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Comment on MSCEDC MOOC Ethnography by hwalker

Comment on MSCEDC MOOC Ethnography by hwalker

Hi Chenée,

Thank you so much for your positive feedback. I have to say that I really struggled with the ethnography: firstly I became embroiled in ethical questions and then I wasn’t able to get permission to quote the course participants. Brilliant of you to make the connection with Sterne – I didn’t! And yes – anxiety and a sense of being disorientated by the hubbub and volume of activity are responses which I’ve frequently experienced both on the MOOC and in this module!

I had to be pushed by my partner to include the personal images: it sits uncomfortably with me to blend my private space with this public one (I know that this is something which you reflected on in your own lifestream (http://ift.tt/2lzTVtX)) but he felt that I needed to reference why the medium of the MOOC wasn’t working to deliver the sort of mindful experiences which I get from other areas of my life. I think it works but I still feel a little uneasy about this ‘collapse of context’.

And brilliant that you skate: are you in a roller derby team? If not, what sort of skating do you do (way, way back, I was a figure skater; that’s something Anne Powers and I have in common). We could start an MSc skating club…

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Comment on Helen Walker’s MSCEDC MOOC Ethnography by cpsaros

Comment on MSCEDC MOOC Ethnography by cpsaros

Hi Helen,

This is such a wonderfully rich artefact again. I really loved how you incorporated the themes around body from Block 1 into Block 2. You brilliantly supported Sterne (2006) by incorporating the sound of typing, breathing and a heart beat to demonstrate how over-whelming and anxious being involved online can sometimes seem.

I also loved that you gave a us a glimpse into your personal life too. I took up rollerskating last year and I saw you are able to skate, so that’s something we have outside digital education in common. I’ve found this block particularly interesting because communities seem to grow better by incorporating the personal. Really lovely work. 🙂

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Comment on Eli Appleby-Donald’s blog: A little bit of chat, a little bit of community building by cpsaros

Hi both,

I’m so pleased to be learning some Scottish slang. I definitely want to learn more! Maybe we could have a word of the week. 😉

Some really interesting points made about students with different needs. I think we are so focused in face-to-face education with meeting students’ needs, I was wondering how this is translated into the educational spaces in MOOCs. Is this something those educators should take into consideration, or should they run the course they want to and allow the participants to meet their own needs? What happens if those participants don’t really know what it is that they need because they don’t have the experience? It’s definitely given me something to think about.

I think having a Skype chat as a regular thing is a great idea. Good idea to set a topic, maybe give someone the job as moderator so we don’t speak over each other (something I was conscious of doing because I was so excited to chat to you guys!) Can’t wait for next time.

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Connections

This week has been such fun! I have connected with so many different people on the course in such a variety of ways. See if you can match the images below  with whom I interacted. Each picture is a snippet of Anne’s, Stuart’s, Linzi’s and Eli’s lives that I wouldn’t necessarily have found out about had we stayed in the ‘educational spaces’ of EDC.

It started out with Stuart; we had a productive Skype chat to compare notes about what we had found doing the same MOOC. It was interesting see how he approached things so differently to how I did. As we chatted I noticed that the conversation changed from the academic to something much more like the banter that exists with my colleagues at work.

I had an interesting tweet exchange with Eli which made me question whether MOOCs are still massive and thanks to connecting with Stuart I know how massive the Internet of Things MOOC actually is.

Linzi proposed a Skype chat on Twitter, which Eli, Stuart and I signed up for. This gave us an opportunity to catch up in a less formal environment than we have before. We were able to compare notes about our musings on Education and Digital Culture and the MOOCs we are doing. Conversation flowed much more easily than it did in the Hangout tutorial, I think we agreed that it is more stilted in the Hangout because we are self-conscious of making a mistake in front of everyone and looking unprepared or silly. We could relax more. It was good to hear that others also felt ‘naked’, or rather awkward and embarrassed, about having their assessed work and feedback available for all to see.

Anne and I had a chat on our WhatsApp group while we were reading the comments of our MOOC together. This was so helpful and caused us to pick out exact exchanges that have been useful when formulating our ideas. Anne also found a WhatsApp MOOC group for two-hundred-and-fifty students on IoT.

It seems these secret groups are a thing in MOOCs, as Eli shared that she was invited to join a ‘secret’ Facebook group. I thought having a WhatsApp group was intriguing as I would classify this as private space. Anne and I continued our discussion via a WhatsApp phone call on Friday, providing support and chatter about our plans for our studies.

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Lessons learnt: What micro-ethnography has taught me about research. Week 6

So many MOOCs

I persevered with the Internet of Things (IoT). I tried to become part of the community and searched for meaning in the comments. I did not find anything that was able to inspire me. I was bored and found myself avoiding the course. I did some of the activities to try and gain a better understanding but ultimately focused on participation or lack thereof. Whilst reading the comments in the IoT, I struggled to make sense of what was written. I was frustrated. I did not interact with others or actively participate in situated learning and I was not interested enough to apply critical perspectives to my participation (Stewart 2013).

I wondered why I found it so difficult to engage. I decided to try another course. I enrolled on to two other MOOCs; FutureLearn’s Teaching Literacy Through Film (TLTF) and Coursera’s Writing in English at University.  I chose these because I have knowledge of the content and I could focus more on the community and participation. I realised quickly that Writing in English at University was a poor choice and not ‘open’ as participants are required to pay for interaction.

TLTF appealed to me as I have used films in class to assist with literacy. I noticed a difference in the course almost immediately, it was more transparent, participants were encouraged to share personal information, there was discussion between participants, the atmosphere was friendlier and community more generous with their interaction. I was surprised to find that I wanted to be there. It did not feel like a chore unlike the IoT.

By changing MOOCs I discovered:

  1. being engaged with what we are researching makes it so much more meaningful
  2. if something is not working while you research, try something new
  3. communities can be both selfish and generous
  4. by comparing and contrasting information, we can make sense of it

Stewart, B., (2013). Massiveness + Openness = New Literacies of Participation? MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Technology, 9(2), pp.228–238.

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Tweet: Twitter in MOOCs

I found this blog post through Renée Furner because I was really struggling to find any participant engagement outside of the MOOC I am doing. I eventually found the paper the blog is based on . It made me wonder why Twitter isn’t being used more in MOOCs since I’m finding it increasingly useful to engage with the MSCEDC community.

From this tweet I had and interesting conversation with Philip Downey about this very topic.

Building communities

Twitter is restrictive when trying to convey meaning so we moved our conversation into direct messaging and outside of the public sphere.

Connecting in private

When I consider that it has taken about six weeks for me to connect with, and feel like I’m part of a community, I realise why Twitter may not be useful for connecting in MOOCs. It takes time to build relationships and see how we might be able to interact with others both within and out of an educational context. I suspect interaction on Twitter might not be successful because MOOCs simply don’t run long enough to build those relationships.

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Community in the private space. Week 5

Community within the same space? Photo: @The Mirror

I’ve been delving deeper into the Internet of Things (IoT) MOOC and I find it ironic that a course essentially about the communication between devices doesn’t champion communication between participants. I am surprised at how little interaction there is between participants. It is difficult to connect with others as there isn’t any social media space connected to the course. It seems the only contact people have with each other is if they ‘like’ a comment, to which doesn’t happen very often. The most ‘likes’ I’ve seen on a post, so far, is four. Participants have the ability to reply to a comment and while this occasionally does happen it seems to happen in a void where people who posted the first comments don’t reply to the thread. There is such limited potential to develop autonomous channels of communication (Stewart 2013) that much of what is communicated is repetitive and limits inquiry outside the content presented on the course.

This apparent lack of communication has led me to question the whether educational communities can be established in an xMOOC. I wonder how communities might be built without extended connectivity. How do those communities go about interacting if they aren’t assisted through the platform via social media?  Is FutureLearn as the private platform, where the IoT MOOC is hosted, discouraging communities from connecting? Social media sites like Twitter are not being exploited, this makes connecting with others more difficult. The limited contact participants have with each other does not promote an environment of community learning.

It is also very difficult to find people with whom to connect. Comments are presented in Facebook wall fashion but it’s quite difficult to see how active a person has been. There is no search function for why they might be interested in the topic. There is no way of knowing whether they a product developer, researcher, business, or just interested in finding out more? Even once ‘following’ another participant there is no way of directly communicating with them.

Geographical location seems important for the course content because the capabilities of connectivity for the IoT is dependent on connectivity. Again, there is no way to search for people who might be able to offer suggestions or alternatives for specific geographic locations because finding out where people are based is impossible unless they put it in their profile, which most don’t.

As a participant, I have a feeling of being blind to the community in IoT because can’t see individuals. It is similar to standing in a crowded station blindfolded. I can hear the announcements (from the teacher), I can hear specific comments from other participants, but don’t know how they fit into the greater context or whether there are any real conversations happening.  Which leads me to question whether people at the same train station can be considered part of a community? Ultimately they have the same place/space in common, they all will have travelled by train but eventually they will be travelling to different destinations, probably with their headphones on and trying to avoid eye contact.

FutureLearn (2017). The Internet of Things. Retrieved: 6 February 2017. https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/internet-of-things/

Stewart, B., (2013). Massiveness + Openness = New Literacies of Participation? MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Technology, 9(2), pp.228–238.