from Dropbox
via IFTTT
My aim was to produce a video for this and I had all the transitions/animations in place but then decided to do via a Dropbox link and opted for a document only due to PowerPoint Mac and export to mp4 choice not showing. I’m not overly happy with it but it is the end of the week and time to move on. I really enjoyed the MOOC itself and will continue with it to the end.
Even though it wasn’t what you fully intended, I thought this was very nicely put together, Clare. Your use of image is really effective.
For the 5000 participants, was this on this, single iteration of your course or spread of previous iterations as well? If just this one, then wow – that really is massive!
I liked your observation that “Many people applied the taught elements to their own local community based projects.” Perhaps nowadays when our lives are so enmeshed in technology we are less likely to seek community online (i.e. because tech is ubiquitous the novelty and or utopian vision has worn off somewhat). Certainly I’m aware that I’m generally (not always) more likely to engage in dialogue about concepts from my studies with friends and local peers than I am with fellow course participants.
Or, has the rise of SNSs changed the types of community we seek online? Moving away from affinity groups and towards communities based on established relational (friendship/peer) networks? Or, perhaps it is as Walther (1997) suggests, and community is to a degree dependent on anticipated future interaction… more questions than answers from me (as usual), I’m afraid.
Thanks for sharing.
Renée
Thanks Renée, good questions. I can’t remember where the 5000 was reported, I think it was at the beginning when the course facilitators made a video of all the participants but as the number of comments doesn’t really reflect/support it, perhaps it did include previous iterations.
It was so interesting to hear about community projects about cycling, unused spaces in towns, healthy eating, litter, flood/earthquake destruction etc discussed within an online community. However, like you I discuss my ideas/interaction with the course with friends and colleagues more than online. I think defining community on or offline is difficult and a flexible, reflexive approach might be better than a concrete ideal.
Renée
As an update for the week 4 summary the student number is now stated as 7000. That is massive indeed.
Clare
This is a really comprehensive presentation of your MOOC experience Clare, nice work!
Interesting to see ‘physical locality’ as a point of connection in your MOOC. This was certainly something envisioned in the early days of the platform MOOCs, partnering with a service called meetup.com, so that groups could arrange face to face gatherings – I don’t see much of that anymore, and the partnership seemed to disappear. It reminds me of Howard Rheingold’s work on online communities, which often highlighted the fact that groups meet in the ‘real world’. Do you find evidence of people meeting, or was this just affinity based on location?
Great to see your TAGS explorer visualisation here too – it gives another useful depiction of community. We’ll be looking at Twitter visualisations in week 9, specifically thinking about the algorithmic or automated processes that are co-creating the community – perhaps a useful way to connect this thinking with block 3?
Thanks Jeremy
This is a fascinating angle that I hadn’t considered fully. I didn’t spot any explicit physical meetups. However, there were two distinct connections: the first that many students had been advised by RMIT staff to join the MOOC to enhance experience of formal courses and the second is that a lot of people working for local government in Australia connected and some already knew each other. I suppose this highlights the importance of the central node in the network, that people are drawn to common localities despite the virtual delivery. Did you find that there were significant numbers from Edinburgh (or even Scotland) on the #edcmooc?
Clare