Category: Week 2 – Networked Learning

Blogging puts a magnifying glass up to one of my greatest weaknesses: online levity. By that, I mean my ability to show an informal side with a sense of humour through any online platform, or even more broadly, any text-based content. Somewhere during my education and professional experience, I have learned to be formal, ‘professional’, and informative. But I have also lost the ability to speak my mind and connect with an audience through my words. Blogging clearly has a lot of potential to hold the writer accountable, increase visibility, and provide control over one’s internet presence. It also is not only a useful, but necessary tool for those pursuing careers in academia.

My current graduate assistantship requires me to promote study abroad opportunities for students through several online platforms. Just this past week in the office, we were faced with an interesting dilemma. There is a scholarship program run through the U.S. government called the Boren Scholarship. It’s deadline was coming up and a co-worker of mine edited our website to say “Boren Ultimatum” as part of the headline for our update. We all are huge fans of wordplay and absolutely loved the joke. But, we were conflicted by whether it was ‘appropriate’ to publish on our website. One of my co-workers finally made the point that it’s our website, and we can do with it what we want (within reason). It was then that I realized I have never thought of online content that way. It has never been ‘mine’. It has never been something that I was free to have fun with. I realized that the well-trained academic and bureaucrat in me subconsciously rejected the idea of having fun with content. I’m not sure if this is something that I will be able to overcome over time. But having a structured way to work on lightening up my online communication and sharing my thoughts with a community will be a much-needed first step.

Another example of this internal struggle of mine shows its head in my use of Twitter to engage with the academic and policy community in my field. People working in national security, foreign policy, and international relations frequently take their debates to Twitter. They debate contemporary issues and critique each others’ publications, not to mention building networks of colleagues and friends. It is a dynamic and very real community that holds its public forums online. I have been on Twitter for a couple of years now and I am still a lurker. I always find excuses not to tweet or comment. It comes down to fear of saying something wrong or contested, or simply just putting myself out there. But, as Tim Hitchcock explains, that is precisely what the value of Twitter and blogging is. It is a forum for academic engagement that is, at least somewhat, removed from self-selected filters we place over our work. It is open and available to other users of the interwebs and forces us to people and perspectives that will make us better in the long run.

This is the start of my journey to have a little more fun, knowing that I will still be able to get my point across while maybe entertaining a few of you along the way.

In this blog I’m going to summarize what I have found interesting in the resources, as well as the reflection of my personal opinions.

What kind of educational experiences change lives?  This is the main question studied from different angels in “Networked Learning as Experiential Learning”. At some point, the author compares the traditional networked learning experiences via hard copy books available in the libraries, with the digital networked computing in the cyberspace. Undoubtedly, the emergence of digital books and later Learning Management Systems (LMS) and related apps has been a paradigm shift in modern education. In my opinion, as we are still learning how to implement the digital educational system effectively, it is important to bolster it with the conventional physical version. For instance, I have always thought that given accessible, inexpensive lightweight Ebooks, they should certainly beat the market . I was totally surprised when I found an opposite trend in “7 Reasons Why Ebook Sales Are Falling–and Print Book Sales Are Rising Again“. One can definitely find similar examples comparing modern LMSs vs. traditional systems, where the latter is mostly based on in-class and face-to-face communications and evaluations. From my point of view, depending on the course subject, students’ age, the level of course and many other factors, keen teachers sought for a good balance between the two modern and traditional forms of course materials to improve the educational experience.

In”Twitter and blogs are not just add-ons to academic research” the author emphasizes the importance of public involvement in academia through social media and blogging. This was an appealing article for me, as I have always overlooked the productive consequence of public engagement in the digital world. It is argued that while many journal articles are merely published to serve the needs of big publishing, it is required for researchers to make use of public channels, e.g., Twitter and blogging , to ENGAGE the readers in academic dialogues. The author believes such virtual conversations simply demonstrate the underlying passion for a subject, and must be publicized to foster the concept of active engagement. He, particularly, encourages early career scholars to expose their research ideas publicly. While they might be afraid of being criticized or see their ideas stolen, the author explains that this is a beneficial resolution in long term to build an audience for their work in the process of doing the work itself. Finally, a very practical tip is proposed which I am eager to try in my future classes: embedding blogs in undergraduate assessment. This sounds like an effective win-win method for undergraduates to improve their academic writing, and for teachers to hear all passive voices and feedbacks.

Three useful ideas to work on the web openly were suggested in the corresponding manifesto: have control over your digital identity, publish your work publicly in a standard format, improve the network effects of your digital work by adding well-structured URLs and tags and applying metadata. In another resource for this assignment, Seth Godin describes blogging as a free functional solution to acquire metacognition of thinking about what you intend to say. He clarifies if you stick with it, regardless of number of your followers, you will good at it and ultimately will be heard.

Last but not least, Dr. Michael Wesch modestly narrates what he learnt from his toddler, George, who endlessly tried to learn how to walk down the stairs. It was absolutely a touching TEDx talk in which the lecturer talked about his journey to get to know his students and their concerns. Spending a lot of time and having one-on-one lunches with his students, Dr. Wesch finally came up with the conclusion that most of them struggle to answer these three principal questions: who am I? what am I going to do? am I going to make it? The speaker presents a novel collaborative model for setting up the course projects which truly impressed me. I am very excited to implement his idea in a future class.

Hello everyone! My name is Meredith Bullard and I’m excited to dialogue with you this semester! I’m a second year PhD student in Civil and Environmental Engineering. My research focus is at the intersect of the environment and water resources; I study groundwater dynamics and transport modeling! Having a mother who is also a university professor (in chemical engineering at NC State) has not only had an impact on my life view and career goals, but also on my views of pedagogy. Although I’ve never had to take any of the classes she teaches, I grew up hearing about active learning, academic integrity, and the importance of good advising. I’m excited to share my views and some stories with you all, and I’m sure that this class will be a great opportunity for me to integrate new ideas from such a diverse group of backgrounds into my own experience.

I enjoyed our long discussion Wednesday evening about privacy and whether learning management systems should be able to collect and share our data. I was sharing some pieces and parts of our discussion with my boyfriend, who has a degree in computer science from VT. He now works as a web developer and is definitely much more knowledgeable than me in this area. He said that most websites track user data (clicks, time spent on pages, etc.) without our consent — this isn’t just something that’s limited to Canvas. While that does seem to me like a violation of privacy, he pointed out that most of this data is hard to interpret. At his company, they often use heat maps developed from usability tests to show what people are interacting with most and how people navigate through a website. Much of this data would be used for site improvement, which would ultimately benefit users, but it mostly remains anonymous since you’re just looking for overall user trends.

When I mentioned our discussion to my mom, she said that she had to put a paragraph about TurnItIn in the syllabus, since it was used in a course she teaches:

In this course we will utilize www.turnitin.com , an automated system which instructors can use to quickly and easily compare each student’s assignment with billions of web sites, as well as an enormous database of student papers that grows with each submission. After the assignment is processed, the instructor receives a report from turnitin.com that states if and how another author’s work was used in the assignment. For a more detailed look at this process, visit http://www.turnitin.com. Plagiarism in written documents is unacceptable and will be cited for academic integrity violation.

When it comes to data, I usually assume that any data I produce will somehow be sold or used. I’m fine with that, although it would be nice if it were aggregated with other data and not attached to my name. I would like more transparency with what data I’m producing and how it’s used. With regard to Canvas and in the interest of transparency across the board, should we:

1. have a right to know who can access (or is accessing) the user data from Canvas and how that data is used in decision making?
2. be required to add something to our syllabi so that our students know that their learning management site collects data about them (even though there’s not a way for them to opt out)?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

TBD. This blog is in place to create a new category.