Sylvia Currie

Your feedback and suggestions are so appreciated! I smile when I see the familiar faces, and appreciate that you "dusted off" your id and password to join in.

Just about every post mentions lurking -- some of you even have your own brand of lurking: "professional lurker" "avid Lurker". Appreciation of this ability to follow along, unnoticed, has been mentioned many times over the years. I've met people at conferences and other events only to learn that they have been following SCoPE seminars since the beginning, yet they have never contributed to discussions, or created an account for that matter. In my view, the value in these open conversations, and lurkability (there you go, a new word!) is that MORE people benefit. Hopefully individuals in turn take what they learned back to their own workplace, and share even further.

Nick mentions that he recognizes the issues in "being an audience rather than a participant". Of course lurking is a form of participation, and possibly taking the extra steps to go deeper by crafting responses equals greater benefit. One challenge as a community steward is keeping track of participation for reporting purposes. Naturally big participation numbers help to convince sponsors that you're on the right track. There's a whole world out there that might be participating and we don't even know about them. The best I can do is make note of the occasions when we do find out about the lurkers. Satisfies me anyway :-) Or are there clever ways of capturing that data?

I always remember this question from John Smith, community leader for CPsquare: When it comes to participation at events, why do people think more is better? It's a darn good question! Some of the best conversations happen in small groups. Jenny mentions the First Steps into Learning and Teaching MOOC, a good example of rich conversations that would not have been possible if everyone showed up! In a MOOC, and in any open event for that matter, there's the potential for too many active participants.

What is that ideal number? Are people more reluctant to jump in when there are too many active participants? Or too few? What is it that nudges lurkers to hit that "post" button?

A rather loose tradition here at SCoPE is to schedule a "reflections and next steps" discussion at the beginning of the academic year. We miss some years, and this year we're getting a late, but hopefully productive, start! 

First, a bit of a snapshot of what's happened since we launched 7 years ago. We have:

• Approximately 4,000 member accounts from 156 countries
• Organized 75 scheduled, facilitated, asynchronous seminar discussions, and about 120 synchronous sessions
• Hosted 1 entirely online conference, provided facilitation and administration for 2 others, and supported online presence for f2f conferences
• Held 4 Online Community Enthusiasts events in Vancouver
• Collaborated to offer 2 MOOCs
• Provided space and support to 50 online special interest/project groups

All of this has been possible thanks to well over 200 volunteer facilitators. Some volunteers have facilitated several events!

And thanks to full support from BCcampus, and prior to that Simon Fraser University, all of these activities have been free. It's fantastic that this international professional learning community continues to be valued!

The 3 questions we always kick off with are:

• What have you liked about SCoPE? 
• What would you change? 
• What are your ideas for future activities?

During a recent conversation with SCoPE members and Community of Practice leaders, we thought that asking the questions this way might help to focus the conversation more on value to YOU and your workplace.

• How has SCoPE helped you?
• How do you think SCoPE can be improved to have more impact?
• Where do you see the community going in the next few years?

However you choose to jump in, even if it's just to wave and say hello, your contribution is much appreciated! 

Welcome to Revisiting the Community of Inquiry Framework.

About this seminar

I'd like to add a personal note about this seminar. Back in 2001, as coordinator for the Global Educators Network, I helped to organize a 4-part Community of Inquiry series, introducing the social, cognitive, and teacher presence theoretical framework by Terry Anderson, Liam Rourke, Randy Garrison, & Walter Archer. Each facilitator took on a topic for one week: critical thinking, content analysis, text-based learning, and teaching presence. The discussions were thought-provoking then (I'll post the archive!), and the work continues to be important today. So here we are, over a decade later, looking back at that conversation and all that has happened in between. On the topic of online discussions, we have a lot to talk about!

Seminar Description: Since its original publication, Garrison, Anderson and Archer’s (2000) “Critical Inquiry in A Text-based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education” has inspired a great many researchers and advanced our understanding of online learning and online education. In recent years, a number of reviews of the Community of Inquiry framework (CoI) have been published, including, Garrison and Arbaugh’s (2007), Swan and Ice (2010). Cindy Xin, author of a recently-published critique (Xin, 2012) will be with us to explain her argument and, together with Sarah Haavind, facilitate a discussion reconsidering the CoI and its recent reviews and critiques. By provoking new thoughts and possibly constructing new theories and methods, we hope to further our understanding of online discussion in particular, and online education in general.

There is a bit of background reading, but it's optional of course! It is listed in the forum description.

About our facilitators

Both Cindy Xin and Sarah Haavind have facilitated SCoPE seminars in the past:

Cindy: Supporting and Advancing Online Dialogue: May 7-27, 2007

Sarah (with Nancy White): SCoPE Seminar: Informal Learning: May 15 - June 4, 2006

and now they return to facilitate a seminar…together! 

Cindy Xin is an Educational Consultant with Simon Fraser University's Teaching and Learning Centre and Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Education. For the past 15 years she has been involved in research on discourse processes and collaborative inquiries in web-based environments, and the in development of open source technologies to improve online discussion forums.

Sarah Haavind is Associate Professor at Lesley University School of Education in Cambridge Massachusetts. Her dissertation at Harvard Graduate School of Education looked at collaborative dialogue in Virtual High School courses. Sarah is co-author of "Facilitating Online Learning: Effective Strategies for Moderators" (2000, Atwood).

Participating in SCoPE seminars

SCoPE seminars are free and open to the public, and registration is not required. You are welcome to come and go according to your schedule and interests. To contribute you will need to create an account on the SCoPE site -- a quick process. Are you new to SCoPE or wondering how to manage your participation? Check this resource.

If you're a Diigo or Delicious user we can round up our resources pertaining to this seminar topic by using the tags 'scope seminar' and 'coi'. In Diigo you may choose to share to the SCoPE group.

If you have any questions about participating in SCoPE don't hesitate to ask here in the forum, or get in touch with me directly:

Sylvia Currie
scurrie@bccampus.ca
skype:webbedfeat
+1 250-318-2907

Oh my, there are some excellent photographs accumulating in Flickr. Have a look! And check back often; there are more on the way.

The task for leaders of the open space sessions is to post notes captured during their sessions here. (Or post them anywhere, but be sure to ping us!) 

Alice is already writing about the twitter un-chat. Congratulations to Holly MacDonald for winning the online participation prize!

"Stuff" was the word of the day. So post your STUFF!

I think this is my final "before" post. Do you feel sufficiently bombarded today? :-D A big part of facilitating scheduled activities (our theme!) is to pace your communication a little bit. I'm obvioulsy not modelling that practice very well!

Thursday, 14 June Alice MacGillivray is organizing a twitter un-chat. From her blog:

This year we are organizing an Un-chat. Between 2 and 3 pm Pacific we will use this [#oce2012] hashtag to pose approximately four questions. So far, it sounds like a regular twitter chat, right? But the questions will emerge through the event. The first question will have come up through an open space process in f2f event. Subsequent questions may come from the chat or backchannel online communication, or people in the room, or some synthesis of these sources.

There will be a prize going to the person who stirs up thinking most effectively from a distance (yes, it will be a subjective onsite decision!)

Please spead the word in your networks!