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Thomas Clancy

Can Learners Participate At Their Own Level of Expertise? by Mary Arnold : Learning Sol... - 1 views

www.learningsolutionsmag.com/...t-their-own-level-of-expertise

Mary Arnold elearning writing connectivism Education 2.0

shared by Thomas Clancy on 26 Jun 10 - Cached
  • As an early assignment, a facilitator might ask the group to vote on a question, to introduce themselves to the rest of the group, or provide a link to resources they’ve found useful in the past.
    • Keith Hamon
      Keith Hamon on 26 Jun 10
       
      I like starting with a very simple online task that I know most students can complete successfully. Nothing like success to help people feel confident with something new.
    • Thomas Clancy
      Thomas Clancy on 27 Jun 10
       
      We are coming to the point of valuing online participation first--good-old buy-in. An improvement in written communication skills WILL follow.
  • The first threaded discussions might evolve from simple polls into exercises where you ask learners to rank choices in the order of their preference and explain the reasons for their choice. Later, you might ask participants to divide into groups (or they might naturally divide into groups on their own) to argue the pros and cons of a particular situation. You can ask specific members to pose questions to the group, submit blog entries, or edit wiki entries for accuracy.
  • Scoring is a motivator because it provides users with feedback. If your learning environment doesn’t include a scoring strategy, look for ways to help the members of the community notice and appreciate one another’s contributions.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Learning communities that sustain themselves over long periods engage in these activities naturally. Members are simply curious about one another’s opinions and know others appreciate their contributions. If learners are engaged in productive conversation without you, avoid the temptation to get caught up in the role of emcee. Ultimately, the goal is to create a learning community that sustains itself with minimal intervention from the learning designer.
  • Consider the scoring strategy Yahoo! Answers uses to award points to its members. New users start with 100 points, the ability to ask up to five questions a day, answer up to 20 questions a day, and comment on 10 answers a day. But if users want the ability to rate other answers with a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down,” they have to earn another 150 points first. To earn those points, they could simply log in once a day for 150 days. If they choose to answer questions, however, they can earn 2 points per question, which would speed up the process. The quickest way to earn a lot of points is to provide the Best Answer for the question. When an Asker selects a Best Answer, the participant who wrote it gets 10 points, and additional points for each “thumbs up” rating from other users.
    • Keith Hamon
      Keith Hamon on 26 Jun 10
       
      Ahh … so we educators can learn a thing or two from the business world. Nice.
  • Keith Hamon on 26 Jun 10
     
    Scores can be a surprisingly good way to help learners enter the class learning environment at their own level of expertise.
  • Thomas Clancy on 27 Jun 10
     
    Scores can be a surprisingly good way to help learners enter the class learning environment at their own level of expertise.
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