Communicating in an Information Age blog

25 April 2008

I'm aware that I didn't do very well keeping up with the blog I set up when I was delivering the Communicating in an Information Age module for the first time in 2006-07. I guess I'm not a born blogger and I've found it hard to discipline myself to develop any sort of blog routine. So why, then, do I expect students to keep up with a blog? This has been a key learning experience for me and I'm far less critical of students who don't find blogging easy.

I have a strong reflective learning style so you might expect that blogging would be my cup of tea. I'm always keen to try out new learning technologies so it's not that aspect that presents a barrier. So what is it? To be honest, I'm struggling to put my finger on it. I've had several attempts at trying to set a good example to students by using the BB course blog, and a blog in a Ning space, but that left me with so many blogs to follow that I gave up - again. So, I'm hoping that PebblePad might provide me with a way of producing one blog from which I can then send the individual assets to a variety of blogs for different purposes. I'll have to see how I go.

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Posted by Ruth Whitfield at 13:03

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09 March 2007

We had designated this week as reading week; however, I agreed to be in the Cobden cluster for anyone that needed help or wanted to catch up. It was a well I did as this turned into a mediation session. I guess there is always the danger that some groups will have problems; however, it was a bit daunting as this is the first time I've tried to embrace group work for assessment. This module is certainly providing me with lots of learning opportunities.

Basically, I think the problem stems from different understandings of how a wiki works. One person wanted to use it in its intended collaborative way, whereas another was keen to keep an element of individual control by allocating a page to each person. I think both were motivated by trying to get the highest marks for the group work, although they failed to see this. We talked through what my expectations were and I explained that if the group wiki wasn't successful they shouldn't worry, as their reflections on why this might be etc would help to boost their marks in the other aspects of the assessment.

Whilst I don't think they were the best of friends, they said they would continue working as a group with this new understanding and see how it goes. I'll have to keep an eye on things.

I'm more concerned about some of the other groups who don't appear to be engaging at all in the group project. I shall have to chase them and give them the hard word.

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Posted by Ruth Whitfield at 11:18

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It was over to the learning technologists today. They were repeating a session they'd done for the ITQ candidates. A very interactive session that makes use of VOIP, virtual classroom and video conferencing. I caught up with them in the virtual classroom from my office - they certainly like the drawing tools and the whiteboard there!

I saw a couple of the students on my way out and they said it was a really good session. So thank you again to the Learning Technology Team.

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Posted by Ruth Whitfield at 11:08

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This kicked off on 27 February. Liz Kelly and I are running the first 2 sessions as inductions for students from both modules. We gave them a run down of what's expected in HE, regulations and health & safety etc. We then got them logged into Blackboard where we've set up an organisation so that both groups can interact with each other. The science students then went on a tour of the labs.

It was a good morning and they seem a nice bunch of students. A nice start to an interesting venture.

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Posted by Ruth Whitfield at 11:05

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In view of feedback, I've limited the work today in order to allow students to catch up.

The group working aspects are causing more concern than I'd anticipated. I had planned (maybe assumed wrongly) that much of the group working would take place online and that the need for groups to meet outside of class would be minimal. This appears not to be the case. Some groups are meeting regularly to decide what their online contributions should be. I know that online collaboration is difficult; however, I had hoped they would experiment with the group wiki much more than they are doing. Students are putting much more effort into this 30% stake of the module than they appear to be for the other elements and I'm unsure why this might be. Perhaps it is because this element is to be peer assessed? Or maybe it's just that they haven't grasped the true nature of a wiki and their adoption of more traditional methods of group working are muddying the waters. I'll have to think about this more.

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Posted by Ruth Whitfield at 11:01

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I couldn't make it to the class this week; however, I'd left some Netskills materials for students to work through that look in more detail at blogs and wikis. I've been really impressed by the ways in which some of the students are approaching the module and they are starting to build a useful resource on the group theories page in the class wiki.

It seems the group action plans are causing some concerns, as well as the workloads involved in the module. I need to review how I organise the earlier sessions for next time. However, as it is a 20 credit module, it carries 200 hours of learning. I suspect that as the module is assessed primarily by course work rather than an end of module essay, the workload is more evenly and constantly spread throughout the 12 weeks and this might account for the feelings of heavy workloads. Another factor is that there may be more time management issues with much of the work being online.

Comments posted in the class blog indicate that students have not grasped the three elements of the assessment and are still confused about where to post things. We've had two sessions where I've talked this through with them and although they say it's clear when we're in class, they obviously feel differently when working on their own.

I'm considering doing a flow chart to try to clarify this further and I need to think how I can reorganise the first few weeks to make things clearer. However, I suspect we are exploring new ways of learning on this module and it could just be that students are struggling because the approach is not what they are used to.

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Posted by Ruth Whitfield at 10:49

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09 February 2007

I was a little apprehensive about today's session as I was moving into the area of group dynamics and communication which takes me outside my usual comfort zone. It doesn't help with working with Peter Hartley and Richard Woodcock both of whom specialise in communication Anyway, I came away feeling quite pleased with how things went.

We started by reviewing what the different tools were for and how they related to the assessment as this was obviously causing them some concern and confusion. I suspect it will take a little time for them to capture my vision.

We then looked at action planning. They have to develop a group action plan relating to their group project and an individual action plan relating to their personal learning needs. Firstly, I asked them to search for resources giving guidance on action planning and to add these to the class wiki. I've just been looking through and although they've found quite a few resources, they've posted these in the group discussion area. I'm not sure why this might be and wonder if there's a "trust" element involved. It could, of course, just be total confusion because we do have a lot going on.

I'd asked them to use the group discussion to negotiate and finalise their group action plans. We started the action planning in class so they obviously took advantage of being face to face; however, I'd deliberately restricted time for this to force them to do some of it online. Interestingly, one group were discussing how they would use the group blog to discuss and develop their action plan BEFORE they posted their messages in the group discussion. They, were also making arrangements to meet. I hope they do some of the negiating in the group discussion; from my experience, it is difficult to achieve results using this means so I'd like to explore whether they have similar experiences.

I've developed a short learning object to introduce students to group dynamics. It's based on ideas offered in Peter's book which is a core text for the module. I was a little worried that there wasn't enough substance in it (my learning object, not Peter's book!); however, using it in class produced some useful discussion and helped students to recognise some of the complexities of studying groups. I purposely didn't go into any particular theories in the learning object, as I want students to go on a journey of discovery to find these. With this in mind, I gave each group a theory/model to research and asked them to develop a short summary of the theory in the class wiki with a view to "teaching" the rest of the class about the theory.

I'll keep you posted on how this goes, but now I'm off to bed!

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Posted by Ruth Whitfield at 23:55

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In week 2 I asked students to make a list in the class wiki of all the forms of communication they experience in a day. This produced some interesting reactions.

1) Rather than post a list, the initial entry was added in a format that resembled a blog entry.
2) Subsequently, two students posted their items as comments to the wiki page rather than editing the page itself.
3) I edited the page to present the thoughts of these three students as a list.
4) This resulted in the attached.
5) One student added a new page to the wiki and posted his list there. I only discovered this by looking at the page view option. I've resisted the temptation to move it. I'll wait a while to see if anyone pick it up.

It would appear that there is a degree of ownership and an emotional element associated with text added to a wiki. I can identify with this, as I have also had anxieties when contributing to a wiki that I didn't want to cause offence by editing others' contributions.

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Posted by Ruth Whitfield at 21:02

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I had also realised that including the blog in the webfolio prevented readers from posting comments to individual blog entries. However, I'm pleased that an upgrade to PebblePad last weekend has fixed this.

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Posted by Ruth Whitfield at 20:49

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I'm getting a bit frustrated with PebblePad's text editor. It appears to have a mind of its own. Just noticed that after adding Week 3 stuff to the Module Materials, all my lists have whitespace between them. Looking at the source it has created each item in its own list Give me a HTML editor any day!

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Posted by Ruth Whitfield at 18:19

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