in the coming courses, but consider this a preview. The first i is the itch; "a hunch" that there is something going on. This inclination can indicate the sublime starting point for change or an innovation The second i is insight; the research framework to base the fundamentals of the innovation on The i for idea; the experimenting towards potential solutions ("what if"- approach) The final i is for impact; the realization of the changes and innovations."

Review by Rob Jenkins on the Chronicle, 3.18.13, on why MOOCs are a massively bad idea for wait-listed community college students in California as proposed in new legislation there. Excerpt: "We know that succeeding in online classes requires an extraordinary degree of organization, self-discipline, motivation, and time-management skill. A simple Google search of "how to succeed in online classes" yields a plethora of Web sites-including many college and university sites-offering students such gems as "be organized," "manage your time wisely," and (my favorite) "stay motivated."" Excerpt: So to recap, California's plan (or to be fair, one senator's plan) is basically to dump hundreds of thousands of the state's least-prepared and least-motivated students into a learning environment that requires the greatest amount of preparation and motivation, where they will take courses that may or may not be effective in that format. Here's a prediction: Those students will fail and drop out at astronomical rates. Then the hand-wringing will begin anew, the system will pour millions more dollars into "retention" efforts, and the state will be in an even deeper fix than it is now. (Virtual cheating will probably run rampant, too, followed by expensive anticheating measures, but that's another blog post.) Look, I'm not a politician or an economist. I don't know the answer to California higher education's budget woes. But I'm pretty sure herding community-college students into MOOCs is not it.

article by Steven Mintz for the Chronicle of HE, July 22, 2013 Excerpt: "But the most important challenge involves a shift in the way students consume higher education. Instead of attending a single institution, students receive credit in multiple ways, including from early-college/dual-degree programs, community colleges, online providers, and multiple universities. Students are voting with their feet, embracing online courses and undermining core curricula, which served as a cash cow, by turning to alternate providers, and pursuing fewer majors that require study of a foreign language." Fifteen innovations: 1. e-advising 2. evidence-based pedagogy 3. decline of lone eagle teaching 4. optimized class time 5. earlier educational transitions 6. fewer large lecture classes 7. new frontiers for e-learning 8. personalized adaptive learning 9. increased competency based and prior learning results; 10. data driven instructions 11. aggressive pursuit of new revenue 12. online and low-residency degrees at flagships 13. more certificates and badges 14. free and open textbooks 15. public-private partnerships

Look at this list of eight skills needed by a community manager. It's a different take.

Preview of Google PLus's value to HE Excerpt: "Facebook does allow some selective sharing, but doing so is difficult to master. As a result, many professors have decided to reserve Facebook for personal communications rather than use it for teaching and research. "I don't friend my students, because the ability to share is so clunky on Facebook," says Jeremy Littau, an assistant professor of journalism at Lehigh University. "This gives us ways to connect with people that we can't do on Facebook." In Google Plus, users can assign each new contact to a "circle" and can create as many circles as they like. Each time they post an update, they can easily select which circles get to see it. B.J. Fogg, director of Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab and a consulting faculty member for computer science, says he plans to use Google Plus to collaborate on research projects: "Probably every project in my lab will have its own circle." Mr. Littau is even more enthusiastic. He posted an item to his blog on Thursday titled: "Why Lehigh (and every other) University needs to be on GPlus. Now." "I want to start using this in my class next term," he says, adding that he aims to expose his students to the latest communication technologies in all of his classes. He plans to try the video-chat feature of Google Plus, called "hangouts," to hold office hours online. The new system allows up to 10 people to join in a video chat. Mr. Littau may also hold optional review sessions for exams using the technology. "I can host chats a few nights a week," he says."

Learner Weblog by Sui Fai John Mak on why people leave MOOCS. Believe that the list of reasons may apply to all online learning communities. Mak's reasons: 1. emotional (people afraid of revealing ignorance with technology and ideas); 2. lack of motivation; 3. feeling of chaos with too much info to deal with; 4. identity (in my words--where do I fit? What is my view uninfluenced by this rich abundance of ideas; 5. Threat to security and privacy and being overpowered by ideas of more influential, smarter people (my words) In comments: Ken Anderson--novelty; our neophilia keeps us from sticking around after the newness wears off; Brainysmurf--the "working on me" realization--what I have to understand and address "about how I learn or do not learn, how I perceive authority and control, how I manage or fail to manage info and filters and flow of information." Jeffrey Keefer--length (of commitment to course--12 weeks or 32 weeks?)

Wonderful HoTEL (Holistic Approach to Technology Enhanced Learning) visualization of learning theories from key concepts, to learning paradigms or 'world views,' learning theorists, and scientific disciplines, from Edudemic.com. The online learning facilitator role that we are most familiar with functions primarily in communities of practice, social constructivist settings, and connectivist networks including MOOCs

Leveling Up research project makes me think about all the benefits of being associated with a purpose driven online adult group. It may start out as a research group, one may participate to help deliver an outcome/product, but the growth that one can experience through reflection, application, adaptation, and sharing with the 'team' is where the learning occurs on an individual basis. How can one do a better job of harvesting the learning collectively for the group and for exporting (for whatever reason) to other audiences? Excerpt: "Our gaming cases center on the learning resources and supports that surround specific game communities. The experience of games is bigger than the designed games themselves. Players think about and work on games before, during, and after play. They develop complex relationships to their play, write detailed theory about their play, invest in their gaming reputations, and bring all of this into other social contexts. All of this "other" activity is known as the metagame, and designing for it is a key consideration in the crafting of games. More explicitly, gaming activities that include a social media component, span physical and virtual space, leverage the social labor of players in ways that reinforce and extend the experience into the everyday lives of the players."

article in Academic Matters, the Journal of Higher Education, by Stephen Carson and Jan Philipp Schmidt, May 2012 issue. Excerpt: "Expertise will be earned and maintained through ongoing lifelong education, not conferred once and good for life. Open learning systems offer the possibility for the kind of continuous lifelong learning that will be necessary as the pace of technological and scientific knowledge development increases. Like athletes, learners will not just learn once, but will maintain a level of performance ability in their chosen field through ongoing study and participation in learning communities."

Slide show by Harold Jarch on PKM--personal knowledge management--uses systems theory to show how we learn on mega (society), macro (organization), and micro (person) levels. (February 2010) It seems to me that a large part of a MOOC's value is forcing people to build a personal knowledge management process. They might have been able to ignore such a need before enrolling in a MOOC but cannot manage the avalanche of material otherwise. Not only do they need to become better organized in their seeking (this is where the MOOC departs from the day to day personal/professional learning sequence since it aggregates the begining content for them and continues to aggregate the work of MOOC participants), they then need to make sense of it (here again the social filtering and assessment are very helpful), and share their findings/unique perspective. As feedback is received, it motivates the first learner to keep trying to go forward. We all need an alliance of informed and thoughtful folks to keep up with the speed of change. The tools developed in the course of the MOOC can then be the core of PKM. This slide show also makes me realize that ALL online learning communities require some type of PKM and if one doesn't have a regular method for pulling information in and pushing tentative or firm opinions/conclusions out, full value cannot be realized.

Great videos on e-learning with such topics as: How does one get started as Instructional Designer? Does Social Media Selling Works? How to build your digital footprint. What's your learning style? Knowledge Creation Digital Age. Embrace the digital communication age. What we're learning from online education. The educators is as site that has resources and blogs about learning. You can spend days here!