Peer Assessment can be a great experience to get multiple perspectives and feedback from those going through a similar experiences and to learn by providing it back to them. However, there can be some anxieties in both giving and receiving peer assessment. I sometimes have difficulty knowing how to balance positives and negatives. My goal is to really know what I am doing well and what needs improvement. I not only want to get a good grade, but I want to learn more through the process of reflection and improvement. Since these are my goals, I also assume those are the goals of my peers. However, this overlooks the difference between mine and my peers expectations due to the multiple socio-cultural and individual variations.
Questions linger in the back of my head: am giving too many or not enough positive "good jobs". Is because I like them or because I don't want to hurt their feelings? Is this because Is it because I want to continue to build a community with them inside and outside of the course? Am I being too harsh? Are my expectations too high? Am I acting like I am a teacher or looking at it like a competition? Should I use a different tone or will I come off offensive?
I also wonder if I am giving too much positive feedback. Am I being too lenient? If so, will I be missing an opportunity to help someone grow and get a good grade? If I were them, would I want to heart bluntly, subtly dropped, or ignored?
Another fear in peer assessment is receiving the assessment. Are they telling me the truth or not wanting to hurt my feeling? What if I am embarrassed? What if my work puts them off from wanting to building a relationship or group work because they now see my my work as not being up to par?
Luckily, I have never felt like I have received offensive or overly hard peer assessment that wasn't in tune with the true quality of my work. I have trusted that they always come with good intent and grew from the experience. However, I have had experiences where I had to carefully reflect on if I was being too positive or negative, and still ended up with having a bit of anxiety when I hit "send" on the button. Will I help them or will they still like me? In the end, I came out with learning from it and found it very valuable.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Moving out of comfort zones to assist in community building
Since most of the members of my organization are apprehensive and lack Web 2.0 technical skills, our main form of communication and community building is through email. I have tried several times to get them to participate, however their most commonly used excuse is that they don't have time. Also, they are strongly embedded in formal university publishing. They have fears of not being seen as academic professionals and want their ideas to be presented in prestigious journals or publishers. They fear that the Web 2.0 spaces of sharing ideas and resources will be not be protected in a secure space. They also fear that their ideas will be taken and used by others (individualism, competition, and intellectual property centered). Finally, the want to be paid for their work and ideas.
The top 3 action steps that I will take to assist in community building with my colleagues include the following:
1) I will create a video tutorial on how and why to use the social bookmarking site Diigo as an email attachment. I will then ask them to respond with their thoughts about using this tool. I will then ask them to try it one time. I will then follow up with a discussion of their experiences.
2) I will then invite them to a synchronous online meeting through Adobe or other conferencing tool. I will create a tutorial video on how to use the tool. After getting an agreed time, the focus of the conference will be to discuss and create a Community Guideline. Through this exercise, I will formalize and document the Guideline through a Wiki or Google docs.
3) I will then show them how to use discussion forums with the Web 2.0 tools so that we can start to create a formal community discussion space.
4) I will then create a blog where the content will start out with their formal, academic discourse. I will have links to other professional focused blogs and Web 2.0 forums. I will create a video tutorial to walk them through how to use the blog as a viewer, and how to create an account to participate.
Steven Downes ' article has several additional suggestions on how initiate and serve as a model for how to use Web 2.0 technologies to help build a learning community. He suggests that one should actively share and publish with Web 2.0 tools. In doing so, others may be encouraged to participate.
Even though I am excited about initiating this step, I too have apprehensions about submitting my article for publication. Mostly, I feel that it will be the first time that my work will be available for anyone to see. This feels risky, as there is a chance that my work will not live up to the readers expectations. It seems permanent, no turning back, I have shared part of myself to the world. I suppose need more self confidence that it is okay to share yourself with others. Maybe it is due to my generational experiences with not wanting my identity to be shared with the public. Even using this blog that is outside the Blackboard space, I still have an uneasiness. When I finally take that great leap, I am sure that I can adjust, grow, share part of myself, and learn. It is really ironic, because using Web 2.0 tools outside a formal LMS is the entire focus of my course and thesis.
As Papert's (1998) futuristic views reveal that my colleagues' resistance to follow the new generation's use of community building and learning space will make their ideas irrelevant. I use the word irrelevant because while they continue to submit their work to these journals, conferences where they may speak to 500 people, teach their face to face courses which may reach 200 students in a year. Their audience is limited. The newer generations are creating a new way of learning on their own with Web 2.0 tools. With access to new technological tools, the power dynamics have change. They aren't following or asking a teacher or parents if they can do it. They have already done it. Now we have to adjust.
My goal with my colleagues is to encourage them to get hands-on experience using these tools. This will start a discussion and introduction to the way that new generations are learning and how we will incorporate it into our online course. Through this hands-on experience on community building with Web 2.0 tools, hopefully they will be less apprehensive, see their value for learning, and will continue to maintain our own learning community with these tools.
Papert, S. (1998, June 2). Connected Family presented at The 11th Colin Cherry Memorial Lecture on Communication. Retrieved February 19, 2009 from http://www.connectedfamily.com/main_alt.html
The top 3 action steps that I will take to assist in community building with my colleagues include the following:
1) I will create a video tutorial on how and why to use the social bookmarking site Diigo as an email attachment. I will then ask them to respond with their thoughts about using this tool. I will then ask them to try it one time. I will then follow up with a discussion of their experiences.
2) I will then invite them to a synchronous online meeting through Adobe or other conferencing tool. I will create a tutorial video on how to use the tool. After getting an agreed time, the focus of the conference will be to discuss and create a Community Guideline. Through this exercise, I will formalize and document the Guideline through a Wiki or Google docs.
3) I will then show them how to use discussion forums with the Web 2.0 tools so that we can start to create a formal community discussion space.
4) I will then create a blog where the content will start out with their formal, academic discourse. I will have links to other professional focused blogs and Web 2.0 forums. I will create a video tutorial to walk them through how to use the blog as a viewer, and how to create an account to participate.
Steven Downes ' article has several additional suggestions on how initiate and serve as a model for how to use Web 2.0 technologies to help build a learning community. He suggests that one should actively share and publish with Web 2.0 tools. In doing so, others may be encouraged to participate.
Even though I am excited about initiating this step, I too have apprehensions about submitting my article for publication. Mostly, I feel that it will be the first time that my work will be available for anyone to see. This feels risky, as there is a chance that my work will not live up to the readers expectations. It seems permanent, no turning back, I have shared part of myself to the world. I suppose need more self confidence that it is okay to share yourself with others. Maybe it is due to my generational experiences with not wanting my identity to be shared with the public. Even using this blog that is outside the Blackboard space, I still have an uneasiness. When I finally take that great leap, I am sure that I can adjust, grow, share part of myself, and learn. It is really ironic, because using Web 2.0 tools outside a formal LMS is the entire focus of my course and thesis.
As Papert's (1998) futuristic views reveal that my colleagues' resistance to follow the new generation's use of community building and learning space will make their ideas irrelevant. I use the word irrelevant because while they continue to submit their work to these journals, conferences where they may speak to 500 people, teach their face to face courses which may reach 200 students in a year. Their audience is limited. The newer generations are creating a new way of learning on their own with Web 2.0 tools. With access to new technological tools, the power dynamics have change. They aren't following or asking a teacher or parents if they can do it. They have already done it. Now we have to adjust.
My goal with my colleagues is to encourage them to get hands-on experience using these tools. This will start a discussion and introduction to the way that new generations are learning and how we will incorporate it into our online course. Through this hands-on experience on community building with Web 2.0 tools, hopefully they will be less apprehensive, see their value for learning, and will continue to maintain our own learning community with these tools.
Papert, S. (1998, June 2). Connected Family presented at The 11th Colin Cherry Memorial Lecture on Communication. Retrieved February 19, 2009 from http://www.connectedfamily.com/main_alt.html
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Social software as a tool to sustain learning comunities
Sometimes we all get stuck in our comfort zones. We feel comfortable with what we know and what fits our socio-cultural interaction and learning styles. Stepping outside these bounds feels overwhelming and challenging.
Online instructors may also get stuck in this rut. Specifically in terms of how they use social software tools as a means to build and sustain their learning communities. This may stem from a generational disconnect. The net generation is here, online, and ready to learn. They have used these tools as part of their daily lives, and will feel comfortable with using them to learn. However, the way they experience and use social software tools can be greatly different from the way an instructor from a different generation conceptualizes how they can be used.
In attempt to catch up, some instructors branch out and use a few new tools. Using Wikis, blogs, and forum discussions in their online courses is usually the first step. Ironically, many of these same instructors do not utilize these tools for their own personal and professional development. I must admit, this has been my first experience actually creating my own blog. Without this experience, I didn’t realize its power to create social capital and form community. Even though I visit and read blogs all the time, I still envisioned a blog just being a personal journal. It just didn’t click.
So it is not surprising that when instructors get comfortable with using these limited set of tools in their online classrooms, they end up getting stuck again. Wikis, blogs, forum discussions, are just the tip of the ice burg of the Web 2.0 tools available, including the vast ways that the net generation are already use these tools as part of their own personal networking and learning spaces. Instead of being separated by the walls of a physical or online classrooms, the net generation are developing social capital, as well as creating and sharing their own learning objects as part of their daily lives.
It can also be overwhelming due to the speed at which Web 2.0 tools change. Brighter, shinier, and more powerful tools arrive everyday. Keeping ups is a struggle. As they newer ones emerge the resistance for their reappears. It doesn’t click in terms of how they can be used in an online classroom.
A few of the newer Web 2.0 tools that get some resistance or looks include Twitter, Virtual Life, and Mind Maps. Isn’t Twitter just a thing that teens use to have banal conversation or uninteresting aspects of their daily lives with their friends? Isn’t Virtual Life just for unsocial gamers? Aren’t Mind Maps used by yourself to get organized on your own personal computer? How in the world can they be used in an online classroom? Can they really be used to create and sustain an online learning community?
The goal of my team's final paper is to leaving readers with an general understanding of how to use these new tools, get themselves unstuck, and help students to leverage these tools to form learning communities.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Strengthening the bonds
This week, our team worked to put together our Group Contract. In doing so, I got to learn more about each person's style of working, and how we are going to work together. Some strengths and roles are starting to emerge. Each of us put up a few ideas about what we would include. My other team mates had specific ideas that they wanted to include. My contribution was a lot more theoretical at the beginning, wanting to make a structure of everything that we should address in the contract. Then, to move forward with getting the details together for each idea. After the first draft was put up, we then had a web conference that included a white space area that also allowed the group to view web pages, for which we could all manipulate. It was my first experience with this technology. While we came up with some great ideas towards moving forward with the contract and the project, the real benefit was getting to learn more about each other. Even though much of the conversation was regarding the tool and the work, I learned so much about them that I wouldn't be able to get from a message board or picture. Just putting a "voice" to a name was helpful in learning more about their personality, learning style, and collaboration style. There was a small technical difficulty, that we quickly resolved. However, I could see that this may be one thing that could interfere with the learning process for our students. Someone on either end could get frustrated and decided not to participate. Also, being exposed to this tool was an eye-opening experience. Just like doing this blog for the first time, the way that you think of a social software tool pre-and post- using is so different. Even if it is an exact match with your understanding of the concept, the tool involved. Using it, and especially in a collaborative context, makes all the difference. Every time I mention any of the tools I will use in my course, not having used it myself seems so disingenuous. I really don't have an understanding of the power that it has, and how to ultilize it appropriately. I am going to have to dig in more and more and take every opportunity that I can get inside and outside this course to use them. At the end of this week, I feel like it has been productive and feel much more of a bond with my teammates.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Progression of the group process
Our group is still in the early stages of the planning. We are beginning to learn each other's negotiating and participation styles. So far, we have been very effective about communicating expectations, each taking different roles at different times. We all have shown active contribution, notified one another of our schedules, and negotiation of topics and writing tool. We have also shown great trust in each other to edit and work with the ideas. It has went pretty smooth so far.
We are also just beginning to learn about our socio-cultural constructs that we bring when forming a community. I think that it will come out more and more as time goes on. Right now, I think that we have very similar socio-cultural constructs in terms of gender, leadership, time, assertiveness, and recognition (Khalasa 2007). This may be why it has been going well. I think that this will be enhanced with the next steps of our group work.
Once we set up guidelines, this will be come more appearant as we see what one another thinks are important. We were also bouncing around the idea of using other tech tools to experience them ourselves, as this is part of our research topic. It will be interesting to see how we negotiate which tools and time to work together, especially since sychronous conversation can be the most difficult part. As we continue to work together the formation of social capital will gain its momentum, as these venues will help us to "develop the capacity to work together to better understand and to take action on issues that are important" to us (Imel & Stein 2003).
Imel, S. and Stein, D. (2003). Creating Self-Awareness of Learning that Occurs in Community. Retrieved on 1/12/2009 from http://www.alumni-osu.org/midwest/midwest%20papers/Imel%20&%20Stein--Done.pdf
Khalasa, D. (2007). Multicultural E-learning teamwork: Social and cultural characteristics and influence. As found in A. Edmundson (editor), Globalized e-learning cultural challenges. (p 307 - 325).
We are also just beginning to learn about our socio-cultural constructs that we bring when forming a community. I think that it will come out more and more as time goes on. Right now, I think that we have very similar socio-cultural constructs in terms of gender, leadership, time, assertiveness, and recognition (Khalasa 2007). This may be why it has been going well. I think that this will be enhanced with the next steps of our group work.
Once we set up guidelines, this will be come more appearant as we see what one another thinks are important. We were also bouncing around the idea of using other tech tools to experience them ourselves, as this is part of our research topic. It will be interesting to see how we negotiate which tools and time to work together, especially since sychronous conversation can be the most difficult part. As we continue to work together the formation of social capital will gain its momentum, as these venues will help us to "develop the capacity to work together to better understand and to take action on issues that are important" to us (Imel & Stein 2003).
Imel, S. and Stein, D. (2003). Creating Self-Awareness of Learning that Occurs in Community. Retrieved on 1/12/2009 from http://www.alumni-osu.org/midwest/midwest%20papers/Imel%20&%20Stein--Done.pdf
Khalasa, D. (2007). Multicultural E-learning teamwork: Social and cultural characteristics and influence. As found in A. Edmundson (editor), Globalized e-learning cultural challenges. (p 307 - 325).
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Best Practices for Increasing and Maintaining Group Particiation
For our group project, I am interested in exploring the best curriculum and design strategies that increase student motivation and participate in social networking with E-learning 2.0 tools. Also, how to create group participation that is stemming from the students desire to participate, not because they are being graded, but because they want to and find it a valuable experience. One is example is providing tools and activities that correlate with various social Web 2.0 learning styles. Another could be Web 2.0 notification tools that help with creating and maintaining group cohesion, such as Twitter, etc. Of course that there are so many other more aspects that we could explore. The focus could be very specific to very general. I am open.
Since I am creating a self-paced course, students may be a different places in curriculum. Thus participating and sustaining collaborative learning can be a challenge. Finding a way to leveraging every opportunity to increase motivation and participation is imperative. I think that this challenge would be a subject that would also be pertinent to all types of courses, whether cohort or self-paced.
Since I am creating a self-paced course, students may be a different places in curriculum. Thus participating and sustaining collaborative learning can be a challenge. Finding a way to leveraging every opportunity to increase motivation and participation is imperative. I think that this challenge would be a subject that would also be pertinent to all types of courses, whether cohort or self-paced.
Sustaining a Vibrant and Innovative Online Community of Learning
I feel that the ways that you keep a community vibrant an innovative is to continue to network and not only share ideas, but continue to build relationships and trust. Additionally, creating a group identity. Part of this is to find commonalities, defining joint projects, continuing to stay connected, doing more activities, asking for advice, and collecting artifacts. These are just a few ideas that I came across Wenger (1998).
Wegner, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning as a Social System. Systems Thinker. June. Access on 1/18/2009 from http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/lss.shtml.
Wegner, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning as a Social System. Systems Thinker. June. Access on 1/18/2009 from http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/lss.shtml.
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