Trying out Google Analytics

Sorry, this wasn't a very informative posting originally. I've signed up for Google Analytics to see what sorts of information it can tell me about how people navigate around the blog. So one poor soul went to my original post and then spent 10 minutes reading my questions I want to find answers to of which there's only a few seconds reading anyway.

Seems interesting though and bags of potential. Thanks to Linn Gustavsson and her post that pointed me in this direction.

Long Time, No See!! Thoughts on a MOOC

Most of the big discussion on PLENK2010 this week seems to be about how quiet it has become around the discussion forums in the last couple of weeks and the value of lurking. I was only able to get my head in the game about the middle of the course and had a good two or three weeks of ideas and input (from my point of view) before other demands loomed and I had to drop out of sight again. A good deal of the course therefore, has for me, been spent lurking or gleaning. Occasionally I feel able to create a post or add a comment, but much of the time I am put off because I'm too far removed in time from the discussion.


Time is of the essence (but not available)
The problem I've had with the MOOC is more about the timing than anything else. It is difficult to keep up with the amount of discussion that takes place and because of the way my particular combination of web tools works, it is difficult to have a late comment (i.e. one added more than a couple of days after the bulk of the discussion has ended) discussed.

I've been using Netvibes as my aggregator and whilst I was keeping up to date it was great. But because it doesn't notify me of new additions to discussion posts, I haven't necessarily been aware of whether my comments have themselves engendered any discussion.

Lurking, I think, is a by-product of not being able to keep up. I haven't yet found a way of keeping track of all of the little discussions and postings and their associated ripples. I think this is a vitally important and missing part of the process since a PLN works because people respond to each other.

Lurkers may add the odd comment here and there but get discouraged because they aren't necessarily noticed by the rest of the pack, who have already moved on. I haven't really noticed the cat-i-ness that has been mentioned a few times over the last few weeks, but I wonder if that frustration is a result of comments and postings being "ignored". Human nature, in my experience, looks to blame people for the unpleasantness that comes their way, but I am convinced that quite a lot of this unpleasantness is just "the way it is", i.e. a part of the system, not the fault of individuals. What needs to happen then, is for course conveners to take a long hard look at the system and question whether it meets the needs of the participants?

Architects design, Engineers make the building stand up!
I know this isn't the fault of the MOOC conveners, but I wonder if the architecture of the course is actually counterproductive when used with a Moodle platform. We are trying to get Moodle up and running at our high-school and one of the problems is the course architecture. We can set different faculties up and have different years/subjects within the faculties, but then we are immediately stuck at trying to put everything else into the last remaining tier. Everything ends up looking too crowded and confusing.

The MOOC needs to be set up by topic rather than by week and they need to be kept open all the time. My reason for this is that, a discussion might come up in Week 2 that attracts some interest and people want to follow the discussion. The conversation may have various tags/topics/categories which could be associated with it.
Six weeks down the track, someone else raises a point that could be easily linked back to the initial discussion but isn't because few people are that aware of the huge number of tags/topics that were raised in Week 2, let alone those over the entire eight preceding weeks!

How one is meant to keep a track of all the different threads and discussions I don't know but I imagine it will have something to do with tags. I think that the PLENK twitter network and the associated hashtags may be what I'm trying to describe, but not having access to twitter on a regular basis has prevented me from really seeing its' potential.

The MOOC has become quite messy and unwieldy and difficult to navigate around. I find it really quite hard to find the list of readings for the beginning of each week without trying to backtrack through the Daily archives. I've got no idea where a particular discussion thread was unless someone points me to it. Overall, some of the important learning points are probably going to pass me by without me noticing, which seems a shame.

So, for PLENK2011, how should the course be organised?

Ideally, I would like individuals to engage in a MOOC in their own time. We all have other commitments, so it seems fair to assume that although I may post a comment in a timely manner, it may not be read for a while. When it is read, I would like to have any comments fed straight back to me.

Also, when I am running a couple of weeks behind schedule and trying to play catch-up I would like to be able to post comments or new discussions on old topics and have them read and commented on in return. This is easy for my blog so long as I actively encourage my PLN, but I have found a bit problematic with the Moodle.

Learning by Doing
In terms of continually encouraging new people to join in the conversation we need some mechanism by which they can actively participate in conversations that are old. After all the discussion in a PLN is what creates the learning, so excluding someone from the conversation just because they are 3 months behind everyone else isn't in keeping with the spirit of a PLN.

On the contrary, it would actually be beneficial for not-so-newbies to improve their own mentoring skills by assisting newbies along the way. However, this does require individuals to step up to the mark and take on these responsibilities as they arise.

I watched the Tom Chatfield's TED video the other day and wonder if some sort of incremental scoring system (like experience points) may be useful in determining whether someone should adopt a more responsible role within a PLN. Your PLN should include a certain number of experts, peers and newbies so that you are able to fill the roles of expert, peer and newbie yourself. Your "score" should be a rough average of the scores of those members of your network. When your score starts to rise above your PLN average, you start directing some of your "newbies" to assume responsibility for the new "newbies" coming into the system.

I've tried to represent this here:


The diagram seems quite limiting in that I've set it at three levels but that obviously isn't necessarily the case. Also one individual may appear in more then one network and at different levels.

Active Mentoring
I suppose the idea I'm trying to get across is that unless there is some architecture set up like this, the "new-newbies" coming in at the bottom do not have someone who is only slightly above their level of understanding helping them along the way. The pressure is all on the course conveners to try and encourage the "new-newbies" and those who have been in it from the beginning.

I think it is important for the the "peers" and "newbies" to assist the "new-newbies" because this in turn reinforces their own learning (the best way to learn is to teach). I also think the "experts" have the right to delegate some of their responsibilities further down the chain so that they can devote more energy to their own learning.

Of course, all of this interaction is published on course blogs and people know where they are because of the mind-maps and organisational structures that are published. It is important though that we all know roughly what level of expertise someone has. So we come back to a point raised in the PLENK forums a few weeks ago about how individuals describe themselves in their profiles. This may have been discussed, but I haven't managed to find it yet. ;)
In summary then;

• The MOOC needs to be structured so that learning is not limited by the time you have available to participate
• There needs to be some way of scoring within a PLN so that it is easy for individuals to see how they compare with other members of their network:
• this will encourage new-newbies to participate if they can see that the bulk of members of the network they are joining aren't too far ahead of them
• it will also allow experts to estimate the level of understanding of the peers and newbies in their network and delegate some mentoring responsibilities to them
• All of the artifacts produced by individuals within the course need to be tagged in a way which is easily navigated, so someone (or someones) need to arrange organisational maps of the tags that are easy to find and use.
• The artifacts need to be accordingly mapped into the organisational map so that individuals on their learning journey can see if they are headed down a path already well-worn by previous MOOCers

Fairwell and Adieu you Fare PLENKish Ladies (and Gents)
I joined this course with no expectations. I'd done nothing like it before and had never heard the term Personal Learning Network. I'd never really understood the educational buzz about "collaborate, communicate and create" replacing the 3 R's. I've come away from the course with an astounding wealth of knowledge about new tools and technologies and have learned the names of a few people who I will continue to follow and converse with in the future. I am also trying to work out how I can best incorporate PLN's into the architecture of learning in my high school. They seem such a simple and yet powerful resource for learning.
Ultimately, I think the MOOC has broadened my horizons about the term "life-long learner" and given me a view of how modern technologies can have a huge impact on the efficacy of an individuals learning journey.
Long may my own journey continue.

Sydney to Wollongong

Ollie and I have reached our fund-raising goal and are setting off tonight. Staying at my cousins and then start the ride tomorrow at 8am.

Influence as a Measure of Learning (a draft)

This is my initial (planning) for the post, but I can't seem to get it finished, can't really conclude it properly and am starting to worry that its a load of rubbish anyway. I need some objective feedback please. I've numbered the paragraphs to make feedback easier. Also I have a diigo account (iwoods2807) if someone wants to share their diigo notes. Anyway here it is:

1. Like Chris, the idea of reciprocity keeps pinging around in the back of my head and that it is somehow very closely linked with how an individual's learning may be both assessed and evaluated. Interestingly, assessment and how it would occur was one of the focus questions I set myself back at the beginning of PLENK2010, although, to be perfectly honest, I hadn't really been "focussing" very hard.
2. I am trying to work out how the influence we have on each other (as a by-product of reciprocity) could actually be used as a measure of our own learning. That maybe there is a mechanism by which that influence can be measured in a way that indicates both an individual's depth and breadth of knowledge.
3. Recognition of Expertise
4. The amount of learning that can said to have been gained by an individual within a MOOC needs to be recognized somehow and I think this would be an exceptionally hard thing to do if it wasn't for the fact that individual clusters form around people who are interested in a similar topic or topics.
5. I am still quite surprised at the robustness of the network that I seem to have found myself in. The same few names keep popping up in forums and blogs that I am reading and posting to. These people have discussions, ask questions and suggest solutions to each other's trains of thought and obviously have an impact on each other's understanding.
6. However, I would argue that we are also forming opinions of each other's areas of expertise so that we know who to turn to for help with a specific question. That in fact we are already making an informal evaluation of each other's depth and breadth of knowledge and that it is already an intrinsic part of our PLN's.
7. The clusters themselves are not composed entirely of newbies. As an analogue of a university faculty we have the experts at the top (the professorships and doctorates) and then a number of individuals at different points on their road to understanding (under-grads, post-grads, masters, etc.) all of which ask questions and post suggestions that trigger further understandings and questions for the other members of the network.
8. At any point, you should be able to ask someone (or more likely 'all') within the network to evaluate the "learning" of the other members and would be able to get a pretty reasonable snapshot of the relative understandings of the individuals within the network.
9. The specific nature of the network indicates the field of learning (what are you learning about?) and the individual members of the network should be able to recognise at least some of the different levels of expertise of the other members of the network (who are the experts, leaders, etc?)
10. n.b Some nomenclature for the different types of personalities within the network would be really useful here. I know the terms lurker, gleaner, but that's about it. Is there an actual list somewhere? If someone has a definitive(ish) list, could you let me know?
11. Stephen Downes started a discussion in week 5 of PLENK2010 "Evaluation by Recognition". His opening statements were:
12. Learning is recognized, not measured
13. Recognition is global, not particular
14. A lot of the discussion concerned how we recognise learning in individuals. Largely, the discussion centred around "testing" and how hard it could be to have learning recognised without passing a test. Given that the test could only measure a "snapshot" of the information taught or learned, it wouldn't necessarily give a clear picture of the level of competency or knowledge achieved by an individual. "Cramming" for an examination is an obvious way of trying to get by in a test without actually 'knowing' the course content.
15. My thoughts concerning Stephen's initial points are that we are able to recognise that somebody is an authority in a field without asking them to do a test on the spot. The evidence they present when we are in communication with them will generally be examples of expert knowledge, informed on-the-spot conjectures and if an answer is not known, then reasonable pointers toward the gaining of such knowledge.
16. The longer that the dialogue occurs, then the more likely that the recognition of expert knowledge will either be confirmed or denied. Or, from the point of view of evaluation, that the level of understanding of an individual can be identified.
17. If this evaluation had to be assessed by an individual teacher, then the amount of time involved becomes a major obstacle to an informed assessment of an individuals understanding. However, if the assessment is based on real-time analysis of the interactions between members of a network and how individuals are referred to by the network then assessment of learning for a specific piece of knowledge may be done by simply looking for traffic containing key words and how the different members of the network interact with that traffic. Assessment can become an intrinsic part of the network.
18. What do WE know?
19. In terms of assessment or evaluation then, the key is the quality of sustained dialogue between the testers and the "testee" (careful not to drop an 'e' here). But how do we measure this?
20. Traditionally, assessment occurs as a form of dialogue between the teacher and the class and is usually some form of a test or task. Any longer form of dialogue would be difficult because of the time involved. One of the discussion points raised was that the sorts of dialogues that would expose learning could only occur on a one-to-one or one-to-few basis. A teacher would have to continually monitor and make notes of his/her students and essentially assess the entire body of work produced by the class.
21. I would argue that this is where the strengths of PLE's and PLN's come into their own. The network itself is already a sustained dialogue between its members. We are producing an enormous amount of information and because it is electronically stored, maybe it can also be electronically analysed using tools like Google Analytics or Gelphi (neither of which I have any experience of, so I am taking a leap of faith that such analysis is possible)
22. What do YOU know?
23. I think that the number of times an individual is referenced, invited to discuss, quoted or cited could be a fare indication of the level of knowledge that other members of the network feel that that individual has. Is it possible to reverse this relationship and assess someone's knowledge by looking at how much recognition or influence they exert over the network?
24. There are some issues in the different ways influence can work: An individual may produce one piece of work which demonstrates a deep understanding of a particular topic, that is referred to many times. Their influence may be large but the breadth of knowledge exhibited by the artefact may be relatively narrow (although profound).
25. Alternatively , there may be a member of a network who works hard to nurture his contacts and appears all over the place (a nod to Chris Jobling,your efforts are much appreciated!). His influence is that he provides little titbits of knowledge that assist the members of the network. The titbits themselves may only help a couple of people but the individual may influence many people in a multitude of different ways. This may indicate a wide breadth of knowledge but little depth and yet still exert a similar amount of influence to the example above. (I'm now NOT referring to Chris as I feel he demonstrates both depth and breadth of knowledge).
26. In reality, individual members of the network probably exert influence in both ways. We may produce an artefact that is referred to many times and also provide smaller titbits all over the place.
27. What I would like to know is, is there a tool or tools that could measure depth and breadth of influence. I think that influence can be measured by looking at the number of citations and references, but don't have the expertise to be able to test the theory.

This is where I got bogged down. I can't seem to bridge to my rather shaky conclusion:
Conclusion
When embarking on a learning journey it is important that you establish a Personal Learning Network for the following reasons:

1. You quickly establish a dialogue that protects and time-stamps your intellectual investment
2. Your learning about subject is instantly recognised (evaluated) informally by the members of your network and may be established formally (assessed) by using tools such as Google Analytics and GELPHI.
3. Your understanding of the subject will improve more rapidly because you engaged in an ongoing dialogue with a number of different people who all at different stages on the same journey
4. Your influence is recognised and appreciated by the other members of your network
5. Reciprocity is important because it both encourages development of your network and also improves the amount of influence you have on the network, thereby improving any assessment of your learning that might take place using network analysis tools.
6. Your value as an individual within the network is determined by the amount of recognition and influence that you earn.

Other references I had thought were useful but hadn't yet found a home for.

1. Emma Stoedel's PLENK10: Competency levels for building and managing a PLE - Annotated
2. A note of my own about reciprocity:
3. The members of your network have a vested interest (they themselves learn more) in understanding and encouraging your learning.
4. Reciprocity is important therefore, as the central idea behind the MOOC and PLE's/PLN's is the building and strengthening of networks that help you learn. Without reciprocity, your network won't grow and the amount of learning you can achieve may be relatively small. You have to nurture the relationships between individual members of the network in order for them to feel it is worth their while supporting you.
5. Issues of Plagiarism
6. It is possible that one individual may pass themselves off as an expert (as a doctor, or airplane pilot, etc.) but these are situations in which sustained dialogue should quickly expose the fraud. Susan O'Grady's concern (in the original Influence of Reciprocity discussion) that "lurkers" may use the ideas posted by someone else, I would therefore suggest is not necessarily an issue.
7. It is entirely conceivable that an individual may steal an idea and claim it as his or her own, and they could even build up support for the idea amongst their own network. However, since their interests are likely to coincide with that of the original authors' network, there will inevitable be some sort of a show-down in which the two camps try to claim ownership of the original idea.
8. I think that this is likely to be resolved favourably given the nature of the tools we are using in this course. All the artefacts we produce are pretty much open to public scrutiny and are date/time stamped. It is therefore in participants best interests to post ideas and have them be scrutinised by the members of their networks in order to protect and develop their intellectual property under the protective guidance of their network.
9. Using web tools to analyse the structure of networks
10. It may be possible to measure the influence of a PLN by using some form of network analysis tool (Tony Hirst used GELPHI to identify the network cluster in the twitter messages about PLENK2010). JGChesney's response and suggestions for the network analysis also incorporate the strength of the influence (i.e tweeting original though or re-tweeting has different impact on analysis).
11. Collaborative Learning is more beneficial to the population than individual Learning
12. Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups -- Woolley et al., 10.1126/science.1193147 -- Science
13. Implications for teaching kids that can be taught to share an wait their turn may do better as part of the group than they would as individuals, (use Socratic dialogue)
14. Group intelligence improved by the sharing between community members rather than individual intelligence.
15. Is Citizenship more important than content in education?
16. In the Evaluation by Recognition discussion, Chris Foster made a point about the evaluation of two students:
17. "...one is naturally good at math and wrote down all the right answers. The other put in some extra work, wrote down mostly right answers, and got some special dispensation from the teacher (extensions, hints, offers of extra credit, etc.) 30 years later, I'll bet the student who was less good at math will be the more successful one."
18. I think then that it is much more important that the particular qualities that the individual brings to their assessment are recognised in the assessment. That we do not just judge understanding of content but instead value the qualities of citizenship and work ethic that an individual applies to their work. I think this is most easily recognized when that individual makes a noticeable effort to help those around them.