Creating elearning experiences

Phase 2 was the 3^rd and final proposed project for our learning community design. It came to fruition more so as Angus was about to experience a more hands on approach in his everyday life that reflected the processes and outcomes of this project to some degree. For me this project meant more in that I felt I could contribute more in terms of project management and costing framework design. Having some accounting background helps. Since Angus and I had worked on similar but smaller projects, it wasn’t too hard to get into this one when our initial hiccups had been overcome. We used some modern technologies to overcome travelling to each other’s house. Skype came in very handy, we would talk most of the night discussion the processes and analysing costs of the framework and what technologies we would use in order to achieve the project outcomes. We proceeded to create a list of software solutions that would fit the acceptable goals of the project. Angus would deliver the learning framework and I would analyse the desired software. We also found it important to define team roles and the required processes to achieve the goals. (Anecdote Collaborative Workplace, Team Process P7).

Some of our solutions that would be useful in the design of the community were identified and the best possible outcome was achieved in terms of usability of the software, its availability, and easy of training others to use. We defined many open source systems due to their community of support and the fact that they are part of their own communities of practice; we could therefore involve ourselves in feedback to the community to enhance the systems if we felt the need to. Also in defining our systems to support the learning community we stumbled upon a hitch. There is no paper trail with audio conferencing unless the chat is recorded somewhat. The role with audio conferencing was to provide synchronous chat functionalities that complimented the learning community. (Weller, Peglar, Mason 2004 P65) Unfortunately with synchronous systems, the people who are not present do not benefit from the audio conference.

In our community it was an important factor to ensure participants gained a deeper learning. As “within a community of inquiry, participants must see themselves as both individuals and as an active participant in the learning community” (Redmond Lock 2006 P271). To be actively involved means to contribute, review and evaluate processes and to have the functionality to do so. We analysed what they did and documented there processes and decided that programming was a system we could duplicate. Collegiality and academic process is found in the wiki as a solution for our needs. The wiki gives teachers the ability to review and examine the processes of current methodologies and best represents the system of processes a teacher may go through in practice and academically. The wiki would form the new type of academia publication and become alive. No need for 2^nd, 3^rd or 16^th editions, edits can be made on the fly thus creating a living document open for peer review. (Horizon Report 2007, Yeo J Blog)

Consistency and online identities, how each and everyone hide behind some form of avatar or random pseudo name to personify their virtual existence (Identity, Purplegrrl Blog). If a person wants to own a body of work they need to be able to own that body of work as themselves. If we are enhancing communication within the organisation we need people to represent themselves. The reason is that the organisation exists in physical and virtual forms.

This can somewhat upset a community of learning. Even through my own experiences people are not held massively accountable for their online actions because we simply don’t know who they are. People need to represent themselves in a similar manner as if they were talk to someone face to face. Consistency is needed in order to pass on accountability for that person’s online identity.

Recently watching a video presentation on ted.com (http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/216) it was interesting to see the correlation between our project and its ultimate success… without giving myself or Angus a big head. The system we are developing should be successful because of the complex interdependency of the system and the participants. The video specifically mentions success through co-operation instead of success though domination. We are trying to bring the bigger schools into the organisation, and analyse the strategic viability and business success models of sharing. All we need to ensure is the learning community becomes an thriving community of practice.

For my own experiences, this subject has been a massive eye opener, coupled with new terminology that has been somewhat difficult to grasp. It has also been difficult to deal with a totally different way of thinking. I have dealt with exact sciences in previous lives, in terms of numbers and program code, imperial quantitative data, but reviewing experiences and reading articles with complex theories and terminologies have been interesting none the less, but also have proved challenging qualitative data. What I am seeing here from a programming perspective is that qualitative data in many respects is just variables that are too complex to define easily. I can see that this data is something that can be defined, but is not always easily defined. I’m use to making decisions based on cost, simple mathematical data, however I can see what we have learnt in this subject, draws upon something that in inherently true in ourselves and in our social natures that it makes it difficult to define and mentally resists quantification. Nothing though is too hard of a challenge. It just depends on the motivation and the behaviourisms of the individual. I won’t go into particulars of my motivations and particulars, that is of another post. However I will mention that my somewhat jaded view of education and its future has changed, not just from this course but also dealing with people who use this on a constant basis and Angus has been the collegial mentor to me in terms of my educational desires. I see the mix of my project management, accounting, programming and web suaveness and rather large asset and to couple those with online learning abilities I see real opportunity in the future.

Brett, N. 2008, Who are you again, Sydney, viewed 5 June 2008, < http://purplegrrl.edublogs.org/2008/06/04/who-are-you-again/>

Callahan, S. Schenk, M. White, N Building a Collaborative Workplace Anecdote Whitepaper

Horizon Report, 2007, The New Media Consortium and the EDUCause Learning Initiative, As seen at: Yeo, J. 2008, New Horizon, Sydney, viewed 5 June 2008, < http://joeblog.edublogs.org/new-horizon/>.

Redmond, P & Lock, J. 2006, ‘A flexible framework for online collaborative learning’, Internet and Higher Education, 9, pp. 267-76.

Way-new collaboration Filmed 2005, Video recording, viewed 5 June 2008< http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/216>

Weller, M. Pegler, C. Mason,R. 2004, ‘Use of innovative technologies on an e-learning course’, Internet and Higher Education, 8, pp. 61-71.