Mary Burgess

I'm not sure I'd say "always", but certainly there is a trend... I was just reading a post Deirdre wrote in the Trust and Relationship building forum about Structured Controversy activities (tried to use the quote link but no luck there):

Structured Controversy (SC) – sometimes referred to as ‘Co-operative Controversy’ or ‘Structured Academic Controversy’ – is a co-operative learning activity. During SC all students, working in teams and small groups during class time, engage in an informal debate like discussion about a controversial issue arguing one position in Round 1 and then another position in Round 2. The purpose of SC is not to defeat the other side, but rather to uncover the various arguments pertaining to the issue in question." - M. D'Eon 2009

I'm thinking this would also be helpful for building confidence, since it's not about representing one's own points of view, rather it's a more objective representing of ideas people might have on a given topic.

Sue, your point about ROI got me thinking more about the issue of success criteria Paul raised earlier. Is the ROI something tangible? Ultimately I guess, since we are in the business of student learning, there must be some benefit to them if we build a network of communities for faculty for example, but I'm having a hard time getting that far with my thinking. My gut feeling is that faculty who become part of the communities will become better practioners as a result of the activities of the group, and that is better for students, but there must be some way of articulating that more explicitly...

Hi Paul and everyone,

I'm the Director of the Centre for Teaching and Educational Technologies at Royal Roads University in Victoria. I'm a frequent SCOPE lurker, but not much of a poster but... we are currently in the middle of designing what I'll just call an online "place" for faculty. I don't want to call it a "site", because that implies static content, and a "portal" seems too commercial and like just a bunch of resources (I swear I have PTSD from our last portal implementation). We've been looking at the Learn Together Collaboratory as an example of some of the things we'd like to implement.

We are struggling with the very things you mention above Paul. We want to ensure the "place" is seeded with good resources, and that it has things on it that are of value to our users, but we also want it to be a network of communities and content that they feel ownership over because those elements were largely built by them. I think we'll have to continue to contribute resources and content, but I am really hoping our example will energize the community and it will begin to grow as a result.

I'm not in favour of housing everything in one big piece of software that does it all a la LMS or CMS. What we do try to do here is connect the software we use in ways that enable single sign on at the very least, as well as similar interface themes.

The success question is too hard for this afternoon, but it's absolutely something I need to think about.

Happy Tuesday afternoon everyone!

Mary

Hi everyone - I'm pretty bummed that I'm just now getting into the discussion - we did a major Moodle upgrade at Royal Roads (I'm from the Centre for Teaching and Ed Techs there) in mid January that went pretty awry and took up most of my time and energy - trying now to get back on track while the bit marks fade.

Re the issue of making courses completely open, I agree with you Roger that learners would have concerns - but/and I think so would faculty. A few months back I was at a BC Campus session Scott facilitated in which a faculty member said she was hesitant to make her course materials open because of the scrutiny she would face from her peers. Having not just course materials but also a course facilitator's interactions with learners open to anyone could be pretty scary. I'm about to try to convince faculty at Royal Roads that sharing is a good thing, but I think I'll come across others with that same fear. One of the ways we're hoping to share more than just content is to provide the pedagogy behind the course's development when we share a course. It's not the same as seeing course activity, but at least it would give other course developers an idea of what was behind the decisions to use particular activities or ed techs.

Hi Nancy and all - if I remember right, our discussions were in part around our expectations of students' use of educational technologies in courses when some of the applications sit on servers that would be subject to the Patriot Act.