Reflections on engaging with online content in the Open Design Studio in H817
No, I wasn’t thanking Bill. I don’t know a Bill anyway.
That was what I typed, in a frenzied moment when, during our ODS team’s latest Google Hangout, I at last understood what tasks I had to do by the next one. I had meant to type “OK Brill”.
Our online team meetings, whether via Elluminate or Google Hangouts (broadband connection allowing) keep me sane and connected to both the activity and the task team.
I’m disheartened by the fact that I’ve not enjoyed the majority of this learning block, not least because it’s the part of the module that attracted me most to it in the first place. Some practical experience at playing around with design tools was what I really wanted; something that gave me some practical confidence as opposed to isolated academic knowledge. As yet, it has not come to pass.
It’s only now that I feel even slightly motivated to try and reflect on the actual activities, in the attempt to extract some learning from this process.
There’s been insufficient scaffolding for me to engage purposefully in this learning block. From the beginning, elements of it were fragmented across different online environments, several of which were new to me and took much time (weeks really) to get comfortable with. Herein lies one similarity with the MOOC experience.
From my point of view, an improvement here would have been a clearer overview of the whole task, with some imagery of what it would look like over the course of the weeks to completion. From here, there could have been step-off points into the other areas. No doubt some learners on the course will feel the detail on the H817 weekly pages and forums were sufficient for this. They categorically were not sufficient for me.
Bizarrely, that which looked to be the most practical learning block, that which sought to integrated theory and practice, has not done so for me. I would even go so far as to say that I have picked up little of either. I just haven’t had the opportunity to ‘play around’ with the tools, which is what I wanted to do. I’ve lost that motivation to do so as well. It’s no longer enjoyable. The moment I click into the ODS site, I’m put off. It’s not easy to shrug these feelings off.
The online team meetings at least enable me to learn from my peers. Although I am doing this from their blogs, I seem strangely unable to do this from the ODS site activity materials. By that I mean, when something is packaged up in the templates we’ve been offered, I lose the ability to interact with the material. It’s featureless, untextured, and uninteresting as a result. When we talk about it during our meetings the life comes back into it. It is almost as if I am unable to learn from them if I can’t experience activity alongside my fellow team members. Is the nature of legitimate peripheral participation inhibited by our lack of ‘real’ contact? Although I was able to engage and learn from virtual communities of practice (the online forums, my fellow learners blogs, the Twitter H817 MOOC community), there was more thinking and less ‘doing’. Perhaps something here is more task based?
What is it that I find so difficult about engaging with these materials in the ODS site and on the Google+ community? I want to understand this, because it is going to have implications for how I engage in projects in an online collaborative community. My ability to learn from others seems diminished by both the volume of activity, the rush, and grappling with the medium, but basically, I ain’t learning coz it ain’t fun!