Some disjointed thoughts on our modes of communication in this mooc.

Taken from http://farm5.static.flickr.com/5251/5492023366_2962aa2ea9_b.jpg on 2011-3-15
Original URL - http://www.flickr.com/68869869@N00/5492023366/ created on 2011-03-01 14:19:17
AndyCC BY-NC-SA 2.0

There has been a lot of debate on the current iteration of cck11 about the various communication mechanisms on offer and whether the lack of a Moodle forum or equivalent is detracting from the interaction. The 'official' offering of the gRSShopper system of aggregated blog feeds and online seminars via Elluminate seems to suit those who are regular bloggers and able to attend seminars in real time but is possibly less suitable for those who work asynchronously and/or don't blog on a regular basis. 

This approach seems to lead to a huge proliferation of blogs though a quick perusal via the browser suggests the majority are produced by a minority of participants. Comments on some posts have been extensive and generated interesting discussions often well beyond the scope of the original post e.g Jenny Mackness’  Attacks on Connectivism. However the fact that comments can be left on the blogs themselves or in the gRSShopper feed disrupts the flow. I also get the impression that a lot of blog posts are going uncommented due in part to the lag in their appearance on gRSShopper and the sheer volume of them.

This debate is not unique to cck11 - I came across a paper ‘Blogs and Forums as Communication and Learning Tools in a MOOC’ based on the experience of cck08 while reading Jenny Mackness' post on Autonomy and Accountability. Divergent views on blogs and forums are much in evidence in the quotes obtained during this study, a few of which I reproduce below:

“Discussion in the forum was stimulating and led in many cases to great interactions that hardly seemed possible in a blog-and-comment format.” 

‘Blogging was a comfortable, more friendly environment in which to work.’ 

‘I preferred to interact in the Moodle forum, rather than creating my own blog.'

‘My concern with blogs is that the blogger may become too focused on his/her own ideas to explore or investigate the ideas and thoughts of others...'

This paper is worth a read if you haven't come across it already. 

Quite a few participants on the current course have formed an open Facebook group which has some of the characteristics of an online forum but also has its limitations in that some people won't join Facebook on principle and also that status updates with comments and 'likes' don't necessarily provide the richness and cut & thrust of a discussion forum. The inability (or difficulty) to feed out of Facebook to a feed reader such as Google reader has also been noted as a drawback. There is also a LinkedIn group but it has been much less active than Facebook. A twitter stream exists but hasn't gained the centrality Twitter often does in other contexts.

In terms of my own feelings, I think I'm missing a sense of community often fostered by a forum where people regularly post short messages, raise questions, respond to each other and attempt to develop concepts and ideas together rather than on an individual basis in a blog. I have enjoyed the interactivity of the odd Elluminate session I have managed to attend and can't help thinking that it would be beneficial to continue some of these discussions in a central forum rather than via blogs and comments. I also wonder if the emphasis on the individual and their PLE/PLN detracts from the central 'bazaar' (Mackness et al) of the discussion forum?

However, this is an open course to which many of us are taking a very selective approach to engagement, so maybe it couldn’t be any other way? Moderating a Moodle forum or equivalent could be become onerous for the organizers who put no limit on participant numbers, receive no remuneration from us, do it in their own time etc. The debate continues ....

I asked a friend who has recently moved her children from one primary school in inner London to another how they were finding the new school and was struck by her initial response that the older one (aged 10) was enjoying the firmer discipline of the new school which, amongst other things, involves standing up when the headteacher comes into the room and a strict uniform code. Such practices were considered passé in my own otherwise very formal schools in Northern Ireland 40 + years ago. Yet there seems to be much harking back to good ‘old fashioned’ education amongst some of the more vociferous pundits of a certain persuasion in the UK at the moment.

The new ‘free’ state secondary school due to open shortly in West London https://www.westlondonfreeschool.co.uk/ plans to offer a classical education because this ‘forms the bedrock of Britain’s most successful independent schools’. A classical education was on offer in my old grammar school but it was limited to those who showed aptitude and to some extent inclination. I had access to it because I was considered able at languages but I’m not sure it gave me any particular advantages over my peers who took a different route. Latin and Greek were taught in a dreadfully regimented way, the only light relief being the underlying narrative of the classical mythology and literature around which some of the work was based. Most of those who did the subjects in the early years were only too glad to give them up when they could, leaving those of us who enjoyed the competitive atmosphere of constant drilling and testing to keep the classic teachers in post. I exaggerate but it wasn’t a particularly enriching aspect of my education other than it made me feel special because I was considered successful at these subjects. 

Katherine Birbalsingh former London teacher now making a living by speaking and writing about the ills of the UK comprehensive education system http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/katharinebirbalsingh/ advocates a similar approach often citing the highly exclusive private sector as the model of good education and, as it happens, lamenting the disappearance of languages from the standard provision of many schools. I am not going to enter into any of the arguments here other than to say that while I and most people in my ‘network’ are going to fundamentally object to a lot of this, many people, not least parents, often concur on the basis that their children need to have the best education available and in the UK, rightly or wrongly, that is generally still seen as primary and secondary education at schools doing well in our narrowly defined league tables followed by higher education at Oxbridge or failing that, Russell Group and the good red brick institutions, with the last choice being post-92 (ex-polytechnic) institutions, in one of which I currently work. This is a gross oversimplification but I think UK readers will recognise the thrust. 

In the context of CCK11, I am struggling to see a future for connectivist values of openness, democracy, diversity, freedom and networking when narrowly defined academic curricula and elitist institutions rule the day and attract the biggest resources. A huge paradigm shift is needed if anything remotely resembling the kind of educational model resulting from connectivist theory and practice is ever going to be mainstream. Moreover any kind of progression in this direction will only succeed if it acknowledges the influence of parents, politicians, employers and society at large on educational values and systems. Otherwise, connectivist practice will remain a minority pursuit by the type of people who take part in a MOOC, their students and, maybe their children. 

Apologies for what is a very UK centric post. I hope there is some relevance in other contexts.