ALT C 2009 – reflections and dissemination September 10, 2009

Alt C 2009 Reflections

Alt C - Photo By James Clay, that's me bottom right hand corner looking very interesting talk to the guys from WIMBA

All the powerpoints, abstracts and papers can be found here: http://altc2009.alt.ac.uk/

I found it a very good conference. With both my hats on – my Learning Consultant role and my role as a learner I could select sessions to attend based on work interests and H800 relevance, sessions that would help not only my understanding of concepts we’ve covered in H800 but in helping with my ECA. It has made it a very productive 3 days for me as I’ve been able to relate it to both of those contexts rather than only having one context. It’s great to hear so many different views as well, which complement the course notes and the opinions I am starting to form.

My favourite sessions were Tim Neumann’s stuff on e-conferencing, probably from my student Hat more than work, but work relevant too and Uni of Plymouth’s report on learner experience presented by Jennie Winter.

Some key learning points/points of reflection I’ve got right now are:

Although many (not all) people are becoming adept at multitasking this is not good for learning, as it means concentration on each task is shallow and good engagement is not occurring.

If we introduce too many social technologies to students PG/PT students, they will have greater difficulty in creating the  boundaries they need to focus on learning even thought the advantages of using these software are good for opportunities to learn in a socio-constructivist way.

Meeting someone from H800 was interesting, we found it useful to reflect together on things we heard at the conference against what we’d done in our studies, useful to exchange interpretations of course activities and so on. Although the distance learning communication tools of blogs, e-conferencing and forums go someway to give me social learning experiences when I am someone who needs the convenience of distance learning due to my work and life commitments, nothing beats F2f discussion. What is that X factor that this has given me that the social technologies have not – a lot of it is the visual clues, some is the synchronousity, and some is the ease at which you can communicate in person. The barriers to this were the asynchronousity, lack of emotional clues/visual clues and in Audio Conferencing, the turn taking issue.

However, the keynote speeches did not add anything by being f2f. I could not interact with the people around me or the presenter. The people who logged online while watching were talking on Twitter so they were able to engage in simultaneous discussion about the topic. It would have been fine to have saved a lot of money and the environment by having the keynote speakers streamed in from their places of work (or wherever they were).

Being at the conference really focuses the mind on concentrating on absorbing knowledge and reflecting. Being able to talk about sessions and reflect on what I’d learnt immediately afterwards with Carol was useful. I could blog it, which is useful, but any replies/responses/reactions I might get might be delayed or might not even happen. It’s likely that people will read my blog on this but will they comment – a challenge there for my readers.

Notes from sessions that really stood out for me follow below…H800 students wil find some of this useful I hope…

Why are we using blogs and not just doing the work on our PC? June 2, 2009

Today one of our MBA students asked me this today. I asked this question myself some time ago but since doing this course and seeing the potential benefit for support networks through blogging I can now see more value in using a blog to share my learning and help me to learn from others. I felt very confident in replying to this forum message asking this question because of my studies and experience on H800. I think we should do more on the value of the different CMCs at the start of the course.

The second Kerawalla paper (link below with notes) studid 15 more students than the first, and extended the 4-factors framework of audience, presentation, comments and community to include the relationship of blogging with other e-tools on the course; the functionality of the software; and the requirements of the course.

Although the studies together only interviewed a total of 25 students, they found the benefits of blogging were:

• “a blog is ownded and personalised. It’s my site, I’m in charge. Space for own learning, thinking, planning, note taking, etc.
• a more informal space that a forum, let my hair down and be myself. Can write more as people are not obliged to read it”

But: “It was confusing’ and another that ‘we can comment on each others’ posts both in the blogs and in the forums, do I put it here [blog] or do I put it there [forum]? Sometimes, this resulted in ‘a lot of people repeating the same comments they had on their blog, in a posting on the forum’ and this student eventually stopped using his blog because he felt ‘there were too many places to have to go to’.”

1. ‘How do I want to use my blog in relation to other elearning tools I use?’

To develop a supportive environment where I can share my thoughts with the rest of my course peers, I can help others progress with their studies, others can help me by challenging, adding further insight, or simply empathising/being sociable. I really enjoyed Week 11 when more people were blogging, and we were all commenting on each others’ blogs. There was a really informal, community spirit going on. It was very enjoyable, but this disappeared as the TMA got closer. I’d like to see a move away from the forums and more blogging going on but we, as students, mentioned the same issue as highlighed above, in that we didn’t know where to look/post, often repeated posts – eg some people would post something in the forum, and then copy it into their blog – so the question is do I subcribe to her blog or just read the forums. Of course I do both, because what if she doesn’t copy it every time and what if something new enters the blog….

2. ‘What can blogging offer that other tools cannot?’

As Kerawalla et al, see below, found the forum isn’t as “free” as the blogs. The interaction that took place in the blogs was much more student lead, community focused and fun. The forums seem to be the domain of formal posts out of necessity and difficult to follow threads. Of course, blogs might be more inward looking as you might only read your own blog and comments therein.

3. ‘Do I want a blog that is not provided by my institution?’

Yes, and I’ve got one here. I tried using hte OU blogs in H800 but found the lack of editting tool and individualisation frustrating and as quoted in this report, we were informed that the blog would not be accessibly on completion of finishing our studies with the OU which meant that if by that time I decided to continue blogging for CPD or just social reasons I’d have to set up a new blog. I tried a few different open source blogs and also the Uni of Warwick blog system which has won loads of awards but decided to go for WordPress. I didn’t even want to use a Uni of Warwick blog system being staff there -  1. I might not have felt as free and 2. it can’t go with me when I leave.

Edu Blogs – guide to using blogs in teaching May 18, 2009

I had heard of edublogs before but decided to have a look again and see what it really is.

On their home page it claims to be “blogging for teachers and students made easy”. Edublogs hosts hundreds of thousands of blogs for teachers, students, researchers, professors, librarians, administrators and anyone and everyone else involved in education.

Here is the link to Sue Waters’ blog - The edublogger - who is described as the force behind edublogs.

On the edublogs site there is a guide to using edublogs in teaching:

http://edublogs.org/10-ways-to-use-your-edublog-to-teach/
1. Post materials and resources

2. Host online discussions

3. Create a class publication

4. Replace your newsletter

5. Get your students blogging

6. Share your lesson plans

7. Integrate multimedia of all descriptions

8. Organise, organise, organise

9. Get feedback

10. Create a fully functional website

I’ve got 6 comments! April 23, 2009

As I was saying, until firefox crashed…

I’ve got I was raving on about how Week 10 has seen the blogging community of H800 wake up. It’s great. I’ve got 6 comments, there is interaction going on between tutor groups. I am more motivated to read and comment on other people’s blogs and learn from them.

Yesterday an academic hear raised concerns that blogging or reflective online learning is “open collusion” – and is very anxious about us using it.  She doesn’t understand that’s it’s no different to the full time students chatting over coffee or discussion forums or emails.  Hmm, I like this week’s activities.

Couldn’t study last night, had a bad headache and the unmissable Apprentice was on. It’s clever now how they’ve managed to divide the teams into misfits and stereotypically “beautiful people”. I can see the misfit group being picked off one by one now. But the people who don’t do anything keep getting away with it as the team leaders always pick the most vocal ones for some reason. If that team leader had picked Nerual (sorry don’t know how to spell his name) he’d have been fired and she would have been saved, surely? What do you think?

Tonight I now have to work late to train an external academic on WIMBA Classroom so no studying tonight, there goes my progress through Week 10!

Week 10a Summary April 21, 2009

Week 10a A1 Wikipedia- behind the scenes

Read article by Nicolson Baker (2008) about his experience of contributing to Wikipedia. This was useful in enlightening me to the world of Wikipedians. It made me think that Wikipedia is really there for the contributors who seem to spend a significant amount of time, addictively adding to and creating entries for different subjects. The addiction comes from self preservation.  If Wikipedia wasn’t there, people would just have to spend more time searching and honing their information literacy skills.  Wikipedia relies on a large number of volunteers who are dedicated to the “project” for policing the entries. There seems to be some underhand play and vandalism exists. But as I found in an article on the BBC website (via Digg) claiming that WZ is planning a radical change to how it is run. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7851400.stm :  “It [wikipdedia] is proposing a review of the rules, that would see revisions being approved before they were added to the site.”

Week 10a A2 Citizendium

An alternative to Wikipedia. A curated knowledge wiki with subject experts moderating the entries. These experts/editors do not change content but recommend to authors that they make changes. They also approve a page for citable use. They claim Wikipedia does not provide a satisfactory citable academic source of information.

However, the plagiarism advisor at WBS told me that anything that is published is genuinely citable. As Pat Shearer says in our forums, the people against Wikipedia are “‘Folks-who-don’t-like-people-who-think-they-know-it-all’”. And here I am quoting an individual who is not writing in a published journal – does that make this quote unacceptable for me to learn from.

Shearer, P. (2009) H800 les6 W11 A1 – A2 16 April 2009 19.31

As other in the forum state, Wikipedia has so much information on it, it appears far superior than Citizendium. As long as you use it as a place to find links to more genuine sources then there is nothing wrong with it.

Week 10a A 3 Storing, Sorting and sharing online resources

Introduced the concept of Delicious to save online resources that you can access from any networked computer  and the filing mechanism of tagging. Group tagging is when you can see what other people in the network/group have tagged such as on the same course.

I have used Delicious but never in a networking way, just for my own records so this is a new adventure for me.

It suggests using H800_2009, H800_block1_2009 naming protocol to aid sharing.  We then looked at subscriptions to tags.

Week 10a A4 Finding information online/libraries

Libraries face challenges as sources of information and learning. A4 helped to develop skills in using the OU online library.  It refers to a database called Academic Search Complete which is a database of multi disciplinary full texts.

Safari is OU library resource to help information search.  Not just finding, but reviewing information as well.

The Computing and Technology Information Search on the student website is a resource with quizzes and video tutorials.

I learnt about subject gateways as a search tool that provide access to specialized sites that have been quality checked. Subject gateways tend to specialize in specific topics and use quality control checks, which means that there is less information. they can provide a more direct route to academic websites.

Synonyms – alternative subject words – useful for searching

Week 10a A5 Blogs and blogging

Read article by Kerawalla et al (2008) about a study into blogging behaviours. They found 4 factors that they interviewed 15 H808 students about – their perceptions of and need for an audience; their perceptions of and need for community, the utility of and need for comments from other bloggers and the presentation of their blog. They came up with 5 types of blogging behaviour based on different approaches to the 4 factors.  1. Blogging avoidance, 2. Resource network building, 3, support network building, 4, self sufficient blogging, 5, Anxious, self conscious blogging just for course requirements.

Nothing really surprises me about their findings. I already blog for the MAODE and my use if for self sufficient blogging. Of the 4 factors relevant to me:

a.       Audience not important, accessibly storage space for notes

b.      Community – not worried about comments, not writing for a community. Read other people’s blogs when I’m puzzled to help  me along.

c.       Comments – do not expect comments

d.      Presentation – I do care about the presentation and writing style.

However, if we didn’t have the forums I would be prefer the support network building bogging behaviour.  I don’t work with learners who blog so I can’t comment on what motivates them to blog, but at Warwick University there is one of the leading Blog tools that has won awards, and students and staff blog for social and networking reasons mostly. Some for academic purposes.

How would I design activities to encourage learners to blog?       ePortfolio assessment where blog entries are included;  Remove forum for certain activities, rely on blog for community building;             Use blogs to record  responses to activities and have tutors and peers make comments; Self assessment exercise where you rate your own contribution to the learning community through your own blogging and commenting practice as well as activity in the forums. But this is very assessment driven.

Kerawalla, L., Minocha, S., Kirkup, G. and Conole, G. (2008) ‘Characterising the different blogging behaviours of students on an online distance learning course’, Learning, Media and Technology, vol.33, no.1, pp.21-33; also available online at http://libezproxy.open.ac.uk/ login?url=http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/ 17439880701868838 (accessed 16 April 2009).