When installed, a new option becomes available at the bottom of both the post and page creation forms.  Ticking this option turns the content from a standard WordPress post or page into one that is editable by the group.  You are also able to activate an option that converts any heading tag used in the page/post to a clickable item listed in a Table of Contents listed at the top of the content.

For users with sufficient access permissions (author or contributor), the edit history is displayed at the bottom of the published item.  Users then have the ability to browse back through previous instances, and track who has made the changes.

With the wiki option enabled you can continue to use other standard WordPress options, such as embedded media or the WYSIWYG editor; it just turns content typically created and controlled by one person into something that is open it up to collaboration.

Why not just use a wiki?

All this being said, I don’t mean to suggest that you abandon your wiki of choice and use WordPress instead, because this framework can only do so much.  I see the option as a valuable way to extend the functionality of a blog – particularly a group blog – to support relatively light or infrequent wiki collaboration.  If you’re likely to be heavy wiki users it might make more sense to use a proper wiki.

The significance of using a combination WordPress/Wiki is that you gain collaborative opportunities for aggregation and synthesis of group input while retaining space to facilitate individuals’ reflections and subsequent group discussion.

Educational Use Case

As an educational use case for example, imagine the group work project.  Lets say 5 students are brought together and asked to work on a collaborative project throughout the session, with key milestones and deliverables expected (e.g. project components or short essays) and ongoing discussion and communication required.  Imagine as well that each individual student is expected to post weekly reflections (to track and assist their personal learning processes), as well as contribute to a series of group developed essays or presentations.

Each student could contribute their reflections in the form of standard blog posts, with group discussion taking place in the comments area – thus enabling an instructor to track participation and formatively evaluate how the group (and each group member) was progressing.

Plugin Recommendations

As a quick aside here, there are two key plugins I’d like to recommend here, each of which I believe have both technical and educational value.

• Threaded commenting – I’d strongly recommend using threaded commenting here, as it enables a quasi-bundling of conversations around topics rather than limiting them to the default chronological layout of blog comments.  This could help establish continuity of discussion for those engaged within it as well as facilitate a quick assessment of the outcomes of the conversation – including misunderstandings or areas of confusion.
• Syndication - I would also recommend incorporating a syndication plugin that could pull in content from other blogs using nominated tags.  This would enable encourage students to contribute their reflections to a personal space in the first instance and then have the posts related to the group project automatically reposted (syndicated) on the group blog.  The importance here is in establishing continuity in each individual’s learning journey by helping them track their growth and development over time.  As such it would facilitate reflection over a much larger scale in which they could review their experiences over the course of many posts, months or even years.

Enter the Wiki

Up to this point the individual reflections and group discussions could take place using the standard WordPress blog framework – now imagine what a wiki could facilitate in terms of project planning.

Blogs can do a lot, but they don’t lend themselves particularly well to frequent edits of single pieces of content by multiple people – though it is nonetheless possible.  Wikis on the other hand are designed to facilitate and track frequent edits by multiple people.

Each group could be asked to create a series of pages to document the planning, implementation and outcomes of a series of activities or key milestones.  Not only would the wiki plugin enable group editing, it would quickly show who had contributed each individual change and enable the group to revert to previous versions of the content if the need arose.

Diigo and Twitter

In addition to the blog/wiki framework outlined above there are a couple of additional activities that could be used to facilitate the group’s efforts, each of which could be tied back into the blog.  This would serve to both expand the collaborative opportunities, as well as provide even greater insight into the dynamic that was developing between group members, the content they were discussing and investigating.

Diigo - The creation of a Diigo group for tracking useful reference material would enable the group to amass and bookmark a collection of resources (websites, journal articles, blog posts, YouTube videos, etc) that could be used during the project planning, research and/or implementation.

Diigo also supports automated posting of bookmarked resources to the group blog.  This includes the annotations provided by the student adding the bookmark.  Effectively students could aggregate the links to these resources (and their notes about them) on the group blog, thereby retaining its status as a singular planning site.

Twitter - The use of Twitter as an open channel for discussion, sharing of links and networking with subject matter experts, other students or teachers around the world would provide an avenue for informal or brief discussions on topics that contribute to the progress of the project.

Additionally through use of hashtags (identifiers that categorise content using # followed by a descriptor – such as #learning or #unswphysics1001), students could quickly differentiate Twitter posts that relate to the project from those that don’t.

Hashtags are also searchable in Twitter, making it easy to view and even syndicate all posts that have been tagged with the same term. Using the same syndication plugin mentioned earlier, it is conceivable that the search results from the hashtag could be automatically posted on the group blog as well, thus documenting the group’s efforts even further.  This theory needs to be confirmed however.

The Result

In this use case, by the end of the session the group would have used the space for planning, reflection, discussion, review and evaluation in a manner that established a singular space for the group’s attention – as opposed to one site for a group blog (or even multiple individual blogs) and another for a group wiki. Additionally, through monitoring of blog reflections, comments, and wiki edits, the instructor could monitor each individual’s contributions for the purposes of clarification and instruction while the project was underway as well as summative assessment at session’s end.

Resources

Links to the sites or plugins mentioned in this post are included below:

• Diigo - http://diigo.com
• Twitter - http://twitter.com
• WordPress.org – http://wordpress.org
• WordPress Wiki Plugin – http://wp-wiki.org/
• Threaded Commenting – Threaded commenting comes native to WordPress version 2.7.  See the Discussion settings in the Dashboard area
• Syndication Plugin (“Feed WordPress”) – http://projects.radgeek.com/feedwordpress/

UNSW has released a document called the Guidelines on Learning that Inform Teaching at UNSW, which is a series of concepts discussing the way students learn the most effectively and is intended to provide a basic framework for instructors to consider when designing their courses or activities.

From the website:

“The Guidelines are designed to support and assist staff in reflecting on and improving their teaching, in order to enhance the educational experience we offer our students. “

These guidelines are not specific to technology, but rather aim to provide a holistic view that should be considered during any endeavour that aims to foster or empower learning.

The thought that occurred to me is that this framework could be a valuable starting point for discussing the efficacy, affordances and effective implementations of different technologies and seek to address, in a systematic way, the fundamental questions that Anne Marie asked.

In the case of the discussion on Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) like Blackboard and Moodle versus Personal Learning Environments (PLE) such as blogs or Twitter, as a workshop activity for example, you could distribute an empty table (such as the one below) that detailed each guideline on learning in the left column and then ask groups of participants to assess the capacity or ability of a different technology or framework to facilitate each guideline – or alternatively perhaps how you could incorporate the guideline into implementation of the technology.

Once this process was completed the resulting matrix would enable you to compare the results, the relative effectiveness of one framework versus another, or perhaps begin to evaluate effective ways of working with the tools.

It seems to me that such an activity would serve to address a couple of points:

• Inspire exploration of the strengths or weaknesses of each technology and the opportunities they may (or may not) afford learners;
• Instigate discussion on effective or creative uses of learning technologies;
• Expose participants to new, innovative ways of working

Comparative Matrix of Learning Technologies

To know where you’re going I think you need to know where you’ve been; and going back through my posts it’s fascinating to see connections in concepts I’d previously missed. This is one of the reasons I put together a map, which depicts the major concepts I explored or learned about this year. It’s given me a much better appreciation for the interrelatedness of my interests, and how much everything ties together in the end.

So without further ado, here’s 2008 in review:

Year in Review

2008 was characterised by tremendous growth and exploration of new areas and concepts – most notably the learning side of e-Learning. With several years of technical and user support experience under my belt – and an almost equal amount of blogging and new media experience – the learning side of things was an area I’d lacked a proper awareness of and appreciation for. This year I set out to start to fill in the gaps in my expertise – and ultimately did so in earnest.

There were several motivating factors in this decision, with the three main one’s being an unwavering interest in learning, a desire to be more helpful to people, and on the practical side a desire to have more education represented in my grasp of educational technology.

The first half of the year was largely business as usual though, with most of my attention devoted to analysing trends in emerging technology and evaluating new tools. One of the key research projects I really dove into early on though – which influenced everything that came afterwards – was a much more intense investigation of open source technologies than I’d engaged in previously, and in particular the culture of the community behind them.

The technologies themselves were really interesting – and continue to be – but the culture of openness, collaboration, sharing, communication and a core emphasis on individual freedom – and its preservation – really struck a chord and have inspired me ever since. As a result, there was a natural evolution from open source software, to open education, to what I like to think of as open learning.

In tandem to my exploration of open source sociology were my initial forays into learning theory, learning styles and hemispheric dominance (right brain vs left brain.). As relatively superficial as this was in the early part of the year, it was a significant step that led me to enrol in two online courses in session two – Facilitating Online Communities and Connectivism and Connective Knowledge. The latter course in particular was to play a key role in my learning through the rest of the year and I suspect will prove to be a career changing event.

As such my learning and research trends in 2008 quickly shifted from a predominantly technological focus early in the year to one in which technology became a vehicle for the empowerment and personalisation of learning, and I believe will prove – or I would like to see prove – a catalyst for educational change.

Concept Map

While the following map is not comprehensive of the learning and research activities I undertook in 2008, it nonetheless depicts some of the the most significant and most influential to me personally.

My major learning and research themes in 2008

Key Events:

Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (CCK08) – brilliant introduction to many learning theories, opportunity to engage with peers from around the world on a seemingly unprecedented scale and course model; expanded awareness from theoretical coinceptualisation of technology’s affordances for learning to real-world, practical application; increased awareness of trials and tribulations for classroom use; facilitated more in-depth exposure to experiences and perspectives of teachers; introduced concept of changing roles of educators and students

The Revolution Will Be Syndicated – If CCK08 fed my intellect, Jim Groom and Tom Woodward’s closing presentation at the 2008 NMC Virtual Symposium fed my soul, stoked my passions and ignited the feiry obsession to speak up for what I believe in. Their one-hour extravaganza echoed many of my most passionately held views, and did so in perhaps most creative and engaging way I’ve ever seen presented – online or offline. Truly, it was the highlight of 2008 for me.

Equally importantly, the message they conveyed was one that has stayed with me ever since, and has greatly influenced the manner in which I view my role in elearning both locally at my institution and abroad with those I interact with.

My reflections on the presentation and an embedded recording of the presentation in its entirety is available here: http://techticker.net/2008/11/10/the-revolution-will-be-syndicated/

Aims & Objectives for 2009

As I write this, the clock has struck 12:00 am and it has therefore literally just become 2009, so it’s quite fitting that my attention be brought to the coming year ahead. While there is still much to consider and undoubtly many undiscovered projects to investigate, there are several important points that come to mind straight off the bat:

• Engage more with others
  • Actively Participate in the Social Media Colab
  • Read and comment on more blogs
  • Instigate and participate in discussion at my local institution and local Sydney area regarding new media, its affordances, and implications and opportunities for learning
• Continue to explore new models of learning
  • Read Illich
  • Read Holt – How Children Learn; How Children Fail
• Take another open course

Happy 2009 to you all. May it be a happy and healthy one!

I’m sitting in bed as I type this, currently unable to sleep.  As is increasingly the norm these days I’ve been pondering what appears to be a growing disconnect between my passionate beliefs in learning – and how best to nurture it – and the current state of education – and where it is headed.  I’m frustrated with the standoff.

I believe quite strongly in the personalisation of learning, and the significance of each person finding their own way through the educational landscape.  Education and formal educational institutions are but two aspects of this, but historically have been seen as having a large (one might say disproportionately large) stake in the learning process.  Formal institutions focus on specific models of education and learning, and there is value in that.  However of equal value is what happens outside of that – and this I fear is not being afforded ample consideration in the current climate.

In my sleepless state this evening – now almost 2 am – I was growing listless about my purpose in this environment, where institutions are increasingly focussing on core, formally supported central services that paint learners with more of less the same broad brush.  But personally, I don’t see things in the macroscopic view; I see the microscopic view – that of the individual learner.  I see the microscopic view as being underconsidered, and under-nurtured.

Perhaps this is where my focus should lay – on modelling what is possible for the individual, that they might see the myriad networks and supporting technologies that they might grasp to pursue and explore learning opportunities that aren’t being afforded to them by monolithic systems.

I’m not sure I’m making a vast impact in the wide scheme of things, but if I can help a few people – indeed one person – then perhaps I’ve made a difference after all.

“I read an article in a daily paper…about slow blogging. The article said that slow blogging had been a very popular idea, but that the person who had originally raised the whole idea of slow blogging now no longer blogged, presumably (according to the article) because people got fed up of waiting for the next blog post. This is an interesting dilemma – don’t you think? On the one hand we need time to be reflective, or simply to spend time away from the computer and on the other, if we don’t post on a fairly regular basis then no-one will read our posts anyhow!”

I’ve seen this train of thought expressed before but haven’t ever jumped into a discussion on the matter, but I think it’s an important one to consider – especially in the realm of educational blogging – so I responded with a fairly long comment.

In the interests of inspiring more widespread discussion on the matter I’m including the bulk of my comment below, but I’d encourage you to comment on Jenny’s post since she get’s credit for starting the thread.  Alternatively, be sure to send us both a trackback if you write about this so we can read your thoughts.

…In my view the core readers will stay with a blog no matter how long the period between posts. When I find a blogger I identify with – or better still, connect with – I’m happy to wait for the next post, so long as there is a next post.

I think this is particularly true in edu-blogging, since a core and critical aspect of the dialogue is to ensure the content is as accurate and well-considered as possible. Sometimes building conceptual connections takes time, and I think we owe it to ourselves as learners to leave as much time as is necessary to maximise the learning experiences.

In terms of Connectivism I find too that bloggers can connect with one another through other means than just blogging – Twitter, forums, YouTube, commenting, and others – and these can do a great deal to maintain dialogue and interaction when not posting.

In fact I think it’s critical to diversify the nature of ways we maintain connections with others, because I think this can lead to more in-depth, quality connections and learning opportunities. In my case my blog is a critical component to my connections, but it’s not the only way I learn. YouTube, the blogs of others, news articles, face to face chats, Twitter, whitepapers and journals, etc – all contribute to my learning experiences.

This is why it’s so important, I think, that we look past the tools themselves and to recognise where they fit in our own personal learning networks or personal learning environments. The tools and tech help us do a lot, certainly, but ultimately they’re facilitating mechanisms. In the case of my blog, it is just a vehicle to a wider purpose – in this case reflective writing, discussion, documentation, research and experimentation. So posts come as often as they need to.

I think that’s a sign of a good blog too in a way – the content is kept topical, relevant, and as in-depth as it needs to be to convey a point or concept at that moment.

I’ve just received word that the recordings of the event have been released and are now available for download via the Australian Service for Knowledge of Open Source Software (ASK-OSS) website, who were largely responsible for organising and facilitating the event.

For the record I’m including my slides and the MP3 of my presentation below. Alas with only 6 minutes to devote to the talk I was hard pressed to cover as much as I would have liked to, but I’m hopeful that I presented a fairly holistic picture of the student experience:

[podcast]http://techticker.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/10mike_unsw.mp3[/podcast]

The university I work for is considered to be a research-intensive institution, with a high degree of importance and consideration given to the research output of its staff – such as journal articles, papers, book chapters, or presentations at prestigious conferences. Historically, as with most institutions, the primary source of the research output for the uni has been academic staff. However increasingly general staff, such as myself, are being asked/motivated to start publishing as well.

I’ve therefore begun to look into the nature of what formal publications are, and what the requirements entail. I’m also looking for open courses on research methods and methodology to help fill in gap areas in my abilities.

As part of this investigation I’ve turned to my personal learning network for assistance, saying “Really dumb question, but we’re being told we need to all start publishing papers and journal articles. How do you go about doing that?”  Despite disseminating and discussing my research findings and experiences extensively on this blog, these activities are not considered to be recognised scholarly research.  Indeed, the prospect of contributing to formal publishing channels is a foreign concept.

Lisa’s response is what lead me to this reflection: “I wonder what’s meant by “publish” — seems to me you’re publishing all over the place!”

This caused me to pause and consider the implications.

My Formal Publishing History

I’ve written only two formally published papers in the last 6 years – in both cases as a contributor rather than primary author.  In the first instance (Koppi et al, 2005) my contribution originated from a document that was to be used elsewhere – and I didn’t even realise it was to be included in a paper.  The second instance (Allen et al, 2008), just this year, I was inundated by other work and didn’t contribute to the editing nearly as much as I would have liked to.  My appreciation goes to my colleagues for picking up the slack I caused (sorry about that).

In the case of the more recent publication I was struck by how incredibly slow and tedious the process was – from initial draft, through first pass edits and re-drafting, to second, third, fourth and ultimately 12th drafts, then on to the submission, feedback from the editor, and subsequent changes before publishing.  It took literally weeks to complete; yet this blog post will take me less than two hours from start to finish.

Apples and Oranges, right?

In many regards the nature of publishing peer-reviewed papers in an accredited journal is an entirely different matter to a blog post.  Yet there are areas of significant overlap as well.  For example, both forms of media serve to document research findings and experiences, inspire rebuttal or responses from colleagues, and can serve to influence change.  Importantly blogs are also increasingly referenced in formal publications.

For example, a post I wrote on my personal blog (Bogle, 2006) regarding the launch of a blog by Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was quoted by the Columbia Journalism Review (Colby, 2006).  This lead to the same post being quoted in a document prepared by The IBM Center for the Business of Government regarding “The Blogging Revolution: Government in the Age of Web 2.0” (Wyld, 2007 – pg. 54).

Distribution and Impact

Furthermore, if one of the key aims of formally published material is to influence change and further best practice, blogs are able to do that as well.  In fact as sites like TechCrunch show, with a subscription base of 1.6 million (as of 16 Dec. 2008), the distribution and dissemination channels for web-based materials is vast and can have an equal, if not greater, impact on the landscape that inclusion in a prestigious publication.

In blogs there is also the added benefit of virtually immediate discussion, which can lead to research – at least in certain subjects – advancing at break-neck speed.  The web of edubloggers for example is a closely-knit one, and topics can run the gammut in a very short period of time.

That being said though, I’m not suggesting for a moment that a TechCrunch post is equivalent to a ground-breaking journal article by Physicist, Stephen Hawking.  Rather, that we have perhaps reached a point where the nature of what is formally recognised as scholarly, academic publishing should be re-examined – because the lines have begun to blur.  Scholarship is absolutely occuring outside of formal publishing channels; it’s just not gaining any recognition.

Assessing emerging forms of scholarly practice

The New Media Consortiums 2009 Horizon Report (2009) echoes these sentiments:

“Significant shifts are taking place in the ways scholarship & research are conducted, and a there is a need for innovation and leadership at all levels of the academy. Academic review and faculty rewards are increasingly out of sync. Clear practices for assessing emerging forms of scholarly practice are needed for tenure and promotion. Students who are living and learning with technologies that generate dynamic forms of content may find the current formalism and structure of scholarship and research to be static and “dead” as a way of collecting, analyzing and sharing results.”

Peer Review in Blogging

One of the significant differences between blog posts and formal publications is the lack of a recognised, formalised peer-review process.  In formal publications you have strict guidelines and processes through which prospective articles must pass before being included in a journal, chapter or other document. This serves to guarantee a level of quality and reliability of information, and to distinguish prestigious journals from less-prestigious ones.

In blogs peer review does occur, but in a far more organic and distributed way.  If it’s one thing that bloggers have in spades, it’s opinions; and they’re not afraid to voice them.  The quality and validity of work is vetted through linkbacks and commentary on other posts, as well as comments left on the original blog itself; however in reality this is not with the same consistency and adherence to process as occurs in formal publications.

Admittedly the prospect of resolving the discord between emerging forms of scholarly practice and academic review and faculty rewards is no easy task.  Nonetheless if the aim of these rewards is to assign recognition of achievement, give credit where credit is due, and indeed seek to inspire and promote more widespread adoption and implementation of best practices, it’s critical that new forms of practice be brought into the fold.

References:

• Allen, B., Kligyte, G., Bogle, M. & Pursey, R. (2008). Communities in practice: A community dimension for the UNSW Learning & Teaching Exchange. In Hello! Where are you in the landscape of educational technology? Proceedings ascilite Melbourne 2008. http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/melbourne08/procs/allen.pdf
• Bogle, Mike. (2006)  “Iran’s president has launched a blog“, The Peasants are Revolting, 14 August 2006
• Colby, Edwared B. (2006)  “Abroad, Ahmadinejad Launches Blog; At Home, Calame Outs Keller“, Columbia Journalism Review, 14 Aug 2006
• Koppi, A. J., Bogle, L. and Bogle, M. (2005) Learning objects, repositories, sharing and reusability. Open Learning 20, 83–91.
• New Media Consortium (2009) “2009 Horizon Report Preview”, retrieved 16 December 2008 from http://net.educause.edu/elements/attachments/eli/2009_hr_preview.pdf
• Wyld, David C. (2007) “The Blogging Revolution: Government in the Age of Web 2.0“, The Center for The Business of Government, 2007.

Today I attended the Learning Technology Research Symposium at
the Centre for Research on Computer Supported Learning and Cognition (CoCo) at Sydney University.

A lot of fascinating topics were covered, but in particular I’ve been thinking about three themes:

• self-regulated learning
• cultivating a sense of ownership in learning
• assessment of blog reflections

This clip is a reflection on these themes.  I’d wanted to devote a more well-considered text-based post to it, but my son is sick at the moment and my hands were full at the time

Background

At some point in the next 6 months we will be starting to investigate ways to capitalise on Blackboard’s capacity to support 3rd party plugins.  While I certainly have my views on LMS’s – and Blackboard and WebCT in particular – this is what has been handed down to us (and me) to investigate; and investigate I shall.

Presently Moodle is being discussed as the mechanism to provide student access to blogs and wiki’s, however having looked into this a bit further this morning there are certain aspects of Moodle’s design that have me concerned – specifically with regards to blogs.

Note: This is not to say that I dislike Moodle.  All in all its extensibility looks very intriguing and I look forward to experimenting further.  My issue at this point is how it handles blogs and blog content.

Blogs as facilitators of life-long learning

As I discussed at length the other day, I have quite strong opinions on the importance of Digital Identity in learning and believe it is very important in nurturing the prospect of life-long learning.  Jim Groom suggested recently that they are toying with the idea of purchasing each student a one-year license for a personal domain.  I happen to think that’s a brilliant idea.

As I said:

“Particularly in the case of students, individual’s are at an institution for only a limited period of time, after which point they move on to new endeavours.  Use of a personal domain enables continuity of activity throughout their journey – wherever they go, their reflections, discussions, and content goes with them.  In the context of life-long learning this is particularly important, since the more seamless the continuity, the greater the opportunities for continued engagement and ongoing learning.”

Moodle Blogs

Moodle ties into this discussion in that it establishes an institution-centric view of blogging.  Yes the blogs are tied to the student, but only insomuch as they are students of the university.  Furthermore, the configuration of visibility settings – and therefore what options are available to students – lay with administrators, not bloggers.  Control of content is largely out of the hands of the blogger.

Continuing on the quote from my earlier post, in tying the blog content to the institution you are potentially creating discontinuities in the student’s life-long learning experiences; and arguably limiting the learning opportunities for them as well.

Exporting Content

I spent quite some time trying to locate a module or plugin for Moodle that would enable student blog content to be exported – ideally enabling it to be imported to another blog upon graduation – but so far I have not located any.  The significance of this is in retaining access to previous work, and therefore ensuring learners have the capacity to build on existing experiences.

One of the key benefits of blogging for me is the opportunity to witness growth and development over time.  This is only possible by maintaining continuity of work, and a sense of ongoing learning.  In the worst case if blog posts are tied to the institution, graduation from an institution could result in prevention of access to the content.

Open Education

Taking this conversation one step further, it is my view that any educational content that can be made publicly available, should be; and that collaborative relationships and opportunities for discussion on subject matter are not, and should not be, limited to students at the local institution only.

University staff – particularly academic staff – are frequently encouraged to develop working relationships across institutions, with the logic being that the knowledge-pool for a given subject is greater the wider and more extensive your network.  I see no reason why the same logic should not be extended to students as well.

Logistical Considerations

In saying all this though, from a course and institutional perspective there are questions that arise in the prospect of a distributed blogging model.  Namely, how can such a model be introduced without it resulting in administrative overload for instructors and institutions?  How would instructors keep track of all the dis-aggregated activity?

In light of the work of people like Jim Groom at UMW, and Brian Lamb at UBC, it would appear that a combination of Tagging and RSS aggregation in a CMS or LMS could be used to support a distributed blogging framework while easing administrative tasks.

Folksonomy and Course Specific Tags
One of the key values of RSS is as a method of distributing and repurposing content.  Many blog platforms now support use of tags, and frequently these tags each have their own RSS feed.

In the case of my contributions to Connectivism and Connective Knowledge for example, I tagged each post with the term CCK08.  So when the instructors requested the feeds for all student blogs, instead of sending them the generic RSS feed for my blog – which would have included a lot of unrelated content – I provided the feed for the CCK08 tag only.  Then any time I tagged an entry “CCK08″ the post would be included in the feed sent out to the central course aggregation tool along with anyone else who subscribed to the feed.

In such a model, a single blog could be used to support a student’s activities in several concurrent courses.  The key here is to establish a tagging convention, and ensure students use it.  It’s also important to ensure student blogs are configured to send the full article, rather than just a synopsis.

Aggregating the content
Once the tags were in place the next step would be to aggregate the content, ensuring it’s clear which student provided which entry.

While I’ve not seen an instance of this in the open web yet, my theory is that a combination of course-specific tagging and unique student identifiers (such as student ID) could be used to aggregate posts against student accounts in a CMS or LMS.  In order to do this though it’s likely to be necessary for students to provide the RSS feed for their course blog posts at the beginning of the session so they could be linked with the LMS/CMS gradebook.

Instructors could even create a single blog for a course (I believe Moodle lets you do this) and populate it with the aggregated posts of the entire student cohort.  This would would ease administrative workloads and provide a single starting point for students to view the work of their peers.

The significance of this approach – as opposed to using a native Moodle or Blackboard blog tool – would be that the student retains the original copy of the content in a space that would exist after their role at the institution draws to a close.

The fascinating thing about this is that I haven’t experienced the same combined levels of engagement, lighthearted social interaction and professional discourse elsewhere on the web. Certainly deeper thinking and communication takes place in blogs and synchronous discussion on Skype and Elluminate; but their nature is somehow different – it feels different.

Usage Comparison
Blogs offer reflective space and a forum to house resulting topical discussions via comments – both of which are professionally discursive in their own right, but arguably far less interactive and engaging. This would seem to be due to the largely text-based, asynchronous, hierarchical nature of blogs in which the thoughts of blogger are the focal point and the resulting discussion is more secondary. Moreover, the notion of a shared experience is minimal on blogs, since there is no real way of knowing who is concurrently reading the content. For everyone besides the blog author, the experience feels far more consumptive than participatory, relatively speaking.

With VOIP tools such as Skype and Elluminate, the synchronous nature of the communication gives rise to far greater levels of interactivity than blogs, and with it a greater sense of a shared experience. In the case of room-based VOIP tools like Elluminate, the opportunity to converge on a central space acts as a focal point for a group or network of individuals and can serve to create a sense of cohesion, continuity and community.

In the case of both blogs and VOIP tools however, I tend to engage with the discussion from a largely distracted position in which I’m typically doing several other things at the same time. In the case of Elluminate meetings in particular, I find it all too easy to lose interest in the discussion and fall prey to distraction. When you’re involved in the discussion this mode of communication can be very interactive and engaging; when you’re not, it can become background noise after a while.

Multiple Layers of Interactivity
In SecondLife by contrast you have a highly engaging, interactive environment that supports many levels of discussion – ranging from many-to-many (e.g. local chat in a central square) to one-to-many (presentation), to one-to-one (IM/private discussions).

Importantly, the interactivity is not limited to people in-world, but can include objects as well. This serves to create a far greater sense of engagement, since the user dictates what they pay attention to, where they go, and what they do. The graphical/multi-dimensional nature of the environment is particularly significant in that respect, since the visual elements result in a far more emersive realm than text or audio could possibly create by themselves.

As a result, I’ve found I can’t engage with SecondLife in a state of partial distraction – if I’m logged in, I’m paying attention. To be in-world is to be submerged in a 3-dimensional audio-visual experience of extraordinary depth and diversity, where interaction is both passive, active and interactive.

Implications for Engagement
For me personally, these multi-faceted, multi-layered characteristics have had some very interesting implications for maximising attention span and engagement.

Blog and VOIP communication is largely bounded by the topic of discussion. When lulls in conversation emerge there is little available to fill in the gaps, which can lead to minds wandering to completely unrelated subject matter; hence the importance of meeting facilitators in keeping the conversation moving.

In SecondLife this is less of an issue because so much of what users are exposed to is unrelated to their immediate conversations, which can serve to create a sense of continuity between bursts of discussion. Indeed it can serve to keep a discussion going by introducing a topical tangent, or segue to something else.

In effect there is much less pressure to “get to the point” or achieve a key outcome at the end of the discussion than exists in VOIP conversations or blogs; so interaction can be far more relaxed, conversational and rambling, while maintaining continuous levels of engagement.

Implications for Learning Space Design
If my argument as outlined above is indeed the case (e.g. with others and not just me), it would seem to highlight some important design elements that should be considered during construction in SecondLife.

For example, if a space is intended to serve as a social hub where learner interaction takes place, and the hope is to maximise interactivity and mutual exploration of educational subject matter then planting elements to instigate conversation would be wise. The importance here though would be to maintain the focus in-world rather than directing the learner to external sites, which could arguably break the continuity of their experience and impact on their engagement.

I’ll flag this as something to investigate and post about here later though, since I’d like to look for examples of this in practice first. If you have thoughts on this please make your opinions, experiences, or thoughts known!