monika’s w e b l o g

In the last days I started to collect the empirical data still needed for my research project: 1-hour guided interviews with blogging students – on (possible) learning effects through blogging in informal contexts.

Similar to my former experience with interviewees 2 years ago, I had again some very interesting and insightful discussions with students. ( At this point I’d like to thank to all of you guys for your time, and your efforts to reflect on the issues and respond to the questions! It is your contributions that make this project possible…)

The interviews were preceded by a quite long time of preparation and research. I used it to prepare a “context of justification” about why I would concentrate on informal blogging, when there is so much research out there about blogs in course settings. Besides this, I needed to come to a definition of learning, and a model of learning on which to base the empirical research. (See also my presentation slides with some of the issues).

However, I finally think that the model of experiential learning, including a lot of questions for self-reflection, by Lloyd Davies (2008) comes close to my view on learning through blogging.

Where models of informal learning describe in my view a context for learning, models of experiential learning descirbe the process. In this sense, the go well hand in hand – and help to describe learning through blogging in informal contexts.

Based on Davies’ model and questions, I have developed my interviews. I do not agree with all points and elements of Davies’ model. I had many discussions with my supervisors when setting up the questionnaire, and found it sometimes difficult to stick with the use of terms by Davies (for instance, what is an event in comparison to an experience; or how does he confine informal learning from expereintial learning, etc). However, his mulit-dimensional view on learning, paired with suggestions for questions in all these dimensions, helped me a lot to get down from theory to a concrete view on the empirical study.

June 27th, 2009. von Administrator. No Comments.
Kategorie: e-learning and weblogs, research methodology. .

It is now official:
“I am pleased to be able to tell you that your paper has been accepted for presentation and for publication in the conference proceedings.”

After the abstract acceptance, now our conference paper submission (co-authored by my supervisors David Moore, Janet Finlay, Andrea Gorra, Reinhold Behringer) with the title “Weblogs in Higher Education – Why Do Students (Not) Blog?” has been accepted for the 4th International Conference on e-Learning ICEL 2009, taking place 16-17 July 2009 in Toronto.

More info’s on conference and content will follow…

March 2nd, 2009. von Administrator. No Comments.
Kategorie: conferences, e-learning and weblogs. .

TU Graz is using weblogs university-wide as well:
“TUGLL is the campus wide blogosphere used by students and staff at Graz University of Technology since october 2006.”
(Source: elearningblog.tugraz.at)
Martin Ebner, Behnam Taraghi and Walther Nagler present a poster showing the plug-ins and extensions developed by TU Graz to “enhance the blogosphere with special needs by department of social learning after a year of experience”.

Just yesterday I browsed through the Wordpress Plugin Directory, to have a look for usefool tools for my weblog (for instance, MyCaptcha, Plugin Central, AboutMe widget, etc) and maybe get inspired to try out some gadgets.

I like the idea of increasing modularisation, both for my individual and for institutional use. The various needs of students in collecting, sharing, publishing different kinds of information can just be fullfilled with such a flexible system. Interested how far “widgetisation” could be driven?

September 5th, 2008. von Administrator. No Comments.
Kategorie: e-learning and weblogs. .

The issue 01|2008 of the Online Tutoring Journal contains the article E-Learning-Qualität aus der Lernendenperspektive (Quality of E-Learning from a learner’s perspective) by Nadine Ojstersek.

She writes about new approaches in quality development and assurance in the e-learning field. These approaches investigate increasingly the perspective of the learners and their claims on quality, to define what quality (in e-learning) is. As an example, quality demands and their consequences in the field of e-tutoring are discussed.

Two things are of particular interest for me:

1. the focus on learners to identify qualities
Ojstersek refers to the seven quality fields identified by Ulf-Daniel Ehlers (2004) “Qualität im E-Learning aus Lernersicht. Grundlagen, Empirie und Modellkonzeption subjektiver Qualität”. Wiesbaden, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
among those e-tutoring (“tutorielle Betreuung“) is one field. (The other fields include collaboration, technology, costs-expectations-use, transparency of information by provider, course flow, didactics)

2. the notion of different types of learners with different needs for tutoring
She describes learners with few, middle and high expectations on tutoring intensity, and again refers to Ehlers, who describes 4 types of learners.

Some “teaser text” for Ehlers’ book is available on: http://www.global-learning.de/g-learn/downloads/lernqualitaet.doc

A learner centered approach – this time in quality management.

January 16th, 2008. von Administrator. No Comments.
Kategorie: e-learning and weblogs. .

While thinking of informal learning with social software|weblogs and its implications on institutions/institutional learning, I found two blogposts which discuss changes in learning under terms like connecting and remixing:

1. How to interconnect the mesh together
George Siemens writes in his weblog “I think our learners are at a similar stage. Most of them have blogs, wikis, myspace, friendster, MSN accounts. Now we ask them to use WebCT. Why? Why not find a way to get our stuff into their spaces? How often do they have to learn a new tool?” (http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/archives/002397.html).

2. Remixing eLearning
Scott Wilson has published a PPT-presentation in his weblog.
Starting from the statement that “People obtain benefits from being connected into networks and communities”, where “the internet is all about connections”, pointing out that through feeds|conduits “we can mix, sort, group, rate and annotate the resources” and “we can share our mixes with others”.
He closes by “Envisaging how services can be combined to support an educational process or address an area of concern: Assessment, portfolios, personal learning, learning activities, course validation, curriculum management…”
(http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott/blogview?entry=20060328125550, via http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/archives/002409.html)

Thoughts:
I agree, institutional e-Learning should work with and implement the e-tools out of the living context of learners, to create a more authentic learning environment and to avoid unnecessary learning of new tools.
But: Is it just about getting “stuff into their spaces”? Should learning not follow a more dialogic model, a model of exchange of ideas and of connections, all properties of social software?

June 2nd, 2006. von Administrator. No Comments.
Kategorie: e-learning and weblogs, social software. .

In the last few weeks I spent the little time I had for my research on surfing through weblog entries with FeedReader. Very interesting, many links worth to follow, but also confusing. How to organize all the micro-contents here and there? How to keep track of my own project? How to keep up with the speed of information and knowledge development (in e.g. social software)?

Two blog-entries (in German) by Jan Schmidt pick up the theme, one on “Blogs and science”, and one on “Weblogs: classification and hype”.

From Blogs and Science:
“Unterschiedliche Geschwindigkeiten (Different speed of weblogs and science):
Es tut sicher not, gerade im Bereich der Internetforschung neue Veröffentlichungswege zu etablieren, die der Dynamik des Untersuchungsgegenstands gerecht werden. Die gibt’s ja auch, siehe Online-Journale, Open Access Initiativen, etc. Aber sie wird nie mit der Geschwindigkeit der Diskussionen in Blogs mithalten können – und braucht das auch nicht. Ein entscheidender Unterschied liegt doch genau darin, dass die Wissenschaft einen besonderen Anspruch hat: Mit nachvollziehbaren Methoden Erkenntnisgewinn zu erzielen und die Schlußfolgerungen daraus in einer Art und Weise zu veröffentlichen, die Kritik und damit Verbesserung des Wissens zuläßt.
(…)
Unterschiedliche Sprachen (Different languages):
“In den Diskussionen treffen (…) zwei Varianten aufeinander, über die Welt nachzudenken: Hier die schnelle Blogosphäre mit ihrer authentischen und hochgradig interaktiven Art zu kommunizieren, dort die Wissenschaft mit etablierten Begriffen, einer ausgeprägten Reputationshierarchie und dem Versuch, die Subjektivität des Forschers so weit wie möglich rauszuhalten. Das kann ja nicht gutgehen.”

… Comforting on one hand side, telling me that science can “run behind”, but also stressing the dilemma that weblog- or internet- research is a balancing act between classic research and fast changing social trends.

From Weblogs: Classification and hype:
“Aber: Wir können trotzdem feststellen, dass es Ähnlichkeiten zwischen bestimmten Weblogs gibt, also Gruppen von Menschen das Format auf ähnliche Art und Weise (und abgrenzbar von anderen Gruppen) nutzen. Diese Ähnlichkeiten der Praktiken lassen sich aus meiner Sicht in drei verschiedenen Bereichen zeigen/analysieren: In den Verwendungsregeln (d.h. den Routinen und Erwartungen, die das einzelne Bloggen rahmen), in den Relationen bzw. Netzwerken, die aus dem Bloggen entstehen, und schließlich in der Software, die jenseits der Grundfunktionalitäten unterschiedliche Möglichkeiten für das Informationsmanagement und für die Präsentation der eigenen Person bietet. “

… I see an area for research in the third point – possibilities of software (away from basic functionality) for information management and self-presentation. What do today’s and maybe tomorrow’s students need for this?

March 26th, 2006. von Administrator. No Comments.
Kategorie: e-learning and weblogs, social software. .

Boyd, S. (2003) Are you ready for social software? [Internet]. CXO Media Inc., Framingham. Available from: http://www.darwinmag.com/read/050103/social.html. [Accessed 01 March 2006]

Content:
Social software is defined with the following properties:
- support for conversational interaction between individuals or groups
- support for social feedback (leading to the creation of “digital reputation”)
- Support for social networks (eg, Friend Of A Friend standard, or FOAF)
In contrast to many project- or organization-oriented collaboration tools, where people are assigned to pre-defined groups, social software supports the individual to form groups to achieve their personal goals. This is also being named a “bottom-up” approach. Not the project is put first, but the individual.

Critique:
Clear rough overview on social software. The third “key property” is quite new to me. What I start thinking more and more about, is what possibilities there are to apply social software in HE without falling into the trap of a “top-down” approach, where students are forced to use ss and assessed by that. I should find some examples of best practice so far.

March 1st, 2006. von Administrator. No Comments.
Kategorie: e-learning and weblogs, social software. .

Churchill, T. (2005) Can collaborative online reflection help transform teaching in higher education? University of Leicester, UK.
Content:
In the research undertaken it was possible to identify three approaches to the use of elearning by lecturers:
- Supproting learning
- enhancing learning
- transforming learning
“Do lecturers need to experience e-learning from a studentÂ’s perspective in order to fully encompass its potential for transforming their own courses? Can such an engagement influence (or even cause) the transformation of lecturersÂ’ teaching regardless of medium? A range of examples has been identified indicating that lecturersÂ’ engagement with e-learning is capable of influencing their
face-to-face teaching practice in lectures, seminars and workshops.”
Critique:
I would be very curious about more detailed information on the change of teaching practice. This could give some parameters for measuring “better learning” with, eg, weblogs.

February 13th, 2006. von Administrator. No Comments.
Kategorie: e-learning and weblogs. .

Some interesting approaches. I am wondering if specific research has been done on open source, CONSTRUCTIVIST VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments). Some Papers:

Caygill, D. (2005) Achieving a collaborative open source e-learning framework. LAMS International, UK
Content:
He says that possible reasons for so far limited adoption of open source content could be that
- “re-usable content has generally been single learner focused, whereas much of education is collaborative in nature” and
- ” To date much of e-learning has been focused on content development and delivery, and a transmission oriented pedagogical model. E-learning has not been very good at representing the flow of activities that a teacher facilitates with a learner.”
“The presentation will therefore examine the development of Learning Design as defined by the work of Rob Koper and colleagues from the Open University of the Netherlands on Educational Modelling Language (EML) and the further expansion of the field leading to one attempt at a technical specification by IMS Global Learning Consortium, who produced the IMS Learning Design 1.0 specification in early 2003.”
Critique:
I am not sure about what Learning Design really is, but could this go on the direction of contructivist learning?

Pantó, E., De Simone, M. (2005) KEILab (Knowledge Exchange Initiative Laboratory): A research project about opne source and eLearning. CSP Innovation in ICT, Italy
Content:
“The work of KEILab has proceeded according to these phases:
- evaluate the current open source VLE offer (comparative analysis of 60 VLEs)
- deep analysis of user monitoring features of platforms
- define a form to collect information about VLE features that includes not only technical but also methodological issues
- design and prototype of an Expert System to manage the collected data”

Thomas, L. (2005) The XML way: Courseware development using XML and open source software. Fraunhofer IESE, Germany.
Content:
With XML, the layout of the courseware as well as the specific content aggregation and transformation processes can be applied automatically during the development process or even during run-time. This would be a step further from static course contents.
Thougths:
Is XML providing the larger (technical) context for the concept of weblogs and weblog aggregation? What are the graphical/pictorial possibilities with XML?

February 12th, 2006. von Administrator. No Comments.
Kategorie: e-learning and weblogs. .

Looking through the conference CDRom of the Online Educa, Berlin December 2005, I found that much research is being done on the use of weblogs in HE, eg:

Kruger, J. (2005) Reflective journal writing: from theory to practise. Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa.
Content:
“This paper reports on the creative use of a weblog in a training and capacity building programme and describes and comments on the experiences of the partners in using the weblog as a reflective tool, as well as the extend and level to which reflection took place.”

Warburton, S. (2005) Disruptive technologies: weblogs and social networking in learning and teaching environments. King.s College London, UK.
Content:
“Qualitative analysis of a fully online Masters degree (…) study. The learners (…) are supported via the deployment of low threshold publishing tools, in particular the use of weblogs and their aggregation via RSS.
(…) Comparative analysis of weblogs within both the academic and public domains.
Debate about other collaborative/communicative software (…) such as: asynchronous discussion groups; wikis (group published websites); and social networks such as Orkut and Friendster.”

Roegiers, S. (2005) Facilitating group work with wiki and other groupware tools. Presenting the case of an international, blended course on film and literature. K.U.Leuven, Belgium.

(!) Majava, J. (2005) Individualistic practices and communities of learning: educational uses of weblogs in universities. Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland.
Content:
“Most of the online tools that are designed for education are basically attempts to recreate the classroom in online environment. Weblogs on the other hand, are native to the web and have evolved outside the educational framework. The community dynamics of weblogs are also very different from those of wikis. The wikis – another format that is native to the web > are platforms for collaborative knowledge building for a single topic in a shared community space. Weblogs on the other hand are about open dialogue between individuals, that takes place in decentralized network of semi private spaces. (…)”
“In the context of a single course weblogs can be useful, but the full potential of weblogs in creating communities of learning is limited. Broadening the view from course blogs to the possibilities of free form, personal blogs in education opens up some unique possibilities (…)”
“Although weblog communities cannot be designed, universities can facilitate their birth by offering tools and support for creating and maintaining weblogs.”
(Followed by some suggestions)
“(…) On a course or seminars individual weblogs can be grouped together by syndicating their entries to a single page with a news aggregator. The course participants can maintain full ownership of their blogs, while the aggregator syndicates the entries to a single page. The aggregation page operates as the hub, where teacher and students alike can follow the course activity. The hub can also incorporate newsfeeds from other information sources or shared workspaces such as wikis or bulletin boards.”

Critique:
Very nice thoughts in this last paper, unfortunately no evidence of the assumptions and suggestions.

February 11th, 2006. von Administrator. No Comments.
Kategorie: e-learning and weblogs, social software. .