This week in my Lifestream and in #mscedc in Twitter I’ve witnessed:
- An increase in ‘social’ posts
- An increase in conversations (as opposed to just sharing links) in Twitter
- Convergence of conversations and areas of investigation/inquiry
The increase in social posts could potentially be explained using Kozinets’ developmental progression of participation, which suggests that with increasing time and number of communications, participants’ communications move from topical information exchange to become coloured with ’emotional, affiliative and meaning-rich elements’ (Kozinets, p. 28).
Increased ‘conversations’ may arise out of increased trust in the learning potential or capability of our ‘learning partnership’ (Wenger, 2010), or perhaps from frustration with ‘shouting into the void’ in our chosen MOOCs for the micro-ethnography (at least, in mine).
Core themes which converged were moderation or policing of community values within online communities and the ability of ‘private’ sites with commercial interests to serve the interests of community. Alongside this, multiple conversations about whether community participation is necessary to success in MOOCs (and on courses in general) also converged.
Two conversations on participation converge:
Conversations and inquiry into the role of moderation of communities and the significance of community infrastructure being privately owned and profit generating converge:
So far, my micro-ethnography notes remain offline as I’m conscious of inadvertently revealing more details about the data’s origins than I plan to.