Thursday, 24 July 2008
On being an expert in elearning and online communities
Quotations can be puzzling, irrelevant and downright incomprehensible, and sometimes I wonder why I bother to read them - but on my iGoogle page I have "Quotes of the Day". I find that random quotes are at least as relevant to my life as any horoscope would be! Sometimes, even, the quotes are truly inspiring.
Recently one of my daily quotes came up as:My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared. - P J PlaugerApparently this is a quote from Computer Language, March 1983, and Mr Plauger is an SF writer and an expert in the C programming language.
This one spoke to me - as I pride myself on being an expert in several aspects of elearning and online community planning, management and facilitation, and just recently I have been wondering why I sometimes feel scared. Mr Plauger is right. If you are an expert then you are at the level where you know what you know - and you also know how much you don't know. Or in the case of technology - you know how fast it is moving and therefore how alert you have to be to keep up.
Keeping up with technology and the ways it is used for bringing people together for learning, for sharing and for work is a challenge, but it's also very exciting. Like performers and mountaineers, it's healthy to be scared sometimes. It keeps you on the edge.Labels: elearning, online communities
posted by Helen Whitehead 7:52 AM
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
The importance of tutor / e-moderator presence
For an elearning course led by a tutor to be effective, the tutor presence is one of the most important elements. Showing good e-moderating practice the tutor must:The immediacy of the online environment leads students to expect an instant response. It's a good idea as an online tutor or e-moderator to set expectations at the beginning of a course - e.g., that you will normally respond within 24 hours, or whatever interval is relevant to your course.
- login regularly
- model good online behaviour
- be seen to be present
- post encouraging messages for students
- respond to student queries as quickly as possible
- always sign postings and use people's names
- respond to emails but try to keep learning points within the forum
One of the most useful tools for the teacher is a subscription, such as that offered by Moodle, so that you know whenever a student has posted to your forums (and with Moodle, the content they have posted). This enables you to plan your visits to the course space. If everything is quiet, for example students are working on their own projects or are between e-tivities, then visits do not have to be as often.
Comments from students emphasise the point of tutor presence and encouragement being vital, and appreciated, especially in the early stages of developing the group.
Typical student comments include:Encouraging responses don't have to be long and complicated. The simple can work well. Here are some examples from my courses (which would all be signed with my name):
- "Tutor support has been pretty immediate and I have found that very encouraging."
- "The comments from the tutor have been helpful and encouraging and have prompted reflection."
- "[The tutor] has been really prompt and supportive in replying."
- "Well done, Martin and Louise - keep going. Thank you for your thoughtful postings."
- "We'll be looking at this issue of XXXXX in Week 3
Thank you for bringing up the subject."
- "That's a very interesting point you made, Karen. What would it look like in practice do you think? Does anyone else have any further ideas?"
Labels: e-learning, e-moderating, elearning, online tutoring
posted by Helen Whitehead 10:06 AM
Wednesday, 16 July 2008
Implementing Moodle
Here's a good case study of the implementation of Moodle at Thanet College. Though dated 2006 it still rings a lot of bells if you work in FE. Some highlights:
The difficulties that had to be overcome were:
1. Seeing a benefit; ‘if its not broke don’t fix it’ mentality
2. Expecting this to be an extra piece of work
3. Finding time to train
4. Having time to explore and experiment.
Benefit for students:
Students liked the way they could manage their learning better by accessing information and activities at times to suit themselves and in ways that suited their learning approach, including the facility to repeat work.
Benefit for staff:
There is no doubt that staff feel empowered and excited by using the VLE.
Tutors use the forums to discuss lesson planning.
Project lead Geoff Rebbeck says:
“There are no rules. You want the teacher to be totally in charge of the learning experience. We have started to change the culture of a college, which like most education is based in part on the A4 piece of paper, which is perhaps the most interesting and challenging journey for us all."
There are also lots of good resources on the Moodle belonging to the JISC RSC Yorkshire and Humberside website.
posted by Helen Whitehead 9:41 AM
Sunday, 13 July 2008
Turning Point - when did you decide you needed a better work-life balance?
The Turning Point is a new contributory project to explore the point at which an individual decides to take control of their working life.
Tell us about the moment you rejected 9to5...
What was your turning point - your Eureka moment, your tipping point, your lightbulb moment - the moment that you realised that the 9 to 5 traditional way of working just wasn't for you? Was it in response to a particular incident or did it happen over a period of time?
The Turning Point invites workers to describe that lightbulb moment when you made the decision that traditional ways of working weren't for you. Whether you're still looking for a "way out" or you have already begin carving a new career - whether you've set up your own business or braved asking your employer for flexible hours - or even if you're a successful entrepreneur running an innovative company of all-flexible workers ...
You need to be logged in to create your Turning Point. Click Create New Account on the right hand side. Turning Points will appear once approved by the project editor. (This is to avoid spam.)
Labels: flexible working, primetime working, turning point, work flexibility, work-life balance
posted by Helen Whitehead 10:45 AM
Thursday, 10 July 2008
Fat Gourg on YouTube
Following on from Saturday's newspaper story about Fat Gourg, the 7-year-old's monster who become an internet craze in France, the story hit the local TV yesterday - and the French fans have already put it up on Youtube.
If they had shown the interview they did with me I would have been saying how wonderful it is to have a story that shows the positive side of the Internet.
All writing that is submitted to Kids on the Net is fully moderated and published so safely that it took 5 years, a newspaper, a TV station and thousands of French fans to find Luke.
It's wonderful that they were able to find Luke and interview him! Meanwhile, the current crop of children at his old school, Oakthorpe Primary, have submitted their own monsters who reside on the Monster Motel website in Fat Gourg's Friends annex.Labels: children's writing, Fat Gourg, Kids on the Net
posted by Helen Whitehead 12:39 PM
Monday, 7 July 2008
Monday's Moodle tip: icebreaker e-tivities
One of the steps to facilitating deeper learning is to get your group of learners to "gel". Icebreakers and group work can help to get students working together and supporting each others' learning. This needs to happen in the online environment as much as in the classroom and is one of the key skills of e-moderating.
Although it certainly helps to build the group online if the students know one another from face-to-face classes, the socialisation has to happen again in each new learning space. This means it can happen in the classroom, then again in Moodle (or other VLE), and if you use something separate again like an external wiki, blogs or social networking space, the group needs to go through the group-forming stages yet again in there - it can't be avoided.
Online-only and distance learners can build a group just as well as learners on a blended programme if properly guided by the e-moderator and taken through a stepped programme designed to gradually increase interaction and collaboration.
I run online writing courses (Season of Inspiration) with learners in several different countries. My co-tutor in Australia and I didn't meet face to face for the first time until 5 years after we started working together! However we design our activities so that in the first week students familiarise themselves both with the technology (Moodle), the online environment for learning, and the group that they are part of.
Icebreakers that facilitate this kind of familiarisation and socialisation are key and should include introductions that reveal a little about each student without requiring them to reveal too much of themselves. Some examples of appropriate e-tivities include:
- If you were an animal what animal would you be and why?
- Tell us about one of your favourite websites that is typical of one of your interests.
- What can you see out of your window?
- What items do you have on your desk?
- If you were a TV or film character which one would you be and why?
Labels: e-moderating, e-tivities, icebreakers, Moodle, online learning
posted by Helen Whitehead 8:59 AM
Saturday, 5 July 2008
I never thought I'd be part of an internet cult!
My project Kids on the Net features today in the Leicester Mercury - and it's all down to a monster ("Fat Gourg") created by seven-year-old Luke, during a writing workshop I held in a Leicestershire primary school in March 1999. Starting as one of our many writing ideas for kids the monster has since become something of a cult figure for a group of young French artists and cartoonists. writing ideas for kids
In 2003, the drawing was discovered on the website by famous French online cartoonist Pierre Primen. The 25-year-old raved about Fat Gourg on Primsworld, his website dedicated to funny cartoons and drawings, which gets 50,000 visitors a day, sparking instant adulation. Apparently there's even, on August 8 - the "eight" symbolising his fat body - a Fat Gourg Day!
He has a Friends Reunited profile, where he is listed as single and retired, and a Facebook profileand there is a Facebook group dedicated to finding him.Now the hunt is on to find Luke. His French fans "would like to know if Luke remembers drawing this monster. If he does, I guess we have to thank him for all the fun Fat Gourg has brought to us, and we have millions of questions to ask him about this character. We also have to offer him a statue to pay tribute to his oeuvre!"
I hope Luke is amused and not embarrassed by all this. But imagine being able to say you launched an internet cult at the age of 7? I find the whole story most heartwarming, and I remember Luke's classmates and school with affection - they had the best school dinners I've ever had!
Fat Gourg can be found in the Monster Motel on the Kids on the Net website. The project is still going and invites children worldwide to contribute their own monsters - a great topic for kids' writing activities. Children's own writing is featured throughout Kids on the Net and there are many different writing activities for kids.
Labels: children's writing, digital writing, Fat Gourg, Kids on the Net, online projects for kids
posted by Helen Whitehead 3:02 PM
Friday, 20 June 2008
Wordle for tag clouds
Wordle is a rather beautiful way to display tags – prettier than the usual tag cloudit generates “word clouds” from text that you paste in yourself. Like a normal tag cloud, words that appear more frequently in the source text are bigger. Various colour schemes are available. They can be printed out, or saved to the Wordle gallery but there isn’t an option to simply display it on your own blog or website.
Labels: blogs, tag clouds, tags
posted by Helen Whitehead 5:08 PM
Wednesday, 18 June 2008
Twist in the tale of Robin Hood
Robin Hood as a baddy and the Sheriff of Nottingham as the goody? Only in Hollywood!
Whatever next?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7460634.stm
There are some conventions that it just doesn't work to play with, something that designers of every kind - and including elearning developers - need to remember.
A recent newsletter from usability guru Jakob Nielsen talked about do you put the OK button first and then Cancel? Or Cancel and then OK? The answer is that you follow the convention, which happens to be different for Macs and PCs. Unless you really do want to make things difficult for users and stop them in their tracks, conventions should be flouted at your peril.
How annoying is it that when you save a Microsoft Word document in some other format it asks you do you really want to do that? and the default is No! Microsoft of course wants you to keep files in their format, but it's highly irritating.Labels: elearning, film, learning design, media, usuability
posted by Helen Whitehead 8:46 AM
Monday, 9 June 2008
Best Practice: Summary: Distinguishing Learning Communities and Communities of Practice (CoP)
This is a summary by Lynn Tveskov of part of the recent discussion in the Best Practice Models community on Communities of Practice. From here this post is all Lynn's summary:
In the spirit of the practice we are setting up around public blogging about our discussion, I will put names to distinct ideas and comments in the summary. Contributors to the discussion were: Sylvia Currie, Alex Hardman, Jenny Mackness, Nana Matsunaga, Alberto Ramirez, Glynn Skerratt, Bronwyn Stuckey, Jack Tseng, Lynn Tveskov, Etienne Wenger, Helen Walmsley, Carole Weale, Helen Whitehead, Bill Williams, Rowin Young
Helen Whitehead put together this wonderful side-by-side comparison and I filled it in with content from the discussion.
Learning community
Community of Practice
The essential goal is to pursue some academic objective. (Alberto Ramirez)
CoP can pursue any kind of purpose. (Alberto Ramirez)
Learning agenda may be set.
Learning "evolves" and can be "accidental" (Nana Matsunaga)
All participants join at the same time
Participants join (and leave) at different times
Clear motivation to take part - it's part of their course
Voluntary: Have to be motivated by "what's in it for me"
Participants move (and can be guided through) community-building and group-forming activities (cf Salmon's 5-stage model)
Members of the community are at different stages, though the community can move as a whole through stages (but not the same ones as Salmon's model)
Can become a community of practice. You can try to set up the conditions for a community of practice to develop
Learning takes place but is more informal than in a course-based community
Tutor-led and facilitated; easier to facilitate.
May be facilitated but members have much more ownership. More challenging to facilitate
Likely to be more hierarchical in structure, which will influence relationships (Jenny Mackness)
In a community the core group or group of leaders will probably have a less hierarchical relationship with members.
(Jenny Mackness)
Responsible for one’s own learning
You take responsibility for more than your own learning in a community.
(Bronwyn Stuckey)
Formal learning at the core
Might include formal learning but it is not the core. (Bronwyn Stuckey)
Learners may or may not take on the role of practitioners.
Learning is closely associated with what you do/practice. It is more than an interest it is about enactment. Learning is grounded in real experience but the learners are in the role of the practitioner, behaving as a member of the profession they aspire to be part of. So more than examining at an authentic task - being in an authentic roleYou are learning it in order to enact it, apply it, refine what you do - not just know it. (Bronwyn Stuckey)
“…the "social body" of a classroom or a course. In this case, it does refer to an "institutional" structure, which…may or may not become a community of practice, or any kind of community at all.”
…if by "learning community" people simply mean that a group of students have peer-to-peer learning-related interactions. In this case, the community of practice concept is more a heuristic than a goal, and it seems definitely "easier" and also usually more realistic given the life trajectories of students.
(Etienne Wenger)
Development can be more organic or spontaneous, independent of organizational structure.
“Good CoPs develop from the ground up – if prospective participants simply *want* to be part of it and contribute to it then that’s of much higher value than a top-down approach trying to create a framework that the authors think might be attractive. Once started and growing, the natural evolution of the community will take care of overall direction and critical mass.” (Glynn Skerratt)
Learners negotiate the building of shared meaning.
Members negotiate not only shared meaning, but also the structure of participation (Alberto Ramirez)
Other Points
- Not all learning communities or courses can or should be communities of practice.
- Community of practice perspectives can usefully inform the design of traditional courses and learning communities, perhaps even leading to change in a system or institutional culture.
Bronwyn Stuckey
Would we want all courses to be communities? I don't think so. I know when I worked in learning development with people preparing regulatory accounting courses - they were about learning the laws and knowing them inside out and passing the regulatory tests...the application was held until later when you were in practice - and then could join a community. This was a necessity in this particular course.
Alex Hardman
There is a time and a place for community within learning and a time and a place for hiding yourself away and reading the texts.
Jenny Mackness
[A teacher] can espouse to the values of a community of practice. Thinking of a course as a community of practice will influence the way in which the course is designed and how it will be taught.
Etienne Wenger
It is often the case that the membership from the outside that students bring to the classroom will make it difficult to create a community inside the classroom without acknowledging and honoring the conflicts in identity and practice that this creates for students.
At the same time, I think it is also useful to hold these perspectives as distinct so as to be clear that you can hold one without committing to the others. So you may use a "community heuristic" in your design without having to worry about whether students are "really" becoming a community. Or you may see that a strongly instructor-led learning event actually opens students to the realities of a target community in an experiential way. Different combinations are possible, and valid if applied for the right purpose.
Labels: communities of practice, CoPs, elearning, learning communities, online communities
posted by Helen Whitehead 8:26 AM
