Moodle101: Two weeks left!

Quoted from http://faculty.bernardsboe.com/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=4074:

Moodle101: Two weeks left!

I am hoping the 'dust has settled' a little and you are back in the swing of things. Let's really put some effort in the next two weeks to ensure that your Moodle site is ready to be accessed by your students by the end of the month.

Aloha! This week felt like a bit of a discompression week. It is probably a natural sense of relief after submitting the final paper coupled with a degree of burnout as the course is well on its' way, not to mention the fact that I am still on vacation in beautiful Hawaii :)

I am pleased with our final paper, but it would have been nice to submit a somewhat more complete version as we had one portion of our paper incomplete. Regardless, I believe our final edits and submission will not be overwhelming at all.

As for the readings, I must confess that I will need to go back and really read the articles when I get a chance. I did not participate fully in this regard. Perhaps I will download the articles and save them for future reference. Again, this might have something to do with burnout and that relief of having submitted the final.

So, that's my story for this week. Life is good. Hawaii is beautiful and I am entirely grateful for the opportunity to be able to participate in my courses while here. One of the gifts of online education. As my family plans to spend a good portion of our summers here for years to come, I can only hope that I can be teaching some online courses during the summer so that I can be engaged in the process and making some money to offset the expense of our trips. What could be better than that!

Steve

Aloha! I am still enjoying our time in Hawaii and thanks to wireless internet access and local cafes, keeping up with the coursework has been manageable. It is interesting, however, that the time of the blackboard backups definitely effects me out here! From home (on the east coast) I have always seen that message and figured it would never matter to me (2am - 3am). Here, the outage occurs from 10pm - 11pm and very often that is right when the kids are asleep and I have enough energy to continue to work on coursework only to be foiled almost every day. Oh well! I'd still rather be in Hawaii :)

This week our main work revolved around the final paper for our team. As always, communication in the team process is 'interesting'. In the end, I believe we did quite well working together, but there were a few minor bumps in the road. This always begs the question as to whether it is a matter of communication style or personality. In the case of online learning, I often find that communication is the main issue. We met several times in real time via synchronous chat. However, we did not meet in real time this week and I am looking back and wonderinf if it would have helped. One problem that I see is that when people send out emails with attachments and wait for a response, the response does not always come immediately, and there may be a number of reasons for that. On one hand, I believe things are sometimes thrown out there and possibly incomplete in their delivery. Thus, team members might feel that they are not equipped to respond or perhaps there is even some diffusion of responsibility (each member hopes another member will respond). If a real time chat occurred, perhaps we could have ironed out the little issues together and moved forward. Whatever the case may be, I definitely think that matters often get 'lost in translation' in online 'one way' communication. We are dealing with people with different personalities, different learning styles, different communication styles, etc. It is somewhat ironic because our paper deals with the idea of online communities, so perhaps there are elements of our anecdotal experience here that apply beautifully.

I will end with a blurb that I wrote regarding the process for submission with our final paper...

When it came time to create our final project, we began by condensing our midterm articles so that they were reasonable in length and supported the overall topic. When this process began, it became apparant that we needed to make some adjustments to the way that our articles were written. Two of our team member's articles were personal accounts written in the first person. As the final paper combined the ideas of four different team members and four different 'voices' we made the decision to create one common voice and present all of our information in the third person. Once this was accomplished, the paper took form nicely. Our editor combined all of the shortened articles with the exception of one as we were still working to ensure that it fit properly within the overall theme of the paper. In editing the first draft, one team member added the introduction and conclusion as it aided in creating a flow of the paper and tying all pieces together. We were all posed with the task of reviewing and editing the draft and one member really took this on and made some changes that were instrumental in creating the final draft. All in all it was a true team effort. It was especially interesting to see how certain tasks were accomplished without necessarily identifying tasks for each partner. We had created tasks (per se) but some of the best work came naturally despite our defined roles.

All in all, I am a big proponent of the value of team work and believe that the 'bumps' in the road are valuable learning experiences for all involved.

Steve

Aloha from the beautiful island of Kauai! This weekend, my wife and I had the opportunity to travel on our own without the kids (something we haven't done in the 7+ years we've been parenting). It was quite a nice weekend. Our kids are wonderful, but the ability to connect and actually do things that the kids might not be up for has been wonderful. We spent our first day driving up to the north coast and hit the northmost beach in Kauai. Luckily, I grabbed my snorkel gear and headed out beyond the rocks to be fortunate enough to see some of the amazing Hawaiin Sea Turtles. Sea turtles have become my absolute fascination. Last year I managed to swim with some, and I feel like all of my snorkel adventures are really a search for more of these peaceful, wonderful, huge creatures. They are truly amazing and probably have a lot to teach us regarding just 'being'. After my turtle adventure, we caught a beautiful sunset and then headed out for dinner and some live music to cap off a wonderful eveninng. Yesterday started with a delightful breakfast at our B&B and then we headed off to meet Berta Pires (a name that should sound familiar) to hike Waimea Canyon. We had a GREAT time. The hiking was great, the views were spectacular and the company was exquisite. It was such a pleasure to meet Berta and enjoy such a wonderful experience together. After hiking, my wife and I ventured to do a little shopping and then headed to see the Spouting Horn (a funny loud geyser like natural thingy where the water shoots high up into the air based on the surf). That led to dinner which was quite nice, but quite honestly, we were so exhausted that being done with dinner and heading back to our B&B seemed even nicer. Today is our last day on Kauai and we are heading on a boat tour (a motorized rubber raft) to the Na Pali Coast. It is supposed to be a great way to see the beautiful cliffs, the coastline, and even some caves. It should be a fun adventure to end our wonderful weekend.

So, I just felt the need to share about my weekend. I see a blog as an opportunity to share whatever one would like, so there it is :)

With regard to this week's learning, I managed to do most of my reading prior to the weekend and post to the forums. I really enjoy the thoughts that come up with regard to the future of learning. Gregory brought up a valid concern regarding the possibility of reverting back in time. His point is quite valid as I believe we have seen this many times in history. We advance, only to return to a more traditional approach after what could be considered a failed experiment. I responded to Gregory with the following and felt it is poignant with regard to my feelings on the week's topics:

"Gregory,I appreciate your bringing up the importance of real human contact. I do not think we are moving away from that. I think that education can mix technology and human interaction without sacrificing either. One thing that comes to mind for me as the idea of renting videos and people having these great home entertainment systems in their homes. Many would have feared that it would have been the end of people going and spending money to see films at the theater. I do not think that happened at all. In fact, during the same time that video rentals have grown, so have the massive multi-plexes. I think (hope) the same will be seen in education. I hope we will embrace the technology for what it is and allow it to help us expand educational opportunities, but not take away from the face to face interaction. In fact, many large brick and mortar institutions seem to speak of online education as a means to exapnd their offerings as they are full to capacity in their traditional classrooms. I have not seen too many institutions close their doors to be replaced by a completely online infastructure.
Thanks for bringing up this point. I think it is an important point to explore."

I am very excited about what is possible as we move forward in education. I believe it is important to continually reeavluate systems and education is certainly one worthy of reevaluation as the world around us changes. After all, education is all about preparing people for the real world, so for the education system to remain dormant while the world evolves would only be a disservice to students and the world they are entering into.

Aloha and Mahalo,

Steve

This week I was not entirely sure what to post to our blog. As such, I figured I would respond to the reflection notes and community suggestion (after all, I imagine that is why they are there...)

On the note of the reflection notes, and community suggestions, my first thought is that I often overlook them because they sound optional. Chalk that up as one for being honest. Perhaps, my telling on myself will help me to change my evil ways :)

Reflection Notes: What will you do to better prepare students for their team/group/partner interactions?

This is a great question and quite timely. I believe guidance from the instructor throughout the process is essential. This should come in the form of framing the context for group expectations. To clarify, I believe that small assignments should be provided throughout the process in order to keep the groups focused. This should begin with a creation of a team charter. This is interesting, because I previously thought the idea of a charter was just an extra step. Now I see how spending time as a group engaging in this process is helpful. Another idea is to provide assignments that work as parts to the whole so that sub-tasks can be assumed by each participant in a seemless manner. The readings point out the imporance of this and our experience with our midterms as being pieces of the final paper ensured that all students did their share. Granted, there are other key pieces to group work that we still must negotiate, but at the very least, each participant did their share of research and writing toward the final paper. Finally, I suppose readings that bring up points like social loafing and other important points related to group work would be good for discussion during the week leading up to group work. Those are my initial thoughts on this idea.


Community Suggestion: Develop a "sociogram" for your group. Email the instructor for more details, if you would like to engage in this experiment.

Hmmmmmm....... I might have missed something. Did we read about sociograms this week? I am not sure what a sociogram is (there I go again being honest!). I am intrigued and may be emailing you regarding this :) I am on vacation in Hawaii, so I am not looking for too much extra work, but it can't hurt to inquire, right?

My group is still moving forward. We have been very good about communication and have spent a lot of time trying to iron out certain ideas about our group work, but I guess sometimes the seemingly redundant discussions are necessary. I do appreciate everyone in my group. Good bunch of people. I do find it interesting, however, trying to now take 4 diferent papers with 4 different writing styles and make a cohesive paper out of them. I feel fortunate as I have worked with Karen a number of times in the past and she seems to have a magical way about editing and putting things together :)

Well, more to come in my next entry!

This week, our team worked on solidifying our individual topics in order to confirm that our topics could blend well for our final project. In addition, we established a timeline to guide the group moving forward. This was quite helpful as I think we started to all feel a little stress in terms of seeing the big picture of the overall project. The timeline provided us with some clarity on individual and group tasks for the upcoming weeks. I see this as a crucial part of the team process as I am starting to see a common issue with regard to teamwork - that being that a lot of discussion occurs without a feeling of certainty regarding action. The timeline and task breakdown provides great clarity and assurance that the project will in fact move forward.

As for individual progress, I believe I have my title nailed down. I am going with "Sustaining online communities beyond course completion" . I am excited about the research, but am at that point where I feel overwhelmed because I haven't done too much tangible work yet. I have done some preliminary research, but have not actually determined what articles I will use as of yet. I have a lot of time to work on this project this week and will certainly be looking to stay focused!!! However, I do feel great about the fact that our group feels confident that our individual research will fit together nicely. This provides a good feeling about the individual contributions as a solid base for our group compilation.

So, I sit here late on Sunday night looking forward to a productive week of research and writing. I believe I will feel great when I provide an entry next week indicating that I have in fact turned in the mid term :)

EDUI6707: The group Process!

Greetings. I am posting today to reflect on the process of coming up with a topic for our group project in 6707. I love the group process :) It is crucial to the development of online learning communities. It also provides us with such a feeling of connectedness and breaks the isolation that could come with online coursees. Of course, the class discussions also aid in this process, but the group process really engages us with others in the pursuit of a common goal.

Once again, I am inspired by the process. The truth of the matter is that all group members seemed to have very similar ideas for our final project and the process became simply about talking together long enough to come up with a title that encompassed everyone's personal and professional interests. It is funny how you can dance around something for quite some time even though we were really all speaking about almost the same thing the entire time (just with a different spin on the wording). The process was perfectly pleasant and not the least bit painful as I imagine it could be if there were great differences of opinion. Like I mentioned, I think we all had essentially the same idea (or close) from the beginning.

Ultimately, we came up with a title that met the needs of all four partners. The title we came up with is "Building and Sustaining Online Educational and Professional Communities". I love it! I believe a few of the assignments related to brainstorming prior to this assignment were helpful. The brainstorming is what led me to realize how important the idea of 'sustained online communities' is to me and how well it relates to my goals with regard to professional development in my school district. Karen (one of my teammates) is more interested in the medical professional community. The title suits her needs as well. I like this because we are talking about very different industries, yet our goal is very much the same.

The entire process was great. We all started with our original ideas. Reflecting on each other's ideas and meeting online in real time really helped us come up with a topic that could work for all of us. In closing, I found the process to be a wonderful learning opportunity.

Steve