Why online learning needs to get social

This article post talks about the role of social networks in online learning, and contains further links to some pretty amazing online learning courses. Seemed pretty relevant to FOC2010!

Linking up my social networking

(This blog post is really an experiment to see if I can get my blog to link to my Facebook account.)

Part of this week's assignments for FOC 2010 is an instruction to 'join a social networking group such as Facebook, Ning or LinkedIn'. Well, I already have accounts with all three, so I thought I'd reflect briefly on my experiences of each before trying to figure out how I could link some of my accounts together.

I joined LinkedIn about three years ago, and haven't found it overly useful. Of course I only signed up for the free version which is really limited. One of the major drawbacks of this version was that it would only allow me to link to other members in the same country. As a new immigrant to New Zealand, my local professional network was really small, and because of the account restrictions I couldn't use LinkedIn to connect to my existing network in South Africa, which was a pity because I used to do a lot of freelance work. I have also noticed that lots of people (like me) join but don't really do much with their accounts.

I loved Ning, when it was free. I liked the fact that it was simple and easy to use, and that I could create multiple networks really easily. It is much more user friendly (I think) than Facebook, especially in terms of the privacy settings. But it is no longer free, and I feel duped!

I use Facebook, sporadically... it has certainly enabled me to make contact with long-lost friends. I think Facebook is an interesting tool, but it doesn't really do it for me - I like more depth to my connections.   In the spirit of intellectual curiosity (!!), however, I'm going to try to figure out how to link my blog to my Facebook page. I'd love to see some South African dots on my visitor map!

Time's winged chariot

More than a week has past and I've fallen horribly behind with the Facilitating Online Course.. and it's going to get worse before it gets better. I'm learning to have a new respect for everyone out there who manages to juggle study, work and family life. I realised just how out of touch with FOC2010 I have become when I received an email today from a work colleague who sent me a link to a really interesting article called 15 practices to deepen human connection and engagement online. It's a great article, and it suggests some simple and practical ways to improve social engagement online. Turns out though that she got the link from a tweet from Sarah Stewart! And here I thought I'd be able to bring something new to the group when I finally managed to catch up! Just goes to show the efficacy of Twitter though!

I have been reading some of the blogs of other course participants. One member blogged about her first experiences of Second Life, which were fairly unpleasant. I had similar experiences when I first got into SL, encountering all sorts of funny-bunnies making all sorts of strange propositions. What struck me most though was the visceral nature of my reaction to these rather odd avatars... I actually felt panicky and anxious and found the experience quite upsetting. (A colleague sitting next to me even started whispering in case the avatar on the screen could hear her!) Reflecting on the experience made me realise exactly how powerful a tool Second Life can be for that very reason - if an encounter with an oddball avatar could make me react so strongly, the scope for semi-real-life Second-Life learning experiences would be huge. Although there has been little uptake of SL at my institution, for a number of different reasons, I do believe virtual worlds are a technology whose time has yet to come.

Reflecting on facilitation skills

I have just been going through the assignments for the FOC2010. The video, Seven key skills of workshop facilitation, gives a really clear overview of some key skills. It also got me thinking about my own teaching. I realise that I relied heavily on body language when I was a teacher. Moving around the class; being a physical presence; creating and holding eye contact, all these were strategies that I used as part of classroom management.

What I am wondering is how one compensates for this when facilitating online? Does it become as intuitive as it does face-to-face? I imagine it must be much harder to get the feel of a bunch of voices, most of which belong to people one has never even met! I'm looking forward to trying out some online facilitation and getting the 'feel' for the virtual classroom.

On a completely different note, Heather Lamond, the librarian in charge of distance students at Massey University was at Ucol this morning, showing us some of the independent learning packages the Massey library staff have developed to assist students learning how to access information in the library databases, and so on. They work mainly in Captivate and Presenter, and they've produced some really useful, interactive stuff. Heather clearly ran a very well-organised and planned project to get these learning objects created, and it was good to hear her talking about how she went about things. She was also talking about the value of creating a virtual repository for learning objects, where these sorts of things could be stored, in an editable format, for people from other organisations to access and download.

I know many tertiary institutions are moving towards the Creative Commons approach and sharing materials, but wouldn't it be amazing if there were an organised library of these learning objects? A sort of one-stop-shop where materials developers went first, instead of reinventing wheels! The Open University, UK, is already doing something along these lines... check it out here.

Image downloaded from Sthacker's photostream,http://www.flickr.com/photos/sthacker/13622219/sizes/m/in/photostream/CC-BY-SA

FOC 2010 Goals

Instructional design and online learning

Sarah Stewart posted a comment on my blog recently:
I do not call myself an instructional designer but that seems to be part of my work these days. I am really looking forward to talking to you about how we design activities and events to engage people in the online environment. What would you say is a really important to take into consideration when designing online activities?

I guess in some ways that's what I hope to find out by joining the Facilitating Online course. Off the top of my head I'd say 'scaffolding'(if that's the right term) to be sure that people have the techie basics right before the course gets underway. I thought this was done really well in the online classroom session on Thursday - it was worth spending the time testing our sound and mics so that we knew what we were doing, even though it meant the session ran over time. I also think that you have done an excellent job of getting information out regularly via your blog, ensuring people are engaged and ready to roll with the course.

I spent this afternoon doing similar work (albeit on a much smaller scale). Our mid-year intake started today, and I spent a couple of hours with our second-year students showing them how they could use some of the Moodle tools to facilitate study groups and build their personal learning networks! This year, for the first time, I have allocated a class group their own Moodle page over which they have complete control. Usually they tend to be on the receiving end of course delivery, able only to react to forum posts and activities designed by either the lecturers or myself. This time, they have complete control over the course - they can upload resources, create and share forums, design activities, whatever takes their fancy. It will be interesting to see what the uptake of this is over the upcoming year.
Oh, and Sarah, although I call myself an instructional designer (mainly because that's what it says I am on my card at UCOL) I have to say that I still haven't quite figured out what I do. Like most of us in e-learning, I guess that I'm really a jack-of-all-trades... and hope eventually to be a master of (at least) one!

Image downloaded from Augapfel's photostream CC-BY-SA from http://www.flickr.com/photos/qilin/71522478/

Facilitating online - The first online class

Thursday evening saw the first online class of the 2010 Facilitating Online course, run through Elluminate. Although I had tried unsuccessfully to get into the classroom earlier in the evening, I had no troubles accessing the session. I was blown away by the experience. I had never used Elluminate before, and I can see why people speak so highly of it. It would be great to get our lecturers and nursing students using the tool as a way of supporting and facilitating their independent learning. What I enjoyed most though was the range of participants from all over the world. (And wow - the dedication of people getting up at 4am to participate was really impressive!)  What an amazing experience being able to share so easily in their knowledge (and all while enjoying my evening glass of wine.) I've already learned of new tools to use to streamline some of my tasks, and I'm looking forward to getting my teeth into them. Watching the course 'staff' was also great as they modeled online facilitation strategies. What could have been a tense experience for a newbie rapidly became enjoyable, and I was sad that I had to leave before the session closed. I'm really looking forward to the next online session.

It has also been wonderful to have people reading and commenting on my blog. My original intention with the blog was more along the lines of a diary and thought-store for myself, but there is something really satisfying about having people visit and comment! Having looked at the blogs of some of the other participants though, I'm feeling the need to dust off my html and have a go at updating the look of my page! It's amazing how extending one's learning network immediately extends one's creativity.

Online communities

Sarah Stewart's facilitating online course started on Monday - accompanied, on my side, by vague feelings of anxiety. I wasn't terribly sure what I should be doing as years of F2F lectures and teaching clearly have me conditioned into a fairly inflexible mindset. So what a wonderful surprise it was to log into my blog today to discover a whole lot of comments awaiting - mostly from people I have never met! It's really quite exciting to realise how rapidly one can expand one's personal learning network! So the anxiety has gone and I'm really feeling enthusiastic about what I can learn from everyone.

Isn't it amazing how these great opportunites invariably coincide with busy times at work? Today Stevie Smith's poem, Not waving but drowning kept popping in to my mind! I did some very small research at the end of last year in which I looked at how our first year students were accessing (or not) our LMS (Moodle). I got a lot of really great feedback which I have been implementing into the design of the new Moodle pages. Unfortunately it's quite a radical shift from what we had before, and I really need to redesign the early pages so that they are consistent with our new, improved approach. And the new enrolments start next week. Eek! I guess if I don't sleep between now and Monday I'll be fine!

Facilitating online

I have just signed up for Sarah Stewart's Facilitating online course which starts later this month. I had intended to do it last year but we all know about the road to hell and good intentions! Anyway, hopefully I'll get myself more organised this time around. I'm looking forward to being forced (although that's probably too strong a word) to reflect on online learning in a slightly more formalised manner, and I'm equally looking forward to meeting other people involved in online education and learning from them. As an instructional designer I spend much of my time developing materials for online delivery, and it will be wonderful to think more deeply about how to facilitate the delivery of these more effectively. Although I love e-learning, it's a world that I landed in almost by accident, and much of what I do is based on feel or instinct, rather than any sound theory!