Amanda,
You and your classsmates could have your own space at Yahoo Groups (it's free).
Best wishes with your project.
Frances Bell
Posts made by Frances Bell
Sounds like a great project Don - blogs (optionally) for life! and you don't assume omniscience - great
Bloggers become quite canny about making sure their nuggets of information reside on their blogs even if they refer to them in comments on other blogs. I foresee a growing student intolerance of our expectations that their postings and assignments 'belong' to the university. Many students already re-publish their dissertations on their own web sites - maybe in future they will pre-publish their essays and dissertations on blogs, etc.
I read all this thread but thought I would try to answer Martin's question about research. Despite all the volumes of research on e-learning, there is not a great deal of rich data and analysis on the learner experience - much of it being provider-centric. To understand phenomena such as anti-'Moodle' sentiments expressed on Facebook, I think it would be better to come from a perspective outside Moodle or any other LMS. I read some of the posts and thought that Moodle was just a placeholder for 'teacher making me do stuff online outside of class'.
Caroline Haythornthwaite has done some good work on student experience of online learning and their use of media see
Haythornthwaite, C. & Kazmer, M. M. 2001, 'Bringing the Internet Home: Adult Distance Learners and Their Internet, Home and Work Worlds', in The Internet in Everyday Life, eds B. Wellman & C. Haythornthwaite, Blackwell Publishing, pp. 431-63.
I blogged about her ideas here, and there is a link to the introduction to the book referenced above (but not the actual chapter). She points out that student communications occupy the most appropriate channel for the style and purpose of the communication. Students are likely to be selective about the channels where teachers can and do 'listen in'. They also work around course constraints to fit in with the rest of their lives.
I just spent a week's holiday with my three young adult offspring and was fascinated to observe their use of social software and services. One uses MySpace and has contacted lots of friends and family through it, one has kept contact with university friends through the university network feature of Facebook (established when he still had a uni email account) and the third uses a complex mix of email, skype, flickr.com, etc. to maintain contact with relative privacy. Between us, we cobble together a workable way of sharing holiday photos without compromising privacy considerations.
Having said all that, investigating what students say about Moodle could be helpful from a requirements point of view. One writer really didn't like the way that Moodle (or the html editor) didn't auto-save regularly. I must say I have been caught out that way myself
Caroline Haythornthwaite has done some good work on student experience of online learning and their use of media see
Haythornthwaite, C. & Kazmer, M. M. 2001, 'Bringing the Internet Home: Adult Distance Learners and Their Internet, Home and Work Worlds', in The Internet in Everyday Life, eds B. Wellman & C. Haythornthwaite, Blackwell Publishing, pp. 431-63.
I blogged about her ideas here, and there is a link to the introduction to the book referenced above (but not the actual chapter). She points out that student communications occupy the most appropriate channel for the style and purpose of the communication. Students are likely to be selective about the channels where teachers can and do 'listen in'. They also work around course constraints to fit in with the rest of their lives.
I just spent a week's holiday with my three young adult offspring and was fascinated to observe their use of social software and services. One uses MySpace and has contacted lots of friends and family through it, one has kept contact with university friends through the university network feature of Facebook (established when he still had a uni email account) and the third uses a complex mix of email, skype, flickr.com, etc. to maintain contact with relative privacy. Between us, we cobble together a workable way of sharing holiday photos without compromising privacy considerations.
Having said all that, investigating what students say about Moodle could be helpful from a requirements point of view. One writer really didn't like the way that Moodle (or the html editor) didn't auto-save regularly. I must say I have been caught out that way myself
I work for a large institution that uses Blackboard as its main VLE. I am not sure what meaning it would have for me to sign this petition, as I have no intention of damaging the student experience by not using the VLE to communicate with them. There may be other more effective actions I can take that would in themselves be jeopardised by my signing this petition. I am quite happy for others to do so - just wanted to point out some organisational realities.
No that wasn't Miles' comment.
Elgg sometimes does something dodgy with the comments so that icon from previous comment is put alongside a comment - very confusing!
Elgg sometimes does something dodgy with the comments so that icon from previous comment is put alongside a comment - very confusing!