Working on the draft of a draft of a literature review. It’s such a mound of material that it’s really hard to arrange sensibly. I’ve got three and a half thousand words, which I guess is about a third of a literature review, but I keep getting lost in it. I’ve done a fairly coherent […]
I’m tinkering with my research questions. I’ve mostly reverted to identity from subject position, partly because it’s more comprehensible, partly because it’s sexier, and patly because it fits in with the idea of learning as transformation of identity. I’ve got a tentative title and hypotheses as well. I’ve thrown in a short definition of a […]
A171 Start writing for the Internet, 10 points, starts May, runs for 12 weeks. About 80 students – evenly balanced between males and females. A173 Writing family history, 10 points, starts May, runs for 12 weeks. About 180 students – mostly women. Also has an OUSA cafe. T183 Design and the web, 10 points, starts […]
Well, there’s a lot of discourse analysis here. * Corpus analysis. I put the text of all four conferences into a data base and pull out subject positions in some way. * I follow the trajectory of individual students. I’d like to supplement this with interviews. * I look at the whole conference, pull out […]
* Which are the main subject positions to be found within a learning community which comes together in an aynchronous online environment? * How are these subject positions introduced or created? * Which of these subject positions work to support learning, and which discourage learning? * How can the asynchronous environment be designed in order […]
Reading: Identity and deception in the virtual community Judith S Donath in ‘Communities in Cyberspace’, eds Marc A Smith and Peter Kollock pp 29-59 I’m interested in the part on how environment influences what you know and what is knowable of others identities. It affects how you create that identity, and what sort of first […]
We’ve got a new group blog up and running. It should be able to import all our old group blog from Blogger, but that’s proving complicated and it keeps timing out with its connection. Of course, the minute I can’t post to it I think of all sorts of things to post in it. I’ve […]
Although this is entry number 50, the previous ones have all just been transferred from my previous blog. Why transfer them? Well, this is an Open University research blog, so it won’t close down if I leave AOL (though presumably it will close down if I leave the OU. However, as it’s now in a […]
These are the main positions that Rasmussen identifies in her observations. They mainly refer to the 2 teachers and 5 pupils. She wasn’t focusing on positioning and identity, so this is presumably only a few of the more obvious positions. I can see that some of them would actively support learning, while others would act […]
Social loafing seems to me to be definitely a position you can take within an online learning environment. However, as it’s not a term in common use, you couldn’t really have it as your identity. Even if it were in common use, would you identify yourself as a social loafer? Probably not. So here’s an […]