Group items tagged

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

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.

A blog by Geoff Cain on MOOCS and Connectivist Instructional design from October 27, 2012. Very interesting history of how this teacher of health information management used collaborative technologies to teach the class and help the students work online in a multi-model delivery method. See below for implications on any online courses and how OS it feels. There were weekly guest lecturers as well as presentations by the course facilitators. The real heart of the course was the groups of students who would meet virtually, using the collaborative tools of their own choosing, who would discuss the presentations and readings. These groups were self-organized, leaderless, and informal. Yet, there always seemed to be someone in the group who would carry the discussion back into the course to have questions answered by the facilitators. And the facilitators would sometimes participate in the discussions. This experience was highly interactive. There was interaction with the facilitators, the content and between the students. Interestingly enough, the research shows that interaction is one of the primary measures of success and retention in online classes: the higher the degree and opportunity for interaction, the more successful a course will be. This course completely changed how I think of course design.

List of projects in Connected Learning Research Network as of July 27, 2012 Note this Longitudinal study of Connected Learning by Ben Penuel of late elementary and middle school students in connected learning environments and the "relationship of participation to valued outcomes. These outcomes include interest development, persistence in learning, civic participation, and development of a positive sense of the future." Could these outcomes be the same for WLS Studio connected learners?