In my H800 module at the Open University (Technology Enhanced Learning, Practices and Debates) we are asked to discuss an article from 2008 on blogging behaviours on an online course. The main conclusion of the article being that blogging behaviours of students at an online course can be divided into five main categories:
- Blogging avoidance
- Resource network building
- Support network building
- Self-sufficient blogging
- Anxious, self concious blogging to meet perceived course requirements
The scaffolding of the activity is as follows:
We read the article and are encouraged to discuss a set of questions in our tutorgroup. The tutorgroup being an asynchronous OU discussion forum for a particular week in the module. It is meant for a limited amount of students and one tutor.
In relation to this activity, it was good to read the blog post of
Martin Kerr of my H800 module. He writes that he does not think there is
the degree of interaction in our tutor group that he would expect and asks how to improve this. I
have had that same feeling and must admit I also feel slightly guilty,
as I was stressing about my EMA in another module earlier and did not
have a lot of time to participate myself. I am very curious as to how to
best catalyst this online interaction, as the lack of this is a recurring theme at my University College when educators talk about
digital possibilities. Just today I was talking to a practitioner who was very sceptical of e-learning courses, because students would miss out on meeting each other and discussing face to face. Surely there must be ways to make this work online?
So how do we improve this? Lots of engaged communities discussing and sharing ideas online exist. So it must be possible. I sometimes think the my own contributions in the forums seem to be very centered around the questions for the particular activity. One idea for improving this could be commenting more on the thoughts of others, maybe also outside the forum, like I am now attempting to do in this blog post.
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The downside of home study
Previous to the course I'm currently studying, it seemed there was just enough contact, both during face to face tutorials and online. Perhaps the level one modules are designed to provide exactly that.
Now, with far fewer face to face, I'm beginning to think something valuable is lost by replacing these with more online forums - except that they encourage one to write.
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I'm reassured that you feel the same Uffe although my intention was not to make you or anyone else feel guilty at all, sorry. We are all under time pressure and the nature of the forums are such that we are interacting but at different times all through the day. I don't have a magic solution but perhaps we can try different things to see if they work.
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I wonder if the problem is too many forum discussions - there are other ways to interact. In a previous online course I did we were asked, in groups, to create a presentation. We used a couple of collaborative tools, outside the forums, to make decisions and create this presentation, and it felt much more interactive - like we actually got to know each other a bit. It was still text-based and asynchronous!