Technical hitch
Published on Friday, August 4th, 2006
Sorry folks,
The blog and wiki server is down due to a technical problem with the disk drives. The Host Systems Group is working on it, but I don’t know when it will be resolved.
Nigel
Professor Karen
Published on Thursday, July 6th, 2006
Karen has been made a professor! My supervisory team is getting more distinguished by the minute 🙂
Ecological metaphor
Published on Tuesday, July 4th, 2006
I’m reading Ann and Kim’s article on affective issues in collaborative learning. They quote Crook extensively and say he uses an ecological metaphor which promtes an approach whereby the investigator pays particular attention to both the features of the interaction and to the ‘character of the resources that collaborators act around – much as ecologists need to study how organisms interact with each other within their natural habitat.
Perhaps I should be doing this?
Probationary research questions
Published on Wednesday, June 21st, 2006
And these are my research questions as framed in my probationary report…
This research will consider the affordances of asynchronous online communities in higher education, asking how they can be utilised to support rather than to impede learning. It will also examine ways in which learners participate in a virtual environment. The main research questions which will drive the work are:
- How do virtual learning communities support distance learners in the co-construction of knowledge?
- How are self-presentation, identity and community relations implicated in learning online?
And again…
Published on Friday, June 16th, 2006
So, my supervisors said that the last set of research questions were questions for an entire career, not for something as narrow as a thesis. Now I’m down to:
How do virtual learning communities based in asynchronous online conferences support higher-education learners in the co-construction of knowledge?
How are self-presentation, identity and community relations implicated in online learning in these communities?
Research questions revisited
Published on Friday, June 16th, 2006
I like to keep tabs on my research questions, so before I delete this week’s set, I’ll post them here.
This what I proposed in the draft of my probationary report:
What are the key characteristics of a virtual learning community?
Which characteristics of a virtual learning community support learning?
Which characteristics of a virtual learning community impede learning?
Epistolary interviewing
Published on Thursday, June 15th, 2006
Just so that I don’t lose it – Here’s Margaret Debenham on epistolary interviewing:
Finally a number of Personal Interviews were undertaken to complete the main study by exploring inferences drawn from the earlier studies through direct interaction with the participants. Eleven students were interviewed in total. This phase of the work was undertaken in two parts, using two different interview techniques. These were ‘face-to-face’ interviews and on-line interviews by asynchronous e-mail, a novel method introduced in this thesis, termed epistolary interview. This latter method was adapted for text-based communication from the type of semi-structured conversational format described by Wilson (1996) as a suitable research tool for in depth exploration of interviewee experience in a face-to-face situation. Both sets of interviews were based on a similar framework of interview questions. (p. 11)
Debenham, M. (2001). Computer Mediated Communication and Disability Support: Addressing Barriers to Study for Undergraduate Distance Learners with Long-term Health Problems. Chapter 1 p 11. Doctoral thesis. Milton Keynes: The Open University. John added:
If anyone is interested in accessing Margaret Debenham’s PhD thesis in an electronic form, it can be found through the following site:
The url of the web page is http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mjdebenham/MDpage2.htm.This will normally be accessed from a link on my home page at: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mjdebenham/MDpage1.htm
Moment of insecurity
Published on Wednesday, June 14th, 2006
I really enjoy my blog, and I’ve been irritated that the damn probationary report has got in the way of my posting to it recently.
It just occurred to me that I spend a lot of time reflecting on the blog s and how we’ll be able to analyse them, and occasionally emailing other researchers and reading their blogs. Maybe I should be researching blogs, not online learning.
Having just struggled though my literature review I have this sense that everyone knows so much about learning and online learning. It’s really difficult to get a handle on it all. There are umpteen journals, so there’s more appearing every day. What I like about thinking about the blogging (and about epistolary interviewing, which I’m also thinking about at the moment) is that it’s fresh and new and untheorised and seems to open up so many possibilities.
Give me a choice on reading a book on blogging or a book on e-learning and I’d go for the blogging one straight away.
Skiving off
Published on Wednesday, June 14th, 2006
Well, I was booked to spend all day at Denise’s research day on e-assessment. I went this morning and, I must say, it was ver interesting.
But having been stressed out with deadlines all week, and expecting to be stressed out agin tomorrow when my supervisors have had a chance to pull to pieces my probationary report, what do I do? Do I get on with the mountains of work I’ve accumulated? No. I go and change the theme on my blog, watch a videocast and idly flick through my emails.
Buddy Space
Published on Friday, May 19th, 2006
Well, I loaded it up yesterday, and I must say I didn’t find it very intuitive to use. Gill and I had a conversation, but the system seemed convinced that Gill was offline. I don’t understand the maps facility. Frankly it could do with some sort of Help facility other than telling me who programmed it in the first place.
So then I went home and thought well, perhaps I should be trying it out at home. I’ve got a Mac at home. And dial-up. So I downloaded the version for the Mac and other non-Windows operating systems. My computer was downloading particularly slowly and thought it might take about 80 minutes to download the zipped file, but managed it in only 25 minutes. Yawn.
But then it wouldn’t run. Lots of image files that would open happily. Lots of sound files that would open happily. No application that would open on my system. Hmm. Well, perhaps I haven’t got Java. Thought I had, but perhaps not. Run search on Java. Umpteen files with the name Java. Can’t spot which one I should be focusing on. Ah,this looks hopeful. Click. Bugger, it runs in Classic. Wait while Classic launches. Oh, look, animated coffee beans. That wasn’t what I wanted. Oh, and an annoying little sound file.
OK, back to the BuddySpace website. How to check if you’ve got the right version of Java. Open a terminal window? A terminal window? We’ve moved into Geek speak. I know they’re in there somewhere, but where? OK, online help. Oh, but I’m in the middle of printing ten pictures, and I’ve got about 10 applications open. My computer’s grinding to a halt. Help finally opens. Find out how to open a terminal window. Open a terminal window. Check my Java version. Yup, that’s fine. Except I still can’t open Buddyspace.
Look, here’s a web client. I didn’t need to do that download. In I go. Hey, I’m in Buddyspace. Where is everybody? Probably in bed by now (checks clock).
Conclusion so far? Buddyspace needs documentation which doesn’t assume we all know what terminal windows are and that accepts that some of us are at home using dial-up and really don’t want to waste an hour or so just so they can say Hi to their friends.
Oh, and I notice Luis is still on my Buddy list, though he left over a year ago. Who does the housekeeping, and how?