Category: collaboratiion

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The Paradox of Structure in eLearning Environs

structure

This week’s materials in the CICMOOC on the Paradox of Structure sparked that seed of interest for me.  For the last couple of years I have been exploring the contours of self-organizing within open organizational structures (e.g. open source software movement, world social forum).  The 119 Gallery in Lowell, MA is often the focus of this work and I’ve written about it at various place on this blog [post 1, post 2, post 3].  However, the prompt to explore structure in the CICMOOC as one of week 3’s exercises has me returning to the comparison between this MOOC and my current Collaborative Exploration (CE) offered up by the Critical and Creative Thinking Program at UMass Boston.

I’m trying to enlist the help of one or more of the current participants of the CE to collaborate with me in the CICMOOC exercise on the Paradox of Structure.  In the meantime, I thought I would explore the enabling and limiting features of the two current learning spaces I find myself in at this time.  Both learning spaces are looking at creativity and ways to engage and enliven individual creativity.

The CE is a 22 day small group, case-based exploration under the topic of “Everyone Can Think Creatively!”.  Meeting synchronously once a week for an hour using Google+ Hangout and engaging in individual inquiries based on the case in between are the main activities. Each synchronous session has a format and structure, while the individual inquiries are diverse and broad.  The group exchanges are intended to support and stretch individual thinking.

The UMass Boston CE enables me to pick my own path of inquiry, but within a defined structural space that focuses or contains the inquiry. Much like the story shared in the CICMOOC lecture this week by Kathryn Jablokow..  There are colleagues to motivate and be accountable to as well as provide additional thinking and support.  It also helps me to know that this is a contained activity with defined parameters of time and input which helps me move forward.  In terms of limits, the CE has a small number of individuals to engage with.  The connections are deep, but not particularly diverse.  Also even thought the time is specified, it still creates some pressure to maintain the schedule.

The UPenn CICMOOC on Coursera has a more formal 8-week course structure.  It is a MOOC, so thousands of individuals might be engaging at any given time.  The course has build in a great deal of diversity in terms of materials, levels of engagement and assignments.  There are assignments, activities and projects to prompt accountability.  I am also participating with a learner initiated quadblog initiated by Cathleen Nardi with myself, Maureen Maher and Jack Matson.

The CICMOOC is enabling in a very different way. Here the course materials are more prescribed, but they are provided in easy to access and digest formats with the option to dig deeper if I like.  Likewise, weekly activities and exercises are diverse enough and there is enough freedom to choose those that interest me.  I have thus far found at least one exercise that energizes me each week.  The course’s three possible levels of engagement create both freedom and support.  Each level is presented as completely valid and no option is presented as better than the other, just different.

In terms of limits, the CICMOOC has provided the opportunity to engage with a very broad set of learners and potentially ideas.  I have yet to fully engage in deep exchanges.  In part this is a lack of my own commitment to do so, but without accountability (or obligation) built in I am finding it difficult to make the time to engage.  The exception to this is the self-organized quadblogging group.  This commitment to quadblog has been enough to prompt me to write regularly and interact with a few folks.  I see that part of the exercise for this week prompts a step to participate in the discussion board, so I will see what happens next.  This inability to have others really respond, react and prompt further thinking prevents deep understanding and exploration of the content.

I am gong to continue to think on these formats and for the time being it seem to me that any eLearning ecosystem needs to have a diversity of options and levels of engagement with content and learners.  Enabling others and supporting learners to build that ecosystem is what I hope an upcoming open seminar on Personal Learning Networkswill explore.

Image from: http://davincidilemma.com/2010/12/add-structure-to-your-schedule-to-be-more-creative/

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Considering Self and Community while Exploring Creativity

I started the Creativity, Innovation and Change MOOC (#cicmooc) this week as well as a Collaborative Exploration (CE), “Everyone Can Think Creatively!” offered in collaboration with the Critical and Creative Thinking Program at UMass Boston.   Exploring self was the focus of the two activities I engaged in for CIC and understanding how my personal story connected with others was step one with the CE.

Reflecting on self in CIC was a relatively deep endeavor designed to unearth my creative style, my motivations, my driving forces, influencing factors and thinking about blocks and supports.  Connecting with others in this context is a secondary activity and a community of learners is still in the early stages of emerging.  The injection of a quadblog group headed up by Cathleen Nardi helps with the idea that I’m at least accountable and connected to others who are sharing this experience.  That I am part of a learning community. The return of familiar names and faces from the previous #edcmooc is also connective.  So, here in CIC-land I’ve had time to consider material and think on self and move slowly into “conversation” with others.  Although the conversation is right now more like a bunch of random broadcasts waiting for response.

The CE starts from a different place.  The content is less prescribed and as such the starting place is a little more unsettled.  I’m very familiar with this format now — I have my sea legs so to speak.  While a small group has formed around a loose case or idea, the first step here is to really get to know each other.  Intensive autobiographical introductions are the mechanism for doing this along with thinking about where each of us connects to the others. These connections are collectively shared.

So these are two very different places to start in thinking through creativity and creative process — structured content and a loose community vs. loose content and a structured community.  It will be interesting to see how my thinking and knowledge builds through these two distinct learning experiences.

 

 

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Exploring Creativity with Micro Communities

This week starts the Creativity, Innovation and Change MOOC (#cicmooc) on Coursera as well a semester of creative thinking oriented Collaborative Explorations offered in collaboration with the Creative and Critical Thinking Program at the University of Massachusetts Boston.  For the CIC MOOC, I’ve joined a quadblogging group comprised of myself and these three other engaged learners:

What both quad-blogging and Collaborative Explorations have in common is that they attempt to create “thicker” connections within a learner community that is disperse and diffuse.  Strategies such as these seem essential in creating one’s personal learning network (PLN) in the ever expanding world of MOOCs and other online learning venues.  It will be interesting to see what these micro-community of learners yield and how the two formats differ.

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Panic, disorientation, risk, trust, self-efficacy and transformative learning

image by Charity Johansson

As part of a Creative Exploration (CE) on cMOOCs, Rhoda Mauer at Cornell has been posting comments and resources related to concepts of panic, trust and storytelling.  At the same time, Peter Taylor, who is also part of the CE, is talking about a possible new collaboration on transformative education. These conversations intersect with my attempts to understand the power of shifting perspective and building confidence and competence (self-efficacy) that may result from being in a new or unique learning environment.

A brief Google search on the terms “disorientation learning trust” got me to a piece on transformative learning.  So my exploration is turning to learning more about “transformative learning”.

In a Journal of Environmental Education piece, D’Amato and Krasny (2011) write:

Transformative learning is often precipitated by a “disorienting dilemma,” which is followed by critical self-re?ection, social interactions, planning for action, and building competence and self-con?dence in new roles and relationships as a result of taking action (Mezirow, 2000). Such learning could result in personal growth as well as in questioning and changing one’s behaviors toward the environment (instrumental learning). (p.239)

Kucukaydin and Cranton (Adult EducationQuarterly, 2013) also reference Mezirow as four distinct types of transformative learning:

  •  developmental (Daloz, 1999)
  • emancipatory (Freire, 1972)
  • extrarational (Boyd,1989)
  • rational (Mezirow, 1991)

Keegan (Asian Social Science, 2011) also speaks to four processes in transformative learning (critical reflection or feedback,  reflective discourse or evaluation, and action related to learning and teaching quality).  that resonate with the 4 Rs  and Probe-Create-Change-Reflect modes that Peter Taylor talks about as well as the experience I had during the EDCMOOC offered Coursera by U of Edinburgh.

Let’s see where this creative exploration path takes me.

 

 

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Experimenting with Asynchronous Embodied Discussion – #edcmooc

A couple of years ago I was looking for a way to bring a sense of embodied-ness to an online class where students simply couldn’t be together synchronously.  The traditional discussion board was good, but had limits.  So in seeking tools that might help with this snag, I came across VoiceThread.  Since then, I’ve used this tool quite a lot to allow for project presentations and peer feedback.  Students have loved it.

So, I thought I would test out the possibility of having  an asynchronous, voice discussion with individuals participating in the e-Learning and Digital Cultures MOOC.  Herre are the steps:

  1. Click on the image above and it will take you to the VoiceThread for this discussion.
  2.  Hit play and listen to what has been contributed thus far to the discussion.
  3.  If you want to add your own thoughts, press “comment” (you will have to sign in or register – sorry).
  4. Choose the “record” option and record your voiced contribution to the discussion.(try not to use “text” it defeats the embodied purpose and unfortunately I don’t have an account level that would accommodate video).
  5. Click “stop” and then “save.”

I am likely to provide some sort of synthesis of what folks share for those who don’t want to  take the time to listen to the whole discussion (if one ends up happening).  Mostly, I’m interested to see if folks have ideas on how else to created embodied presence asynchronously.  I’m also interested to hear how others might use a tool like this as well.

UPDATE:  The original VoiceThread for the eLearning and Digital Cultures now has over 50 voice comments and a small group has now progressed to scheduling a real-time Google Hangout.  I am now drying to jumpstart a VoiceThread for the MIT Learning Creative Learning MOOC.  That VoiceThread can be found here – http://bit.ly/YxC7ff.

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Care2.com’s ROI on Social Networks

Wonder if you should spend your time campaigning in social networks?

You can use this tool to calculate an estimate of cost and return on investment for the recruitment and fundraising efforts of your staff in social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace. It works sort of like an online mortgage calculator. Just enter the starting assumptions in the yellow boxes below and the tool calculates results automatically.

Need some metrics guidelines? You might check out some of the online advocacy and fundraising benchmark studies. If you don’t measure results strictly by fundraising — maybe your results are based on advocacy or branding only — you can just look at the “cost per friend” or “cost per email name” to compare with the costs of recruiting people elsewhere. You can also see how that translates into cost per action or email viewed (opened).

If you would like to see the assumptions and equations behind the magical calculations, they are available on the original Excel spreadsheet. Email Justin Perkins to request a copy or to send feedback, and feel free to comment below.

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Francis Hunger on Immaterial Labor

I’ve been skeptical against the Open Source Software producers community since years, skeptical against this white, middle-class, male students and engineers. For me this user/producer group is a club, which includes those who have enough time resources to create social capital through peer recognition by working on technologically oriented projects. As early technology adopters, the OSS producers community also actively shapes technology (I have to repeat: they are white, middle-class, male). The OSS producers community tested, improved and incorporated all the elements which can be found in Lazzaratos description of immaterial work above: Flat hierarchies, computerized networks, creating products in their leisure time. So the OSS producer is paradigmatic for the current overage of productivity in the countries of fully developed capitalism, which again gets induced into the circuit of production and exploitation.more here:

https://lists.thing.net/pipermail/idc/2007-August/002724.html

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Yochai Benkler

My colleague Hans Klien at Georgia Tech recommended this book and I find that Benkler’s research interests are closely aligned with my own.

Wealth of Networks

Yochai Benkler -  Yale Law School – yochai.benkler@yale.edu

http://www.benkler.org/

Research interests

  • General theoretical problems
    • Commons-based information production and exchange 
      • sustainability and comparative efficiency  
    • Freedom, justice, and the organization of information
      production
      on nonproprietary principles
      • Normative analysis of the implications of commons-based
        production
        and exchange of information and culture

  • Specific problem areas
    • Peer-production of information and culture in the networked
      environment

    • Large-scale effective sharing of privately owned goods and
      resources

    • Open wireless communications
    • Uses of non-proprietary production models for development and
      global redistribution

    • Free software
    • Free and open science: scientific publication models; open
      science organizational models

 

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exquisite corpse: the psp game!

Well, it doesn’t exist yet but how cool would that be?

Eli has been talking up video editing on portable computers for a while now. And as far back as y2k, Play had their Pocket Producer app that was interesting if not always useful. But in class this week, we started talking about the idea of video editing on the PSP (brought up by guest chatter Ryan Junell.) Pretty interesting, right? But simple in-camera effects and edits aren’t anything new. You can do that with a bunch of the Powershots and Cybershots already out there — unfortunately, it’s not much fun.

So if you could implement it on something like the PSP, why not make it a game?

Think of it as a palm-top front-end for a ccMixter for video?

Gameplay could consist of weekly remix contests like the GYBO challenges. Users could download the relevant clips to their portable devices and get a week to make their own iterations. They post their final submissions back up to ccMixter and the clips with the highest rating after three days wins. Include Keyworx-like functionality, and allow folks to create live collaborative VJ events that could be viewed by others.

Guitar Hero and Taiko Drum Master prove that games based on “content” do work, but neither put a lot of emphasis on community or collaboration which — to me — are the more interesting parts of cultural communities as a whole and hip-hop (including remix and mashup) culture specifically. While we’ve learned that adding community to FPS and RPG games make them infinitely more compelling, we have yet to accept the same with our media. Until then, we’ll be stuck with efforts that do little more but to serve our feudal lords.

http://www.kenyattacheese.net/braintag/2006/04/13/exquisite_corpse_the_psp_game.php

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Audience Shift

Brendan Greeley of Open Source Radio and John Barth of PRX, presented at the latest UML New Directions speakers series. I had asked them both to speak on how new software developments have aided the development of new communities and a re-visioned audience.

John Barth of PRX Brendan Greeley of Open Source Radio

Thanks to Charlotte Crockford you can hear their presentations. In particular, Brendan shared the shift Open Source Radio has made in terms of their community of bloggers. Rather than simply giving feedback, the constellation of individuals have now started to form a real-world need to connect and the show is beginning to schedule “coffees” with these devoted audience members.

While much of this is new, it is still reminisant of older online and real world communities. Interesting.