How Much Time?
sdownes on Sep 29th 2008
Course Time
How much time should the course take?
For the full time learner only (see various participation modes below):
From the perspective of time, this course should not be occupying what a typical (lab) course would at a college or university. Consider:
Three hours of lecture or equivalent:
- Monday contributions from George and I (1 hour)
- Wednesday Elluminate session, often with guest (1 hour)
- Friday conversaton (1 hour)
Readings:
- papers listed in wiki (2 hours, give or take)
Lab (discussion, forums) – 2 hours
Assignments (blog posts, etc) – 1 hour
= 8 hours per week
(Consider – a ‘normal’ course load of 5 courses would be 40 hours per week).
– Stephen
Participation Modes
The participation modes have been interesting. I’ll provide a rough overview of participation:
1. For-credit learners have participated in forums, blogs, and through emails with instructors
2. Actively engaged in conversation participants: those that are highly engaged in conversations in moodle, often digging down into nuanced considerations of subject matter. These participants do not solely engage with material we have provided. They are also presenting their own views and frameworks of sensemaking. In certain cases, the question is “how does connectivism fit with _____?”. These learners may be trying to understand connectivism, but they are also trying to see how it “aligns” with their existing views
3. Actively engaged with course content participants – these are participants who are not engaged in the conversation, but who are reading the daily and providing fairly comprehensive weekly summaries (such as Dave Pollard – http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/categories/businessInnovation/2008/09/26.html#a2251 ).
4. Other modality participants – these participants are reading course literature, but are not active in the main forums. Discussions may be occurring in their preferred language, in Second Life, listservs, or other modes.
5. Peripheral participants – periodically posting in moodle/blog. Subscribed to The Daily, might follow blogs/postings, but are not directly engaged with others. It is also difficult to determine the degree of their engagement with course material as they are not posting reactions or comments. Their continued subscription to The Daily suggests involvement…but life situations, familiarity with content matter, interest or numerous other elements reduce their active involvement.
6. Disinterested/discontinued learners. For what ever reason, these are participants who signed up, but have since discontinued the course.
– George
Filed in Uncategorized | 7 responses so far
Emergent social networks at Learning in a sandbox Sep 30th 2008 at 08:39 am 1
[...] The image above is a visualization of an existing online network, the three social rings are clearly visible. In the chatbox of the presentation, many people instantly talked about the similarities with the CCK08 community. People in the core of the community are actively participating and sharing their views on connectivism, people in the second ring are not that actively connected but do follow the course and perhaps connect with a small group of people. People at the periphery probably just read the daily and maybe follow some blogs or the disccusion at the moodle board (Stephen also wrote about this at the cck08 blog). [...]
Renee Aitken Sep 30th 2008 at 08:45 am 2
Hi George,
I consider myself to be a silent observer – having made many a wrong swift decision in taking a position in my life, I wanted to experiment with thinking about this topic and hearing what others had to say before I weighed in. I also cannot participate in the Friday conferences live because of security on our system – I can get it, but its like watching a movie where the DVD skips every 2 minutes! I do look at the backups though and as a data collection process, this is working well for me.
I started a daily blog, but quickly abandoned it because I wasn’t sure what I was thinking. I will take it back up again when I feel comfortable with my position.
I find the dialog fascinating and will continue to read the daily, follow the links, investigate the blogs, etc. But don’t count me out just because you haven’t heard my voice!!
Renee
CCK08: Reflection for Week 3 « Memeospheric Pressure Oct 1st 2008 at 05:09 pm 3
[...] to the Connectivism & Connective Knowledge course, in the course blog description of varying degrees of participation in the course [...]
The Paradox of Active Participation | Lisa's CCK08 Edublog Oct 3rd 2008 at 08:23 am 4
[...] Taking off from Carlos González Casares’ reply in the Moodle forum on “The Importance of context”, I am thinking about my own participation in this class. Keep in mind that I consider myself not just a “for-credit learner” but also an “actively engaged” participant according to George Siemen’s list. [...]
Cindy Oct 3rd 2008 at 10:15 am 5
Hello,
Like Renee, I consider myself to be a silent observer…not posting but certainly not in the category of disinterested. I realize this is not fair as I get much from this course and don’t give in return…it is not how I learn best under typical situations but am still learning nonetheless. As a masters student and someone working full time I have once again taken on too much but since it is entirely related (learning and technology); it was (and is still) too tempting to let go. I would have dearly wished to have had the time to enrol for credit and I am grateful there has been a place for people like me to stay connected, even if through the daily updates, which often leads me to blogs and applications I have never heard of before. I have bookmarked more than a few of these and plan to visit in the future.
To those who I am benefitting from (which is all of you), thank you and my apologies for sitting on the sidelines.
Cindy
Claudia Pleguezuelos Oct 8th 2008 at 11:33 pm 6
Hola
En mi caso, estoy intentando y seguiré intentando hacerme con las herramientas de trabajo, tema que casi ya tengo superado. Comencé a elaborar un blog en blogger para el curso, pero me lo censuraron, lo haré en otro servicio de blog si no me permiten continuarlo. Los videos, audios y conferencias en inglés los llevo mal, aunque las lecturas en inglés algo mejor. De todas formas seguiré haciendo el esfuerzo de entender lo que más pueda, sobre todo con el apoyo de las traducciones y el grupo de Connectivitas que lideran Dolores y Esperanza, con quienes participo.
Está siendo una experiencia fantástica, aún cuando no pueda sacarle todo el provecho que quisiera. Saludos
A 10 minute post « Jenny Connected? Nov 17th 2008 at 03:02 pm 7
[...] in the course Stephen posted that the course should take about 8 hours per week, but to do this course justice you would need to [...]