It has been a relatively quiet week on my Lifestream Blog this week as I found myself ploughing my efforts into my micro-ethnography.
However, I would name the theme of the content that I had managed to get up as motivation. Following on from last week’s themes of “backstage” and factors that influence the development of community cultures, this week I have been considering how MOOC participants react to these factors and if their individual motivation for enrolling on a course can influence how well a community develops.
The YouTube video entitled Global Digital Culture: Cultural Differences and the Internet suggests that online spaces aren’t neutral and that they mirror the values of both those who enter these spaces and those who design them. I felt that this video was consistent with the findings of my micro-ethnography in that the scale and wide range of motivators within a MOOC can make community building a difficult task.
I was wary that I may have made a bad choice in deciding on the Internet of Things MOOC for my micro-ethnography and that my experience of the course may influence my decision to attempt another in the future. Therefore the rest of my Lifestream content is comprised of my comments and interactions within the MSCEDC community to draw further conclusions. I am pleased that it certainly appears MOOCs are enjoyable, meaningful and social places if the main motivator is learning.
‘It has been a relatively quiet week on my Lifestream Blog this week as I found myself ploughing my efforts into my micro-ethnography.’
Yes, I think that’s been the case for a few of the group and quite understandably so, having seen how much effort has gone into the micro-ethnographies. It might be something you could reflect upon in future summaries: how the varying content of your lifestream activity over the course of a week is influenced by different factors. For instance, why in a particular week there might be more twitter activity than some other form of content.
‘The YouTube video entitled Global Digital Culture: Cultural Differences and the Internet suggests that online spaces aren’t neutral and that they mirror the values of both those who enter these spaces and those who design them.’
Your inclusion of this video is really timely and I’m going to suggest you might want to return to it after looking at the Tarleton Gillespie (2012) article from the Week 8 reading list. In particular, the point at 00:40 that you pick up on where Alex Krotosky talks about the different influences that come to shape the web – both users and designers. It will certainly be worth thinking about this through the lens of algorithmic culture.