A few thoughts about design
George Siemens on Jul 10th 2008
As stated in my previous post, the arrangement of this course will be less structured than many instructional design processes dictate. This is largely due to our discussion topic lacking clear definition – i.e. there is much talk about different technologies, learning theories and related subjects, but the concepts have not solidified to the point where we can definitively say “these are the boundaries of this idea” or “this idea is different from that one based on these variances”. At the conclusion of this course, I hope those understandings will have been achieved collectively. At this stage, things are too unsettled in the conversation to boldly make those claims.
You might be thinking, “oh, that’s lovely, what you’re saying is you don’t know what you’re talking about”. While that is up for debate, the real value in taking a fluid design approach stems from the need to explore the nature of change we are seeing without first putting it into existing containers of what we know. Categorization is valuable after observing, discussing, and analyzing phenomena. Not in advance. If we approach an emerging field with too many existing assumptions, we run the risk of failing to see what, if anything, is unique.
What does an average week look like?
Here is what I currently envision the weekly activity to be:
- Each week will have a clearly defined topic
- The topic will be introduced by a short article or introduction (in this case, a two page description or opinion piece) or podcast, or whatever. Some weeks both Stephen and I will post an introductory piece, other weeks only one of us will.
- Links to external resources for additional reading/viewing will be provided weekly as well.
- Short podcasts and opinion pieces will be presented – i.e. “Stephen’s views” “George’s views”. Stephen and I share many overlapping views of knowledge and learning. But a few core disagreements exist. We’ll try and provide a diversity of thought – complimentary and at times in conflict – for you to consider.
- Discussions will be held in asynchronous forums like blogs, moodle, and wikis. Use of the course code – CCK08 for tagging posts or sharing del.icio.us resources will be helpful.
- Assignments and activities for participants who have enrolled “for-credit” will be required for completion/reflection on a weekly basis as well. Full assignment details will be provided to all enrolled learners.
- Weekly live lectures and presentations will be held as well. These lectures will likely be delivered in elluminate. They will be recorded for participants who are in different time zones and prefer not to get up in the middle of the night to listen to two Canadians presenting
. We will likely have a series of guest presenters through out the course…more information soon. - Mind maps of key discussion topics will be co-created with participants at the conclusion of each week.
Time required by learners: minimum 5 hours per week (reading, assignments, etc). Max 10-15 hours (depending on their expertise with online environments and familiarity with subject matter.
At this point, I would appreciate feedback on:
How can we make this more effective? How can we make it more engaging? What types of tools and procedures can we adopt to increase opportunities for learners to participate and contribute? What challenges to you foresee in a large open course (we currently have over 1,000 signed up)? How can we make it personal, yet effective in capturing varied discussions?
Filed in Uncategorized | 31 responses so far
Vivian Jul 11th 2008 at 05:43 am 1
Your weekly activity looks good. Keen to see those mind map tools in action. (Are their freebies?)
With online groups I have often attempted to summarise ‘the week that was’ to bring key thoughts together. This is challenging with a group of say 15 – I can’t imagine 1000 though of course all won’t necessarily engage. But still the numbers will be mind boggling!
George I came across a cool tool this week (you may know of it already) http://www.wordle.com I posted my initial impression on http://connectingcommunities.blogspot.com/2008/07/word-clouds-visualising-key-words.html This tool might have some potential of bringing together key words visually. Not sure how it would work but certainly some potential to explore… say the blog postings/comments. Not tried that as yet… off to play some more with wordle.
Cheers Viv
Barbara Dieu Jul 11th 2008 at 08:14 am 2
A general aggregator of participants blogs/tweets/Flickr and all material tagged CCK08 on the main course wiki which would then subdivide in aggregations by language and country.
Although we will all aggregate our own preferences, it seems useful to me to be able to check what is going on at a central station as well.
Alana Jul 11th 2008 at 09:15 am 3
Hi george – wondering what you will do to manage the live events with an international audience? I know time zones create challenges to any live environment, but I would love to vote for morning sessions where you are so they aren’t in the middle of the night in Europe.
Maria Teresa Jul 13th 2008 at 01:36 pm 4
With such a huge number of participants, this course will definitely be challenging for everyone. Beyond surprise the multiplicity of participant’s nationalities and areas of interest seen so far in the discussions groups in http://groups.google.ca/group/connectivism/; it has been very difficult to resist signing-in in them all.
If there is such a diversity of areas of interest now, I can imagine how it will be once the course starts. As George said, boundaries are not defined yet, so categorization is impossible at this moment. A pre-oriented mind toward a specific area would spend too much energy filtering information with the consequent cognitive overload.
I think I rather have a classic approach during the course in order to have an entire map or picture of the patterns being formed, but at the same time I will take advantage of technology to register all the access to the knots of these patterns, so I can come back any time and have a closer view.
This being said, effectiveness and engagement for me will depend on the possibility of concentrating the contents of the course in one single space, to count with a general discussion forum, and have the possibility to access the resources and discussions captured (or their summary) long after the end of the course.
Wilson Azevedo Jul 13th 2008 at 05:16 pm 5
I’m worried about social interaction overload with more than 1 thousand participants…
Will someone moderate foruns or discussion groups in this course? Although one or more collective interaction spaces could remain unmoderated, I think it would be a good idea to prevent overload through moderation.
Have you planned something like that?
Randi Harlev Jul 14th 2008 at 12:52 am 6
Ron White, in his book The ELT Curriculum, compares Type A syllabi (teacher-centered) and Type B syllabi (learner-centered). When comparing objectives, he suggests that a pure learner-centered syllabus “describes objectives retrospectively”, rather than stating them in advance. This leaves room for all the learning that takes place beyond the blinded of the teacher’s stated learning objective. While Ron White discusses English Language Teaching, I think this is applicable to all teaching/learning.
Maybe by charting our objectives retrospectively as part of the collective mind maps you’ve suggested, we can chart nodes of our own connectivist learning.
Nuccia Silvana Pirruccello Jul 14th 2008 at 05:18 am 7
I had a first experience as a certified participant last Fall with the Open Education Course by David Wiley. Here is the Student Teacher Chit Chat Blog I worked on during the course:
http://silvana.wordpress.com/
I’m looking forward to this new experience which sounds more suitable to my teaching-learning style with its podcasts and mindmaps.
Silvana
P.S. What is the advantage of having a certificate in terms of ‘getting more’ in personalization and not just a document? I got one last year and I haven’t decided for this course yet. I need more info about the advantages and procedures.
Fleep Tuque Jul 14th 2008 at 05:38 am 8
If George and Stephen are comfortable with it, and there are others signed up for the course who are interested in trying it, I was thinking about offering space in the Chilbo community in Second Life for class participants to meet weekly as a synchronous study group, with or without instructor participation. I’d be interested in seeing if a cohort of the course using a virtual world platform would experience the material/course differently than those who use other methods of “meeting”.
I also like Barbara’s suggestion about aggregating as many of the nodes/sites/blogs as possible in a central location. I’m less worried about social interaction overload and more worried about missing something important due to diffusion or volume of communications.
Cindy Jul 14th 2008 at 11:21 am 9
A few years ago I volunteered for an online course (we used Moodle, and all our activities eventually became input to a PhD dissertation about on e-learning). The course originated from a university in EU.
We started off with more than 100 participants globally, and finished with less than 1/3 I believed.
Most common problems were communications (language is English), lots of lurkers (we think), time differences, personality issues … Mind-mapping and other group projects were a real pain for most groups.
Well, I am a willing candidate again for another online course (f2f can be just as bad), and I just wonder if we would face the same human problems. As I am not a real techie with online tools, I wonder how much more problems I would have with this course since there seems to be even more new tools available these days. Eager to learn is one thing, but I think online learners facing problems with tools post great challenges for learners, group-members and instructors . I am just wondering if there should be limit to how many kinds of tools to use for this course? Or perhaps screening of knowledge of participants on tools?
Martin Jul 15th 2008 at 02:23 am 10
Hi George – re. large scale I once chaired an online course with around 15,000 students. This was at the Open University, so each student had a tutor with about 20 students in each tutor group. They also had access to a range of forums. However we couldn’t have all 15K in one forum so we replicated the same forum structure 13 times to make the numbers manageable. Moderators were in charge of these forums, and I (along with some other OU staff) then moderated forums for the moderators. This hierarchical structure allowed issues to be filtered up to us and meant we could manage the scale.
Now, this wouldn’t work in your case, but maybe some devolvement of responsibility might work? E.g. asking three or four people to look after discussions one week (maybe for extra credit/recognition – they could put an endorsement from you and Stephen on their CV).
A 1000 probably isn’t that many anyway – by the time some drop out, most don’t contribute etc. Of course, if everyone is active, that’s a lot of traffic!
Martin
Peeii Jul 15th 2008 at 06:11 am 11
The mass of participants, and the question of interaction and collaboration have been also in my mind. It´s interesting to experience this kind of learning activity, and also to see how George and Stephen work, and to be a partner in this learning, knowing and acting process, of course.
Stigmercy orientation might have something to afford for our understanding our participation? See http://collaboration.wikia.com/wiki/Stigmergic_collaboration
Regards from Finland, Pekka alias peeii
Kim Fitzer Jul 15th 2008 at 10:38 am 12
Greetings from Michigan. I like the idea of meeting in SecondLife, perhaps there can be a few “social” gatherings there, as well as some course activities, perhaps for team building (difficult in 1000 strong participant courses such as this, but not impossible). I have conducted studies with students in SecondLife and found that language, in addition to some inappropriate behavior, was an issue. Has anyone else had this problem? I would love to hear about ways others have mitigated these problems in environments such as SecondLife.
Also, I agree about having forums and synchro discussions in the early AM. For EU users, this would be ideal and works well for me as well here in the US.
I am interested in taking this course for credit, as well as enrolling in the certificate program. Is there some information posted on the main CACE website as to how to register for credit, and when the deadline is?
gsiemens Jul 15th 2008 at 11:36 am 13
Hi Vivian – I’ve seen wordle – it’s making a bit of a splash these days. For most visualizing activities, I was hoping to use ManyEyes. However, the value of these open tools is in the ability of anyone to create any visualization they find personally valuable.
With regards to weekly wrap ups – I’m hoping a combination of visualization, the concept map and weekly summary (as you suggest) will provide some way of representing key activities. I’m not fully convinced that we need a complete summary each week. People will likely gravitate toward certain people and make certain connections that they find valuable. The intent here is for technology and networks to filter…not for faculty. Come to the edge…step into the flow…
We’ll likely have some people who are quite comfortable knowing that they can’t know everything or keep track of all the conversations. And we’ll have those who are more used to traditional courses where mastery of all concepts is equated with success. Somehow, we have to frame the conversation in a manner that meets the needs of both groups (and, of course, all those in the middle).
gsiemens Jul 15th 2008 at 12:05 pm 14
Hi Bee – we are aggregating the posts/tags on this page: http://www.pageflakes.com/ltc
gsiemens Jul 15th 2008 at 12:06 pm 15
Hi Fleep – if you’re interested in hosting a portion in secondlife, I’d love to see it happen. Can I do anything to assist? If/once it’s set up, please let me know (I think you have my email, if not: gsiemensATelearnspaceDOTorg) so I can post it here…
gsiemens Jul 15th 2008 at 12:08 pm 16
Hi Alana – good question. I’m not sure yet. We’ll try different timezones, but I suspect at least some individuals will access the events as recordings. We’ll try and produce both camtasia recordings and mp3 output for podcasts. If you have suggestions to foster involvement of the international audience, please let me know.
gsiemens Jul 15th 2008 at 12:10 pm 17
Hi Maria – thanks for the comment. You raise an important point about the ability of individual participants to manage content/info/conversation without feeling like they’re missing things. Not everyone will be comfortable in completely open environments. Typically, when things get complex, we like to find anchors/centering points. Perhaps I should put together a short presentation on “managing distributed conversations and information” in this course…hmm…
gsiemens Jul 15th 2008 at 12:14 pm 18
Hi Wilson – we haven’t planned on centralized moderation. We are hoping the network will provide moderation as individuals select certain voices to follow and certain themes to pursue. Separate discussions in moodle will also assist in helping people select the resources to pursue. Part of the challenge here, for participants, will be to model what many of us have been saying about connectivism – i.e. the formation of networks and approaches to manage information in a distributed manner. But that doesn’t happen in the absence of support. We need an approach that guides individuals to the formation of those “networks for sensemaking”. At this point, I don’t have a clear answer.
gsiemens Jul 15th 2008 at 12:18 pm 19
Hi Randi – I like the notion of retrospective objectives. The learning process is too complex, too nuanced, and too fragmented to fully determine outcomes in advance.
With that stated, are you able to provide an example of retrospective objectives in contrast with traditional objectives? Intuitively, the notion of retrospective objectives feels right…but just want to make sure I understand it.
gsiemens Jul 15th 2008 at 12:20 pm 20
Hi Silvana – you’re asking a tough question
. I’m not sure of the value of getting a certificate. I guess that is a consideration for each participant. Some organizations require certificates as statements of competence or PD work. Learners who enroll will receive more focused feedback from instructors…but that may not be important to everyone. Ultimately, you have to decide whether it is personal learning or recognition (or both) that you are seeking…
gsiemens Jul 15th 2008 at 12:25 pm 21
Hi Cindy,
I expect we’ll see varying levels of participation, with the majority playing a peripheral role. Which is fine. By making the course open, we allow others to interact with the content (and participants) at a level they find to be of personal use. Some will use the course for future reference, others will actively engage, others will use parts for teaching their own courses, others will just want to watch a train wreck, etc. I’m not too concerned about final use. As mentioned in a previous comment, I feel my obligation is to put the ideas “out there” for others to interact with, debate, dialogue, critique, or whatever. An educator provides node (content, technology, even people) and an ecology/environment for connection forming. The formation of connections – conceptual, relational/external – is the work of the participants.
I’m somewhat reluctant to suggest pre-screening. I will, as mentioned above, provide a short tutorial on making sense of information and conversations in distributed environments. The challenge is as much conceptual as it is technological. Looking forward to your involvement…
gsiemens Jul 15th 2008 at 12:31 pm 22
Hi Martin – wow, 15K. Hate to enter the marks for that course
.
Interesting suggestion of using moderators in the forums. Your model makes a lot of sense for a course where each learner is expecting feedback. I don’t expect we’ll have much more than ~30 people who enroll (at least that is the cap I’m hoping to stick with). Those learners will receive feedback and direct interaction with instructors. For the larger group “out there”, we’re relying on learners to personally identify their knowledge needs and form networks in line with those needs. A bit Utopian?
gsiemens Jul 15th 2008 at 12:34 pm 23
Hi Peeii, thanks for the comment. I’ll review the wiki. I’m somewhat familiar with the notion of stigmergy and stigmergic systems. The challenge I see is one of finding frameworks or approaches for implementation.
gsiemens Jul 15th 2008 at 12:35 pm 24
Hi Kim – I will be posting enrollment info for the course and the certificate program shortly…
vtclark Jul 18th 2008 at 01:12 pm 25
Please detail the differences between:
the formation of networks and approaches to manage information in a distributed manner
and:
the current concept of content management (which includes distribution).
This slide gives a satisfactory definition of content management:
http://slideml.bitflux.ch/files/slidesets/487/slide_3.html
Thanks.
Barbara Dieu Jul 21st 2008 at 10:11 am 26
In order to avoid being drowned in information coming at us like tidal waves from all azimuths, I was wondering whether we cannot create very precise tags narrowing the focus.
CCK08 would be the general one, the parent for the course and we could think of “child tags” by subject/country/theme, like cck08_elt (for the English teaching crowd) and narrowing it even further to cck08_elt_br (English Teaching in Brazil), for instance.
Trying to balance chaos and order
CCK08 | Siemens y Downes se lo montan - Grupo Nodos ELE Aug 4th 2008 at 10:34 am 27
[...] el momento se han inscrito ya más de 1.000 personas, a pesar de que apenas se tiene todavía un diseño general de actividades semanales. Normal, porque no hay que ser muy listo para saber que este será uno de los eventos [...]
Dolors Capdet Aug 4th 2008 at 10:56 am 28
Hi George,
Connectivitas is implementing different environments for synchronous and asynchrounous text and voice communication that also be of interest for the whole CCK08 community and that we can put at your disposition.
I send you more detailed information via private mail so this comment won’t get too long.
Best regards,
Dolors Capdet
Mireille Aug 21st 2008 at 03:37 pm 29
I think this is wonderful. I can hardly wait to get to as many people as I can and to find numerous to contribute to the value of this course
thank you George. This is a wonderful opportunity and I feel very fortunate I can realize it.
CCK08 | Siemens y Downes se lo montan | Blog Nodos Ele Sep 11th 2008 at 11:52 am 30
[...] el momento se han inscrito ya más de 1.000 personas, a pesar de que apenas se tiene todavía un diseño general de actividades semanales. Normal, porque no hay que ser muy listo para saber que este será uno de los eventos [...]
Connectivism & Connective Knowledge » Tools Nov 4th 2008 at 05:19 pm 31
[...] aloud about what tools we want to use, drawing from George’s post on the weekly [...]