Week 7 Review

This week we concentrated on completing the micro ethnography on ‘community membership’ inside a MOOC.

The ethnography:  I placed my ethnography here and was glad to see that some classmates commented on it.  As noted in my comments, my chosen MOOC had been laid out in a clear and sequential way: the curriculum was set, students had a clear path of progression, and discussions were optional. However this strict structure did not allow much room to manoeuvre in terms of co-creation, collaboration, teaching presence and social presence.

Whilst a MOOC has much to offer in terms of breaking down barriers to accessing education, allowing increased class sizes, and exposure to many cultures, the MOOC does not straightforwardly deliver education in the way that many institutions are promising.  Missing is much of the educational experience of a full time online course. Aspects of the community of inquiry model, so important to the creation of an online culture, example sharing personal meaning, collaboration, connecting ideas and exchange of information, is very difficult to achieve on a MOOC. There are exceptions to this if you intrinsically motivate your students to participate. The interplay between the extrinsic forces acting on persons and the intrinsic motives and needs inherent in human nature is the territory of Self-Determination Theory. When a MOOC achieves the delicate balance of convincing students that they want to participate, then that MOOC is on to something.

Peer Interactions & ethnographies:  I spent some time in the last day or two looking at my classmates ethnographies which were as broad and diverse as a vibrant Arabian marketplace. The quality of the artefacts makes me quite proud of being part of such a talented group. It was interesting to see how different people focused on both specific interactions and/or broad scope.

I will continue to comment on classmates ethnographies as they go up but the several comments I made on their work are on the links below.

https://edc20.education.ed.ac.uk/jjack/2020/03/02/ethnographic-object/

https://edc20.education.ed.ac.uk/msiegenthaler/2020/03/02/micro-ethnography/

https://edc20.education.ed.ac.uk/dyeats/2020/02/27/micro-netnographic-artefact-community-pushing-through-the-cracks/

https://edc20.education.ed.ac.uk/mwolfindale/2020/02/28/micro-ethnography-entangled-communities/

https://edc20.education.ed.ac.uk/vmuscat/2020/03/01/micro-netnography-artefact/

https://edc20.education.ed.ac.uk/jkwon/2020/03/02/mscedc-this-is-the-link-of-my-microethnography-but-i-am-a-bit-embarrassed-having-seen-other-classmates-wonderful-outcomes-anyway-i-hope-everyone-enjoyed-this-artefact-https-t-co-jnmmjh2/

Micro-ethnography of Mooc

Hi all,

This is a short microethnography on ‘community membership’ inside an EDX Course called Urban Sustainable development run by University of Wageningen (Netherlands) in conjunction with the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS).

https://media.heanet.ie/page/266675d15f6d45c99e699d56f3f8d34a

Also included here is a transcript of the video file above.

Transcript of video-Microethnography of a MOOC community_AOMahoney

My conclusions:

The course is well organised and laid out in a clear, sequential way and provided a welcoming interface for early student on-boarding and discussion. Discussion questions were easy and did not require huge time commitment to complete. Yet evidence of community development is not really there on the discussion boards.

I did find evidence of community in the gamification element that took place in weeks 1 and 4, where students submitted images of their city onto a map of the world, and in week 4 they uploaded their carbon footprint image onto a map of the world. When students were asked to represent their city, their home, their community, this seemed to result in what Kozinet described as a central consumption activity.  It seemed to be an activity that users felt was important to them.

The greater the centrality of the consumption interest to the person, the higher the interest level and concomitant level of activity knowledge and skill. 

The lesson that I learnt from this Mooc was that the activities that resulted in the highest amount of community engagement were those that were personalising and linking the learning back to school, home or community.

 

Review of Kozinets

Benefits of online community community development

Initial research on the online social environment detailed how lack of social cues made people discount the value of online social group- they were seen as ‘less than’ face to face interactions.

However (Walter 1997 & Bayne 1999 as quoted by Kozinets 2010) showed that groups are getting around that by expressing missing nonverbal cues in written form’- emoticons. Textual messages became ‘imbued with features intended to replicate a face-to-face communication’, and as a result gained some ground in terms of quality of interaction.

Another advantage of participating on an online communities is that participants enjoy a ‘status equalization effect’ – status characteristics, such as age, sex, and race, cultural background are unknown in the online space (unless the user reveals them) resulting in more open communication and less dominance. Online communities therefore benefit from stress reduction, self-acceptance, and informational value, and contribute to people’s sense of identity (see, e.g., McKay et al. 2002 as quoted by Kozinets).

The charts and diagrams in the Kozinets 2010 paper were interesting to me but the one that I zoned in on was the development of community below. I recreated it on powerpoint.

community development

It considers the relationship between the person and the central consumption activity that they are engaging in, with and through the online community. If this consumption activity is not particularly important to them, their relationship to the online community is going to be more distanced. The greater the centrality of the consumption interest to the person, the higher the interest level and concomitant level of activity knowledge and skill. This is a measure not only of self-identification, but of identity and interest combined with expertise.

The benefits of online community (as listed in the first paragraph), are a function of time and online activity. Moving from the lurker status where one has weaker skills, weaker social ties and superficial consumption, to an Insider’s strong social ties to the online community, takes time and commitment.  Can this be adequately applied to temporary online learning communities such as Moocs? Moocs are generally short courses where the vast majority of users are auditors. A Mooc auditor will enter the Mooc community from initial curiosity. Ideally, What began as a search for information transforms into a community and a sense of belonging and understanding.

In reality however, auditors would find it difficult to develop a deep relational exchanges within the online group if they have limited interaction and low interest in the core consumption activity.

 

Kozinets, R. V. (2010) Chapter 2 ‘Understanding Culture Online’, Netnography: doing ethnographic research online. London: Sage. pp. 21-40.

Bayn, Nancy K. (1999) Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. As quoted by Kozinets (2010)

Walther, Joseph B. (1992) ‘Interpersonal Effects in Mediated Interaction: Relational Perspective’, Communication Research, 19: 52–90. As quoted by Kozinets (2010)

5 key points to increased pass rates on a MOOC

Thanks to Irene  (previous class?) for sharing this

In this video Mr. Agarwal discusses 5 key points to helping students successfully pass a MOOC.

  1. Active learning- 5 minute videos followed by interactive exercises- when students answer questions, they are learning.
  2. Instant feedback- the green tick is positive reinforcement & turns teaching moments into learning outcomes.
  3. Self paced learning- students can rewind, so they don’t get lost.
  4. Gamification through drag and drops can simulate a lab environment and changing scenarios.
  5. Peer learning via discussion boards. When students respond to each other’s questions, they are learning by teaching other students.

The MOOC that I am studying has put structures in for the first 3 elements.  Gamification is not included and item 5 discussion boards are visibly present but under utilised because online community relations are underdeveloped (see Kozinets review),Weaker social ties and weaker consumption is linked to the weaker skill set of a lurker (Kozinets 2010) so this is an area that Moocs offer promise in but have yet to take full advantage of. In a blended learning environment,   the gamification element would take place in a real lab environment via a -flipped classroom setting.

In Mr Agarwal’s study, failure rates fell from 40/41% to 9% using the flipped classroom model. So blended learning using a flipped classroom technique that facilitates students working together in labs, still seems to be the most optimal type of learning.

Whilst Mr Agarwal believes in the power of peer learning in Moocs via discussion boards, this element of the MOOC still needs teacher presence in order to offer guidance and prevent  misinformation from peers,  an impossible task for courses of thousands of participants.

Another thing I note is Mr Agarwal’s plan to license his successful MOOC to other universities. Whilst it would be good to cherry pick lessons to supplement learning,  the result of several major institutions adopting the same MOOC, to teach the same subject would be a homogenising of the learning from one source. This reminds me of an article written by jiyoung Kwan on gender and language imbalance on WIKIs. What is right or wrong or missing on Wikipedia affects the entire internet.

some other elements not mentioned but useful for interaction are; Twitter hash tags, a wiki for sharing articles and  a poll to gauge what learners already know or how they feel about the topic.

References

Kozinets, R. V. (2010) Chapter 2 ‘Understanding Culture Online’, Netnography: doing ethnographic research online. London: Sage. pp. 21-40.

Bayn, Nancy K. (1999) Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. As quoted by Kozinets (2010)

Walther, Joseph B. (1992) ‘Interpersonal Effects in Mediated Interaction: Relational Perspective’, Communication Research, 19: 52–90. As quoted by Kozinets (2010)