From 1998-2000, I took a 2-year MEd in Networked Collaborative Learning - online baring 2 x 1 week in the UK at the beginning and middle (it's now called eLearning and is completely online). The course was structured around the notion of learning community (if you want to find out more about it do a Google phrase search for "David McConnell" [ Homepage ]
We had two assignments per module; one cooperative and one collaborative. What's the difference?
For the tutors, a cooperative assignment was one that was done individually but with self-nominated peer and self-nominated tutor feedback. We had to post the assignment at various stages and it had be based on our work practice and something we could research into for a practical outcome .. very EdD like. So we usually had two peers plus a tutor who have us feedback on our initial ideas, proposal/plan, postings as we implemented, draft written assignment and final assignment. This also meant that I would be a peer review buddy for a couple of other participants (there were about 25 or so participants in total).
In the collaborative assignment, we formed groups around shared interested. We decided what the project would be about - it's goals, outcomes/deliverables and work processes. Again each group had a tutor, who, as far as possible, elected to be an advisor due to shared interest.
For both cooperative and collaborative assignments, authors had to post criteria against which they wanted feedback. There were also instituional criteria (up front) to me policies within the institution (Sheffield University, UK).
I'm writing abou this briefly in the hope that it will give another lens to what can be meant by "learner collaboration online".
Nick Noakes
Posts made by Nick Noakes
I've taken these thoughts a little bit further on my blog.
Hi John
Sounds like you have a great job! I have one experience as a user of the Educause website (http://educause.edu) which uses the Plone open source, content management system, which allows the setting up of blogs for it's members. I have to say that I only used it early on and haven't posted to it for a very long time. Why? cos I already had a blog and most of the other members did too. And your post, plus this single experience of community supplied blog, got me thinking. And it sparked some questions I think might need to be answered before deciding how best to procede for you community.
What if you asked (and showed) members who were interested how to use these tools/services and how to aggregate them and then how to bring them into the community using a feed compiler like suprglu and then how to have a dynamic page for them of their suprglu feed using something like Feed2JS. This way they retain ownership of their online spaces like their blogs, social photosharing, social bookmarking but this is brought into the community to both share resources and to share a deeper understand of the community membership.
I'm a teacher and I've been thinking about this for my classes. I don't necessarily need more online spaces coz (liek all of us), I'm already stretched too thin). But I could do with ways of sharing what I'm already doing and finding out what people from my communities, without more 'creation'. I can thinking of a number of communities I mean where this would help. And I've been thinking about this a lot for teacher and student (undergraduate and postgraduate) communities, where I work.
Some thoughts aorund your questions.
Nick
Sounds like you have a great job! I have one experience as a user of the Educause website (http://educause.edu) which uses the Plone open source, content management system, which allows the setting up of blogs for it's members. I have to say that I only used it early on and haven't posted to it for a very long time. Why? cos I already had a blog and most of the other members did too. And your post, plus this single experience of community supplied blog, got me thinking. And it sparked some questions I think might need to be answered before deciding how best to procede for you community.
- What does the admin team think would be the value to the members of having blogs?
- Have the members been asked? (and if they don't know what they are, how would the potential value be communicated? i.e. the different ways of using blogs, and the corresponding different values of blogs, be communicated?)
- Do/How many members already have blogs? Do they need another or would it be more productive to aggregate their 'external' blogs (or flickr, del.icio.us, etc) inside the community space?
- What about the value of collaborative/group blogs vs individual ones?
What if you asked (and showed) members who were interested how to use these tools/services and how to aggregate them and then how to bring them into the community using a feed compiler like suprglu and then how to have a dynamic page for them of their suprglu feed using something like Feed2JS. This way they retain ownership of their online spaces like their blogs, social photosharing, social bookmarking but this is brought into the community to both share resources and to share a deeper understand of the community membership.
I'm a teacher and I've been thinking about this for my classes. I don't necessarily need more online spaces coz (liek all of us), I'm already stretched too thin). But I could do with ways of sharing what I'm already doing and finding out what people from my communities, without more 'creation'. I can thinking of a number of communities I mean where this would help. And I've been thinking about this a lot for teacher and student (undergraduate and postgraduate) communities, where I work.
Some thoughts aorund your questions.
Nick