Group items tagged

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."

"Communities of practice are bridges between the work being done and the diversity of social networks."

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.

Learnlets is Clark Quinn's blog. This is what he wrote on January 26 about Sharing Failure. The closing paragraphs are the most interesting to me. Excerpt: "Now, just getting people sharing isn't necessarily sufficient. Just yesterday (as I write), Jane Bozarth pointed me towards an article in the New Yorker (at least the abstract thereof) that argues why brainstorming doesn't work. I've said many times that the old adage "the room is smarter than the smartest person in the room" needs a caveat: if you manage the process right. There are empirical results that guide what works from what doesn't, such as: having everyone think on their own first; then share; focus initially on divergence before convergence; make a culture where it's safe, even encouraged, to have a diversity of viewpoints; etc. No one says getting a collaborating community is easy, but like anything else, there are ways to do it, and do it right. And here too, you can learn from the mistakes of others…"

An amazing chapter on Personal Learning Networks and their sustainability and longevity that occur based on individuals pursuing their own interests within a context of communal learning.

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?)

Interesting blog post by Chris Collison on starting learning initiatives although he calls them knowledge management, posted July 16, 2013. They are more like variations on a theme than discreet choices. Nevertheless, they are important for enterprise learning facilitators to know about. 1. Top Down, Big Bang-"The challenge, of course is to find ways to keep people's attention - particularly when the board or senior sponsors have moved onto their next big bang." 2. Top Down, Bottom Up--"there is a deliberate effort to harness the energy and passion of workers at the front line, and to involve them in the programme, perhaps as group of advisors or a community of practice." 3. Slipstream--"Slipstreaming is about working in partnership with other initiatives or "transformation projects"" 4. Outside in--"Sometimes things just sound better when they are heard from the outside." 5. Viral--"you need to be prepared for it to be messy - it's a case of let a thousand flowers bloom, pick the best ones and do the weeding and gardening later. However, it's hard to imagine "lessons learned", "knowledge retention" or the creation of knowledge products spreading like wildfire." 6. Stealth--"build up your organization's capability to manage and share knowledge without them realising what your master plan actually is." 7. Copycat--" it's often successful to point to examples of successful KM from other organisations (competitors and customers are particular impactful) to create some "me too" or "me better" demand." 8. Pilot--"A pilot enables you to try the aspects of KM most likely to make a difference quickly, to build credibility locally, and to learn from each implementation." 9. Buffet Menu--"this approach works with the demand already present, and provides an array of tools and techniques which the organisation chooses from at will, once their "palate" is sufficiently educated." 10. Phoenix from the Ashes--"For a lot of organisation

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

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!

Blog post by Jeffrey J. Williams, Chronicle Review, December 2, 2013 This post on stratification of the teaching role in HE reminds me of our conversations from 1-2 years ago. Imagine a diorama in an American Museum of Occupations showing the evolution of the professor. The exhibit starts in the early 1800s with an austere, black-suited man in a minister's collar, perhaps looking over the shoulder of a student at a rustic desk, with a Greek text open in front of him. In the next scene, from around 1900, he morphs into a pince-nez-wearing gentleman in starched collar and cravat, at a podium delivering a lecture. The professor of 1950 adopts the rumpled bearing of a tweed jacket, pointing with his pipe to a poem or a physics equation on a chalkboard. In the next frame, circa 1990, she wears jeans and is sitting in front of a computer screen. How would the diorama represent the professor of 2020? Some observers predict that she won't exist: In the memorable phrase of Frank Donoghue, a professor of English at Ohio State University, we are living in the age of "the last professors." Less apocalyptic commentators say the professor has experienced "deprofessionalization." Both views try to capture the squeeze on professorial jobs, but they misrecognize fundamental aspects of the changes that have occurred. Rather than extinction, we have seen the steady expansion of academic labor over the past century, and rather than "deskilling," we are undergoing more rather than less professionalization. What has been going on is what sociologists call "differentiation" and "stratification." We are in the era of the Great Stratification. We have tended to see the professor as a single figure, but he is now a multiple being, of many types, tasks, and positions. Given that there are more than 1.4 million college faculty members in the United States, it is clear that they are not disappearing. But the all-purpose professor has faded. We have tended to see the professor as a s

First article in two part series between Adam Grant, Wharton professor, and Carla O'Dell, CEO of AQPC, April 18, 2014 on how CoPs and corporations should support and reward give and take behaviors by employees. Also wonder how gender plays into this dilemma...when we see the majority of discussants in CPsquare are women (because they are the majority of CPsquare members? And why might that be true?), what does that signal for whether they are givers or takers?

Love this blog on seed, feed, and weed learning organizations. Excerpt: Overall, it taps into our natural learning, where we experiment, reflect, converse, mimic, collaborate, and more. Our approach to formal learning needs to more naturally mimic this approach, having us attempting to do something, and resourcing around it with information and facilitation. Our approach to informal learning similarly needs to reflect our natural learning.

Godin has started Krypton learning groups for f2f gatherings. Interesting development. Looks like learning bubbles to me.

Excellent comparison of xMOOC and cMOOC and justification of cMOOC by who else, the cMOOC creator himself, Stephen Downes, February 11, 2015. Highly recommend it.