Roles of emergent learning systems…

I am no expert in this, as much research needs to be conducted on the topic of emergent learning in Web 2.0 groups (or virtual social networks). I have some experience in psychology, being a counselor for the past five years.

People have varying motivations when it comes to group work. Some people want to shine, be the knowledge-experts, the know-it-alls, or the boss’s favorite. Others wish to minimize the perceived amount of their own work, and tend to not say much in groups (or do much for that matter). Others are overly extended in their other tasks and need to “check out” in a given group and task . True, people are stressed in this economy…

Some people value creating, and will feel inspired when something new or creative comes from a task. Others, need to see/feel/touch the end-result, in physical form before they feel properly motivated. We have artsy people, logical sorts, emotional feeling types, and many more.

Some unfortunate few take pleasure in derailing groups, trying to create divisiveness, make certain people fail, or just simply crave the negative attention (on probably always will). [I see many pointless blogs and forums online where divisiveness is the only byproduct of a structureless form of 'dialogue' rather debate]

Whatever the person, when enough people come together, group dynamics invariably form. IT is what IS.

So, some ideas for roles of independent members of these emergent learning groups.

Devil’s advocate – contradict the ‘party line’, keep the group fresh and in a creative mode. Do not create debate, rather provide contrasting views respectively. [Must be based in reality and not simply fabrications]

Facilitator – help smooth out disagreements, lessen rigid thinking, throw out questions for others to possibly comment on, steer the conversation in different directions to get the total system’s view of a situation, etc. 

Some roles that may not be necessary: knowledge experts, integrators. The main thing to keep in mind is to minimize the trend of people contributing less due to feelings of inadequacies, insecurities, or simply being drowned out by certain individuals.

Can you think of anyone with experience with creating marketplaces within communities of practices for matchmaking skilled resources with prioritized strategic organizational opportunities to automate and scale-up an enterprise wide performance improvement or knowledge management system?

Starting KM in your organization also means starting to learn a new KM language among your members. A simple tool towards this end is an FAQ on KM (FAQ=frequently asked questions) which can be circulated among members or placed in the KM webpage in your intranet.

Download CCLFI’s FAQ on KM by pressing “Ctrl” while clicking HERE. The FAQ will appear in a new browser tab.

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Thanks to Wordle for the above “word cloud” of the FAQ

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Today we are launching our new community and social networking platform for Microsoft SharePoint. This is the first open social platform for SharePoint, and it combines the key capabilities that fuel communities and social networking combined with an open source approach which delivers customers and partners with unprecedented flexibility and extendibility. The product is available for both Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) enabling organizations to leverage their SharePoint infrastructure and data.

Right now, communities and social networking are one of the fastest growing market segments in the enterprise software market, as organizations recognize the powerful benefits of these applications including collaboration, informal learning and more. Our approach to community and social networking is based on industry best practices from the consumer market, and proven strategies based on nearly a decade of developing and deploying some of the world`s largest communities.

Here’s just a few of the new benefits and features in this platform:
• SharePoint Add-On: This platform is installed as a SharePoint _layout application, deployed via SharePoint central administration, and utilizes SharePoint search and authentication provider. This means no additional costs to organizations as is deployed on existing SharePoint servers. Integrated search and authentication gives unprecedented access to security trimmed SharePoint data.
• Crowdsourced Content Management: Alleviating the need for content management, Tomoye crowdsources this function to users. As users explore and mark-up content, the software tracks implicit behaviour and aggregates explicit user actions to present data to community members by what their peers are using and liking.
• Real-Time Expertise Rosters: Delivering a dynamic roster of expertise in the organization’s communities and across the enterprise, Tomoye tracks and reveals experts by their online activities and by the votes of others. Changing on a daily basis, expertise rosters becomes real-time.
• The Social View of the Enterprise: Tomoye aggregates the most valuable and relevant content across communities and SharePoint data so users can now identify the best information assets from across the enterprise, in a single place. This is done by tracking user behaviour and explicit user endorsements.
• New Open Source Licensing: In addition to a full application programming interface and standards based template engine, Tomoye is releasing its Web UI Source Code with every deployment for unprecedented flexibility and cost savings to Tomoye developers.
• New Partner Model: Along with open source licensing, Tomoye is offering partners a series of incentives including free deployments of 50 seats or less.

You can check out more details on today’s news here, or give me a shout if you’d like more info.

As a Learning and Development consultant I was first employed to design and deliver generic courses to employees who had never had access to training before and I learnt to create off-the-shelf, high impact courses. In the last 18 months or so, with reference to client conversations, I have noticed a move away or at least a progression from, standard programmes that simply educate toward learning that engages.

A big ask? Well yes and while learning that innovates and engages is very much up my street, the approaches I take are still very much work in progress. In fact a “work in progress” approach may very well be the X-factor required: “off-the-shelf” is so yesterday in the training world and I’m shocked but not surprised the big providers are able to sell-in tired material.

Re-designing and co-creating learning opportunities for your people may seem risky and the results even a bit “wacky” on the surface but if the training truly educates and engages the learner everyone is a winner. Why call your programme the ‘Sectretarial Development Programme’ when you can call it ‘The Secrets of Legal Secs!’ with a format that is practical, entertaining and designed around the needs and motivation of the learner rather than the training providers brochure or what you think your organisation might say.

Here are some tips to create an engaging training programme – some old hat, some all-new and all with that X-factor (work in progress):

• Research and involve – get out in the business and talk to stakeholders, managers and your target delegate. Use interesting questions to illicit new views and challenge the norm. Get your potential delegates in the room and chat about their needs, concerns and learning ideas with them, you will be surprised how positive and valuable this will be for them and for your design. Don’t not to do this because you think it will be “moany” or difficult to manage, plan it so it works.

• Connect with your organisations core values and mission and with what’s current – we know that training must be informed and directed by the learner and the business need and seemingly any ‘portfolio course’ could be described as hitting all the right buttons. What about aligning training much more closely to your organisations mission and service aspiration? Can each session explore how a team member demonstrates not only the skill of assertiveness say, but also what that skill looks like in the context of your culture and service. How is it brought to life? In addition, and putting to one side the core skills course on page 7 of a providers brochure, what is happening in the world out there that should be included in your sessions at the heart of the business?

• Innovate where appropriate – in the last 12 months the programmes I’ve created have been led by clearly defined business drivers with an added twist. Crunchie bars, women’s glossy magazines, The Sun newspaper and Gordan Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmare have all been scattered over the table with stakeholders or shown on TV, while designing training that appeals. How do you mix things up and get creative in order to excite and produce new practical learning expereinces for delegates? Do you colloborate with your providers and what are the results? Sometimes a glossy magazine influences the presentation of training and sometimes it informs the format, style and approach to content and exercises.  And why not think about different techniques too such as Action Learning Sets or Communities of Practice? They may not be new but if they are new to your organisation and helpful, explore them. Being creative adds value even if you only use 10% of the material.

• Create a communication plan – communicate early and often with everyone involved in your programme. I encourage bringing delegates into the research and design phase through focus and pilot groups so that they are truly involved and contribute to the results. You will find this also builds openness and honest conversation as well a real buzz for the learning opportunity. In some cases we have had highly over-subsribed pilot sessions due to “the word on the street”. This is exactly the interest, even anticiaption, I like to create. As a rule tell people more than you think you need to and give them a chance to talk with you before, during and after the sessions. Finally employ all channels to communicate – your intranet, booking system, posters in your tea room, emails with visual flyers, a podcast from the Managing Partner, a road show, mini-presentations from team leaders. How do you promote your training?

• Plan for application – less is more in the training room. I have learnt to leave ample space for review at the end of classes to ensure the delegate has identified, understood and has practised the one or two skills to be applied, not the three, four and five skills we would dearly love the person to take from the session. It’s textbook stuff but it’s so tempting to pack content in at the expense of real learning. With programmes, as with any individual session, I recommend structure and coaching back on the job with the person’s line manager or a peer – what did you learn? How will you apply this? How can I help you? This is what you can expect from feedback … Make sure delegates get the support they need and use the process of skills transfer as an opportunity to grow managers too. If the programme is modular then spend some time reviewing application at the start of each class and consider making the trainer and other resources available to learners when needed, outside of class time.

• Fit for purpose – delegates hate full days and 3.5 hour training classes don’t they? So don’t provide them unless the value can really be demonstated. If training cannot fit around the commitments of those coming along, you’re in trouble from the start. I have developed a series of 2.5 hour modular courses delivered across 12 months with each session an explosive burst of trainer input, conversation, exercises and practise. By doing this we can show a positive response to delegate comments relating to previous sessions which “got in the way of work”, we ensure what we put into each session is exactly what we want delegates to get out and we provide periods of reflection and application between training delivery.

• Design for recognition – In my experience support staff and secretaries, to name two target groups with whom I work, often complain about a lack of feedback and recognition. That’s why involvng them from the start, setting up informal coaching chats after sessions and evaluating training with internal online surveys all matter.  In addition one programme I have co-developed specifically references gaining a National Training Award  http://www.nationaltrainingawards.com/index.cfm?sectionID=1&subsectionID=0. We are timing and designing-in components that will help an entry into the award and promoting the personal and organisational benefits of going for it with the delegate groups. It’s important to this particular project that outputs are not only acknowledged internally but also and if successful, externally too. What ideas do you have for recognising and extending the value of your training programme?

I am continually learning and don’t claim to have all the answers! Please feel free to comment, question and add ideas, I’d love to hear from you.

Community of Practice

The Well appears to enact its membership as a centered set.  A centered set community defines membership around a common purpose, or center; the center of The Well can be found in the community’s stated mission of being, “called to act as the hands and feet of Jesus, and proclaim the message of Jesus, in Feasterville, Bucks County, Philadelphia and the world.”[1] Membership in The Well is interest in a common center of “[being] called to” and “proclaiming” the message of Jesus.  Notice that this means the standard of membership is based on an action-oriented interest and not a defined characteristic.  “[Being] called to” and “proclaiming” are not the same as “believing” a certain thing.

The action orientation of The Well’s center makes it consistent with a community of practice.[2] Communities of practice “consist of practitioners who work as a community in a certain domain undertaking similar work.”[3] For instance, a pipe fitter’s union is a community organization of workers with a shared form of labor.  The localization of membership in The Well deals with shared practice in fulfilling the mission, or center, of the community.  Organizing a center through practice means a learning process in the practice of the community. “Communities of practice are flourishing because they provide support for this kind of learning…they are an expression of their members’ will to make them exist.”[4] Newcomers to a community of practice undergo a form of apprenticeship.  One member of The Well quoted the following passage from another network church to explain this development process:

“The basic underlying assumption we try to animate at Jacob’s Well is that real relationships and connection take time and significant investment. We tell people that in order to begin to connect at Jacob’s Well they need to plan on hanging around for at least six months before they can expect to feel like they are part of the community. More than that they really need to actively invest and reach out, not passively sit back and wait for someone to make something happen for them.”

Practice within a community becomes an exercise in bonding social capital – membership is strengthened through the sharing of an experience.

Community of Interest

The limitations of labeling The Well as a community of practice, however, can be seen in the extension of this augmented community into Ecclesia Network.  Ecclesia, as the global augmentation of The Well, does not fit the community of practice model.  Ecclesia is not immediately concerned with the actions of The Well and how they pursue their center in Feasterville, PA.  The functions of Ecclesia, listed in the last chapter, deal with maintaining relations between churches.[5] The limitations of specific practices become delimited in the global community.  In this sense, Ecclesia acts as a collection of differing practices toward similar interests – a community of interest.

Communities of interest bring together different communities of practice in order to fulfill a common goal between them.[6] Gerhard Fischer extends that the exploitation of the “symmetry of ignorance” is what makes the community of interest so capable of innovation.  Symmetry of ignorance describes the way that members of the community all possess “important yet incomplete understanding of the problem.”[7] Being a collection of members with diverse characteristics, the symmetry of ignorance in communities of interest provide for the power of weak ties.   “Online and offline, weak ties are more apt than strong ties to link people with different social characteristics.”[8] The advantage of weak ties is that they present the ability to expand community networks in areas that are far more diverse – as global communities.[9] [10]

In the augmented community, it is the globally concerned community of interest that provides the extension of the local community.  If membership in the community was defined by bounding set criteria, then The Well would only consider membership based on intrinsic properties dealing with their mission, or practice.  However, as a centered set community, membership is extrinsically, not intrinsically, defined.  Due to the shared interests of Ecclesia and The Well, membership crosses the boundaries of the local community into the global network.  Both entities of this augmented community are facilitating the action of the center: “[being] called to” and “proclaiming” the message of Jesus in Feasterville, Philadelphia, and the World.

The boundaries of membership in the augmented community are still well-formed.  In-membership is still defined by direction toward the center.  To clarify, not all action by Ecclesia is part of the augmented community; only the action of the network towards the locality of The Well is really membership in The Well as a community.  When members of Ecclesia are in conversation dealing with aspects that The Well is concerned about as a community, then those conversations are part of the membership of the augmented community.  One example is a network pastor tweeting, “Studying the 21 direct commands Jesus gives to his listeners in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7) and striving to live them out as best I can.”[11] When members of Ecclesia are in conversation dealing with something that does not concern the center of The Well, such as a network member posting, “Beautiful day in Northeast Ohio. Blue skies. Low Humidity. Gentle breeze. This is how everyday would be if I were in charge of the weather,”[12] then Ecclesia is acting outside of the augmented community – at least not The Well’s augmented community.

[2] Gerhard Fischer, “Communities of Interest” Iris’24 (Norway), 3.

[3] Fischer, 3.

[4] Etienne Wenger in Seth Kahan, “Etienne Wenger on Communities of Practice: Engagement, Identity &Innovation.” The Journal of Association Leadership (March 2004) 7.

[5] Ecclesia, “Core Functions.”

[6] Fischer, 4.

[7] Ibid, 2.

[8] Barry Wellman and Milena Gulia, “Virtual Communities as Communities: Net Surfers Don’t ride alone” from Communities in Cyberspace.  ed. Marc A. Smith and Peter Kollock (London: Routledge, 1999), 175.

[9] Thompson.

[10] Wellman and Gulia, 184.

[11] jr_briggs, Twitter Post, August 3, 2009.

[12] tomaseward, Twitter Post, August 3, 2009.

Community of Practice (CoP)
Amplified in Second Life

In a Community of Practice (CoP) the members are drawn to one another and eager to interact and learn from one another. They share goals and interests and work with similar tools to reach these defined goals. There is collaboration and learning by sharing. In a CoP each individual member teaches other group members so that the entire group can move forward and onward with high skills and creativity. A CoP is committed to develop joint better practices.

Personally, I think in a virtual world the CoP is even more important than in the real world. In a virtual world such as Second Life, we see a lot of interest groups: Communities of people that have the same interests and goals. There are educational groups (which can be broken up further into specific content areas), role play groups, business groups, developers, gamers, etc. The committed and dedicated kernel of these groups is rather small though and it is very important that they tie together and work hard keeping the group together bringing learning and joint goals forward.

When entering Second Life, educators may join interest groups such as ISTE. ISTE is the International Society for Technology in Education. I am a docent at ISTE Island in Second Life helping new citizens that enter Second Life through the ISTE portal. I help connect educators that are interested in the same subject area and have decided they want to try out the environment. I give advice on places to visit, events to attend for professional development, and sometimes I may suggest they connect with people in-world or in real-world – people that I know are interested in the same things (and that have allowed me to share this information). I see a lot of new people come by every time I am on shift. Many return. This group of returning visitors is excited about not only the opportunities that Second Life offer in education, but are also excited about being able to connect with others that have the same interests but that, perhaps, are geographically dispersed. By networking these educators form groups of CoP’s and share ideas and practices that move not only them but their group as a whole, onward in teaching. I am not an educator by profession yet, but I am excited to see how these people connect in the virtual environment. An example is The Virtual Pioneers, started by a group of five New York educators interested in travelling together in Second Life learning about history. This group has grown in the past two years to include 226 members and now also has a Ning (http://virtualpioneers.ning.com/ ) to support their efforts, collaboration, and interest.

Having said all this, I am a firm believer that networks take on a whole new meaning in virtual worlds. This is because people that did not know of each other’s existence but have the same interest, now can use the virtual world technology to find each other and to connect and collaborate. It’s an amplification of the Community of Practice. Virtual worlds bring people together in two ways – by the use and interest of technology and by interest in a particular area.

I came into Second Life by accident one could say. I knew about Second Life but had a “game-play” attitude towards it: Not for me! However, when I joined ISTE in real life and watched their introductory video, I realized ISTE’s mission was serious indeed and promised its members something to good not to be part of: Professional development in-world, presentations, workshops, tours, and the 3D technology – all for free. I was sold! When learning that a reputable organization such as ISTE used Second Life to enrich the lives of members, how volunteers helped other members learn through presentations, exploration, and manipulation, I just had to learn the technology and be part of this awesome community. Subsequently, I ventured into Second Life and am now part of a collaborative CoP as a docent for ISTE  - helping others get to just as good and enriching start in-world as I got myself a year ago.

Whilst there are less-measurable commercial benefits to using Social Media, Sponsorships do create the ideal opportunity for businesses to develop additional revenue streams using their client-base and network. Matt Kinsman’s article Associations Experiment With Social Media published in January suggests that whilst companies have struggled to monetize social media, 21% are generating revenue through sponsorships.

The article published in Audience Development highlights the findings of a survey conducted by Angerosa Research Foundation in which 300 US Publishing Associations were asked about their participation in Social Media.

The research findings also suggest that (of those who have set up their own network) 27% use their own software whilst 25% use Microsoft Sharepoint and 64% use other Software such as High Logic, Moveable Type or Community of Practice. Interesting only 19% are using established platforms such as TypePad, Ning and Second Life to build their own network. This may explain why the biggest challenges with Social Media were expressed as cost and resource allocation.

You can easily tell whenever your communication boundaries are breached. The signal is: you feel uncomfortable or bothered. It is your body’s way of telling you that something is going wrong. If you keep ignoring these signals, the repeated discomfort and bother will drain your energy. Then you feel tired easily. If this goes on and on, your bodily resistance wears down and your health suffers.

Once you become aware that your communication boundaries are breached, do something! Announce your communication boundaries to the group. If communication boundaries are constantly breached in a group, then productive communication is not feasible and communication should be ended. Indigo Learning Practices — towards a group of equals seeking to create and build something together — cannot happen.

Productive communication requires that each member of the group appreciates, is committed to, and voluntarily practices the Personal Learning Mode. A good group communication strategy in their journey towards Indigo Learning is to learn together and compare notes as each member of the group practices the Personal Learning Mode.

The 16 topics discussed in previous blogs on “Setting a Personal Learning Mode” can be good topics for practice and for learning together in a “community of practice”:

L11 Will to self-improve
L12 Listening
- Can we manage knowledge? (a practice in listening)
- Listening (and building cross-cultural relationship capital)
L13 Learning how to learn
- The reflective knowledge worker
- Personal learning history
L14 Voicing
- Ask high-value questions
- The art of interviewing
L15 Double-loop learning
- A tool for learning to unlearn: internal “5 why’s”
L16 Concepts can block learning
- Your judgment can block your learning
- Memories (or past experiences) can block (or unblock) learning
- External attention can block your learning

Constant and life-long learning is the hallmark preoccupation of a successful knowledge worker. In school, we learned technical subject matters. In acquiring his or her own personal learning mode, a knowledge worker complements this by learning about himself or herself, and thereby learning how best he or she can learn on a continuous basis. Therefore, it will also benefit a knowledge worker to cultivate his or her own personal learning mode even if he or she is not part of a learning group or a community of practitioners.

Cheers!

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On August 7th, the QEP III Faculty Fellows had their last meeting of the year. This fall four of the teams will offer the redesigned version of their class for the first time. ENGL 2220 World Literature II will be offered for the first time in the spring.
The atmosphere in the meeting was excited and slightly hysterical as many of the fellows realized that though their “plane” was planned, it was still under construction. We even played the “building your plane while you fly it” video and got quite a laugh (See my blog on the July meeting).
As in the past, the redesigned courses in QEP III differ widely. SOCI 3560 Sociology of Disasters (Dr. Nicole Dash) will meet her entire class for the first three weeks in a lecture mode and then students will come to class once every three weeks for an experiential learning activity designed to reinforce higher level learning. They will also be involved in online learning activities. Students in Dr. Kimi King’s PSCI 1040 American Government class will be involved in three large experiential learning activities that will take place during class time. They will still meet often in large groups but not for the traditional lecture activities. Dr. King pointed out that 1 in 30 undergraduates will be enrolled in the redesigned American Government classes this fall. Talk about immediate impact!
Reflections on this year’s redesign: We started with seven courses and I will rate our success as approximately 4 ½. One team dropped out/was uninvited early on because it was clear that they did not have the time and interest to be successful. Two teams completed the year, but never really put together a good design approach with the hard work and planning necessary to implement it.
We start QEP IV with a retreat on August 25th and we are bringing in heightened organization and accountability to that event. There will be seven courses in QEP IV with fifteen NGen Faculty Fellows starting their own redesign journey. There will also be five new NGen Senior Faculty Fellows joining our Community of Practice.
So, stay tuned for another exciting year of the Next Generation Course Redesign™ Project at UNT!

In a recent discussion on LinkedIn, Garry Todd asked “Becoming an IA professional. Where to start, what qualifications / experience makes the grade?”. It follows a number of questions I’ve had recently from a number of people in BA and PM circles regarding the difference between the disciplines of Information Architecture and Data Architecture.

Where to start?

An understanding of the following is a good starting point:

1. User-centred design – it’s all about them, so you might as well design around their needs
2. ISO13407 – Human-centred design processes for interactive systems
3. Jesse James Garrett’s ‘Elements of User Experience ‘
4. An Agile mindset is a bonus — ZenAgile, FDD, XP, Scrum, Lean — which puts the ‘user’ and ‘value’ at the fore of the project

What qualifications?

Information architecture does have a lot of theory and science behind its application, even though some may consider it more of a discipline involving design.

1. Library science
2. Psychology – both the cognitive and behavioural aspects of information categorisation, information discovery, memory
3. Information science
4. Linguistics – and we can’t forget language, how its used, why its used, style, and form

There are a few Masters of IA at various universities, including Australia and the USA. However, just having a qualification doesn’t necessarily mean you’re any good. I know certified PMs who are terrible PMs.

What experience makes the grade?

Variety is the spice of life for many IAs I know. They tend to beg, borrow, steal ideas, tools and techniques from many other disciplines. The result is a sort of collage of practices that all result in them being able to expertly elicit requirements of information design from those who will use the end product and document it in a way that has most value to the project’s stakeholders.

1. Experience with web design (from HTML to CSS), navigation design, user-experience design, visual design, data architecture, database design, topic maps, conceptual design, solution engineering, usability engineering
2. Experience producing paper prototypes, HTML prototypes, wireframes, taxonomies, metadata thesauri, logical data models, mind maps, business classification schemes, site maps, personas, card sorting, storyboards, business process (re) engineering, , usiness process design
3. Experience with workshop facilitation
4. Experience in working with a multidisciplinary team — PMs, BAs, UXDers, developers, enterprise architects, and end-users
5. Stakeholder liaison and negotiation

Overall, IA as a profession continues to evolve. It’s not something that seems to ever stand still. As such, keeping in touch with the IA Community is of incredible value. They love nothing more than to share their ideas and experiences, particularly those who may not call themselves IAs but undertake tasks that involve information architecture. Ultimately, this means that my idea of information architecture may be quite different from others perspectives. All that I know for certain is that it’s a great profession to be in!

M

There are many implications of TEL of how crossing the boundaries of course experience, social and work experiences of learners for practitioners.

For example, Conole suggests that using new technologies requires a co-ordinated approach to design and that practice should be represented to better scaffold the sharing of good practice. This has involved developing tools for visualising and guiding design (see weeks 8/9).

These tools seek to “make explicit the pedagogical approaches and models that are implicit in practice.”

de Freitas el al (2007) “The Practitioner perspective on the modelling of pedagogy and practice” took 3 different groups of teachers and asked them to use the BECTA tool called MEEL to depict their practice; they also looked at how Wenger’s Communities of Practice concepts were relevant in the adoption/use of the tool.

The authors say that these attempts to model practice, is done to improve practice – which will lead to either 1. an idealised practice (Laurillard, 2001) or 2. it can be used by a teacher to represent their own ideas for sharing, negotiation and revision (Conole and Oliver, 2002).

In a review of frameworks and models and theoretical accounts they could be classified into 3 perspectives: Associative, Cognitive and Situative which suggest different pedagogical priorities.

Different types of tools: Frameworks – define concepts; Models – relate to concepts, process based or analytic; Tool kits – structured process for designers; Software Wizards.

Sharpe (2004) identified 5 factors as influencing the success of these interventions on improving practice:

1. Usability- known about, accessible and understandable
2. Contextualisation – customizing or adapting resources for intended audience
3. Professional learning qualities – a change in practice requires learning, involving changes in the conceptions of T&L.
4. Community – working with existing communities rather than trying to create new social structures.
5. Learning design – helping practitioners to based their practice on an understanding of student learning, designing to support this.

Research shows that however good a model is, just handing it over to practitioners will not lead to understanding, engagement or impact.  [this is what happened in Weeks 8/9). Practitioners need to be supported with engaging with the tool i order to understand it’s relationship to their own practice.

A nice little phrase about learning activities: Collaboration, Creativity and Enjoyment.

The authors found that the models were welcomed by practitioners but that there was a variation in how they were engaged with due to the “complexities of REIFICATION” – something that a community produces through its shared practice – an outcome of practice (eg a lesson plan) or a reflection of the process taken in practice (guidelines on how to...).  The models given to practitioners are reifications of the processes the people who made the model went through and the adaptations of the model produced by the 3 groups were representative of their own practice and highlight the situated nature of their work – ie situated within their contexts.

Reifications emerge from practice, they do not define it.

The artefacts which are the reifications enable BOUNDARY CROSSING – they can be given to others – members of the new community must work on it to make it meaningful to them by constructing a link between the reification and their own practice.

Communities may use reifications to influence the practice of others – to ALIGN their practice.

The models were adapted and enabled the new groups into reify their practices.  I would be concerned about how practitioners are introduced to different models as if they are the answer/only way. The key is in how you engage practitioner groups with the reification in order to use it as a catalyst to adapt their own processes.

Drawing Informal Learning into  Education

The process of recognising the skills and experience learners possess in their social and work lives will benefit their performance in formal education. Teachers’ experiences in their own schools can be shared with their CoP to learn, Online interaction supports knowledge sharing and development of practice based learning.

We watched a presentation given by Etienne Wenger (see right) to the OU in 2007. Here are so key quotes I enjoyed:

• “if a university is going to engage in professional development or practice-based learning it’s going to have to fundamentally take these two premises as a point of departure: that knowledge is the property of communities and that meaningfulness, meaningful engagement in a communal enterprise of service has got to be the foundation of professional identity.”

• Online communities – “how can you call this a community? These people have never met. These people will never meet, probably. They are a community because they recognise each other as learning partners and co-practitioners. I can see it in what you say, and because I can recognise the practitioner in you, I can trust that what you’re saying is going to be meaningful to me in my own learning, in my own trajectory. So that connection of practitioner to practitioner that creates a learning partnership is actually very important even with a simple technology like a list serve. “

• F”or them it was like, you know, the first thing you do in the morning is go check the computer. What is my community doing and saying today? So, we should not even assume that in a community, if someone is not extremely active in posting a whole lot, that there is not a very meaningful connection to the process of learning that is directly talking to one’s identity as a practitioner.”

• “traditionally, at least, in many people’s minds, I think, distance learning is kind of second cousin to on-campus learning. But, if you start thinking about learning as engagement in a system of practices, then distance learning could be viewed as actually closer.”

In my last post on how organizations should look at employee knowledge, I suggested that we need new kinds of tools — other than word processors — for helping people contribute to the organizational knowledge base. I didn’t say how I thought such tools could work, so in this post, I’m making some suggestions. The lens through which I look at the corporate knowledge base is that of a community of practice. To me, the knowledge base isn’t the goal; it’s a side effect of helping would-be collaborators find each other and interact. Let people query each other, help each other, teach each other, lecture each other, cite each other, rewrite each other — collaborations take many forms — and give them an online home in which to do it, and you’ll have laid the foundation for the organization’s knowledge repository.

When I say “community of practice,” I’m thinking of any set of people who wish to collaborate, seek advice, “compare notes,” and stay abreast of relevant events or knowledge in their field because they do the same job or have the same expertise. Members of a community of practice (COP):

• May be colleagues, but are not necessarily
• May be geographically close, but need not be
• May know most other members, but often don’t
• May know others who should be members, but often haven’t discovered those people yet
• Want to interact and collaborate, but don’t necessarily know how best to do this
• May have an online “home” in which to operate, but often don’t

I take it as a given that organizations benefit by allowing COPs to form, operate, record their knowledge, and thrive. Without meaning to make any political commentary, I can certainly imagine organizational structures and philosophies that would find all this fraternization dangerous. I probably can’t convince those folks of my point of view. My target is people who see that communities of practice develop new knowledge and facilitate knowledge transfer within the organization; that COP knowledge can foster innovation and can identify specialties the organization didn’t know it had; and that COP members derive a sense of belonging to the smaller group which transfers to a sense of loyalty to the larger organization.

So why am I convinced we need new tools for COP practitioners? It’s because the usual suspects let us down. We give people a mailing list, a shared drive for posting files, and maybe a way to conduct online discussions, and then we wait for the magic to happen. >>Crickets chirping….<< Well, why doesn’t the magic happen? Why don’t online communities just “work?” At first, sometimes they do work if a few motivated and communicative members keep the community alive with questions and content. But the mavens don’t necessarily know valuable ways to encourage participation and attract new blood. Tired of the lukewarm community response to their efforts, the mavens move on or fade into a passive role.

Online communities are still new to us. At least we act as if they are. We don’t inherently know how to operate them. Lacking a model for success, online COPs usually fizzle. Technology can help solve this problem, but not the static kind of technology that just sits there and waits for people to use it. What we need is an active engine that drives and guides participation.

What if a community of practice operated on a software platform that “knew” what to do? What if the platform:

• Coached members on how to play the necessary roles to keep the COP vibrant?
• Solicited participation from members?
• Suggested actions for keeping the community going and the content fresh?
• Provided tools and instructions for carrying out its suggestions?

To make this just a little less abstract, here are some things I think an active COP engine could do:

• Maintain a list of key activities that someone in the community should perform, e.g.:
  • Ask a question
  • Contribute a document or a link to content
  • Run a survey
  • Organize an event
  • Launch a discussion topic
  • Run a conference call or meeting
  • Comment on existing content
  • Propose a new content area
• Remind practitioners periodically to perform a key activity that has not been done in a while
• Seek participation from members, e.g., postings to discussions, answers to questions, comments on content, etc.
• Seek missing metadata, e.g., questions need answers, meetings need agendas and minutes, discussion topics need resolutions, etc.
• Seek fresh content in weak or stale areas

The active COP engine itself would probably be executable code running on the same server as whatever collaboration platform was in use. There’s no reason to write a new collaboration platform; many exist that provide decent functions and can be extended. The COP engine could use the same underlying database as the collaboration platform for its metadata and any other data it needed to store. It could also use the local messaging capability, e.g., email server, for communicating its guidance and reminders out to the user community. The following figure, in addition to illustrating why I got poor grades in art class, also diagrams a (very) high level hypothetical architecture.

Ideally, the engine’s behavior would be largely data-driven, or said less geekily, a configuration file would tell the engine what to do. For example, you could configure the engine to know that a given activity (“Run a survey”) should be carried out by a particular role (perhaps any user could run one, or maybe you’d decide that only administrators should be able to run surveys) with a given frequency (monthly). You could also specify a set of tools to give the user as aids in carrying out the activity; the tools could be native platform capabilities (e.g., many collaboration platforms have a native capability to launch a discussion) or specially written wizards to supply capabilities and guidance that the platform lacks.

I admit I leave a lot to the imagination, but this is a blog post, not a functional spec or technical design. I’m not proposing anything technically difficult or groundbreaking here — agents that “do stuff” are not even close to a new idea. And of course you’d have to devise ways to keep the engine from being an obtrusive pain in the neck or a disrespected amusement (remember the smiling paper clip in Word?) The potential flies in the ointment are addressable without needing any breakthroughs in the field of computer science, though. Worth some consideration, IMHO, are three ideas. First, the idea that communities of practice need guidance and an operating model in order to succeed. Second, the idea that software agents can supply this guidance as an overlay to an existing collaboration platform. And third, the idea that you needn’t work so hard at building the corporate knowledge base; thriving communities of practice will leave one behind as an artifact of their activities.

I’m champing at the bit to build this. Anyone have funding?

How to share experiences with people working in establishing local food systems in other places? What is going on where? In Iowa, the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, serves as a linking pin around building local food systems. Today I joined a meeting of the Regional Food Systems Working Group. This group is a Community of Practice of around a hundred people who meet four times a year to network, learn and share with other Iowans from all over the state, but today, there were also quite a few visitors from other states. Because it seems there is a lot going on in Iowa, compared to some other (Midwestern) states.

The Leopold center is a research and education center of ISU established under the Groundwater Protection Act of 1987 committed to systemic change in agriculture. Currently, there are three programs around the themes of marketing food systems, ecology and policy. Next to the center’s outreach through workshops, network meetings, seminars, and the like, it provides grants to researchers and educators of all Iowa universities and to private and nonprofit agencies throughout the state. These project grants, 33 this year, worth over 700.000 dollar in total, are a very important catalyst for furthering sustainable agriculture. Projects range from research on nitrogen management to improve water quality, developing alternative swine production systems, targeting perennial conservation practices, analysis of the value chain of local produce to targeting on-farm energy needs through renewable energy.

One of the fields on the Small Potatoes Farm

Today the center presented their ongoing work in local food. For example they are putting together a resource guide which will give an overview of all organizations and programs working in local food. We also reviewed a draft on local food procurement information about regulations around raw agricultural products. There are still a lot of myths and fears around the use of local raw agricultural products in commercial institutions, but there are no laws prohibiting direct sale from a producer to an institution.

The Community of Practice brings together various regional food initiatives. Those initiatives gave short presentations and updates on their activities before the more interactive sessions started. For example the Hometown Harvest initiative in Southeast Iowa started a feasibility study to come to a farmer owned food coop and announced a new website and logo. The Northern Iowa Food and Farming partnership shared their experience on how to set up local food distribution among various producers. And the Southwest Iowa Food and Farming Initiative is building a database mapping all local producers and potentially interested consumers as part of the first step in building a food system. The initiative in Marshall town, COMIDA also presented their ongoing work, for example their seminar with Ken Meter (see blog.)

These quarterly meetings are very important for the people working in the regional food initiatives. “I come here and hear about what others do which gives me new ideas” one of the participants said. “Sharing here is a big source of information” and, “things are changing fast now”. There is more acceptance nowadays, that whereas some continu to target the world, others actually want to feed their neighbor.

Reading Jones 2004

Jones’ claims that the networked learning metaphor provides a way for us to undestand learning better, from a mathematical and social perspectgive of networks.  A mathematical viewpoint sees nodes and is concerned with the links between them and how the networks grow.

“Networking learning is learning in which information and communication technology—is used to promote connections: between one learner and other learners, between learners and tutors; between a learning community and its learning resources” (Goodyear et al 2004)

The central term is CONNECTIONS and a need for human interaction, the social processes that take place when learning via a network, not about the individuals.  The Social view of networked learning is that it is the community of practice, collaborating, that creates the learning network. Castell’s and others views is that networks are made of networked individuals and networks emerge from those people acting on and offline. The Actor Network theory concurs with this.

In contrast, the ALT view of communities of practice supports the theories of situated learning, collaboration and community which requires engagement.

This article doesn’t offer JOnes’ own opinion but is a summary of other debates about networking learning.

The network metaphor can help us understand learning in terms of power, culture and social processes.

A note is that communities are focused on participation, collaboration etc and when you introduce the tutor or assessor or peer assessment to the community, you are impinging on these cooperative factors so here we assess the power relationships between the nodes.

Today was the next to the last regularly-scheduled meeting of the NGen Faculty Fellows for the first year. They are each scheduled to “launch their planes,” i.e., start their course next year, most in the fall semester.

btw, I love this video:

The meeting was lively with most of the classes well on their way to launch, though most of the Fellows will indeed be building their “planes” as the fly them in the fall.

I was particularly impressed with NGen Fellow Dr. Jennifer Way’s careful articulation of her course Student Learning Outcomes within a rubric that will allow her to grade the extent to which each student has mastered the SLO through the course activities. She plans to implement inquiry-based learning through a series of group (10-11 students) and small group (2-3 students) activities. The inspiration for inquiry learning came out of readings in the science education literature rather than the humanities.

NGen Fellows Drs. Coffelt and Gau are creating a wonderful redesign of World Literature II with a variety of highly engaging interactive online activities and some engaging group activities. They are launching their redesign in the spring to follow the previously redesigned World Lit I.

Dr. Kimi King and Eddie Meaders presented on their American Government redesign. Eddie will be teaching the smaller class (125 students) and has decided to emphasize group learning. Kimi’s class will be closer to 500 students and she has designed several exciting group projects that students will participate in lieu of lecture class attendance.

NGen Fellow Dr. Nicole Dash’s Sociology of Disasters redesign looks to be a real gem. She plans to meet as a large group (around 150) twice initially with the remainder of the class distributed around small group and online meetings.

The use of Wiki’s across all of these redesigns is prevalent with several of the redesigns not using a traditional text.

LESSONS LEARNED:

We are ending our fifth year of course redesign and I truly believe that there is a vibrant Community of Practice in this area at UNT. However, the use of an electronic media in which NGen Faculty Fellows can share their experiences has been a disappointment. We are looking at using a tool that will have “push” capabilities for the fall to see if we can increase the electronic interaction.

We have tried this year to codify what an NGen course is to guide the NGen Faculty Fellows in their redesign. In addition to stating that an NGen course is build on a foundation of SLO’s that include higher level learning and a robust assessment plan, we provide a range of percentages for each of the three components (lecture, online, and small group experiential learning).

We did this because there have been a few cases in which a faculty member went through an entire year of redesign and ended up with the exact same lecture-based course “supplemented” by online materials.

After the meeting, we had a discussion about whether the requirements to fall within the parameters that we have set up, e.g., between 33 and 60% of the contact hours should be delivered online, may be modified depending on the size of the class. As an example, if someone has a very large class, can you make the transition to 80% lecture and 20% small group and still be an NGen class? Is a class with a redesign that is 25% lecture and 75% small group experiential learning an NGen class?

For me, this is a tough question. I guess the ultimate answer should come through assessing the results. I think it is great that, while Kimi and Eddie are going to use different redesigns, they will both be using the exact same SLO’s and assessments. Let the best redesign win!
Another way of approaching the answer to the question, “When is a ‘redesigned’ course NOT an NGen Course?” is that you will know that it is now when you see it. We must continuously ask the redesign fellows, “How is your class different from the way you taught it before, why, and how will you know if the redesign is superior?”

Photographer: unknown

Mr Hinton gives nice suggestions how to deal with the never ending quest for data by senior management to justify any action with regard to knowledge management activities.  In my working field I always try to mention efficiency gains, increased effectively, more flexibility and innovation possibilities. Within each mention I distinguish first order (within a department), second order (related departments or organizations) and third order (not related order or organizations). I have to admit that I’m not always successful in my business justification, but who is….

http://bradhinton.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/on-knowledge-management-measurement Posted on June 29, 2009 by bradhinton

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Read more at http://bradhinton.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/on-knowledge-management-measurement

Con unas cuantas horas de retraso, por fin se abre oficialmente la toma de datos de este Estudio. Si llevas una comunidad, si trabajas con una comunidad, estás cordialmente invitado a participar en ella (haciendo click aquí). Son apenas cinco minutos, como mucho, y los resultados merecen la pena.

¿Porqué lo se? Porque llevamos una semana probándola “bajo el radar”, y con los datos recogidos de los primeros participantes ya se pueden empezar a sacar conclusiones sorprendentes.

Pero empecemos por el principio.

Objetivos del Estudio

Si uno hace caso de los medios de comunicación masivos, en el último año, las “redes sociales” han pasado de ser un peligro para la infancia a una herramienta sin la que ningún profesional puede funcionar (y ningún joven divertirse). A lomos de esa percepción, las empresas por fin están prestando atención a toda la familia de “social media” que hay más allá de los blogs (que estuvieron de moda el año pasado).

Lo cierto es que, más allá de modas y epidemias mediáticas, Internet nos ha traído unas nuevas formas de comunicarnos y trabajar que son mucho más avanzadas que el email y la página estática. En torno a esos medios se han formado no sólo redes, sino comunidades: conversaciones permanentes en el tiempo, cuyos participantes comparten intereses privados o fines profesionales.

Estas comunidades tienen a su vez la capacidad de generar un impacto muy serio en la actividad productiva (económica o no). En muchos aspectos, entre ellos:

• Soporte al usuario. No existe canal de soporte más barato y eficiente que los propios usuarios apoyándose unos a otros.
• Colaboración e innovación (abierta, o no). Las comunidades permiten el desarrollo y la extensión de mejores prácticas, la identificación de problemas compartidos y la propuesta de soluciones alternativas. Pueden ser herramientas internas, con invitados, o abiertas a los clientes. Son el mejor modo de localizar y evolucionar ideas para mejorar sus productos o servicios.
• Marketing y ventas. Una comunidad es un conjunto de personas que se auto-seleccionan por su interés en una materia: es decir, un “target” perfecto para las empresas que viven de ella. Es necesario conocerlas (son los mejores grupos de foco del mundo), crear afiliación (a la marca o a la empresa), e incluso proponer la oferta de un modo nuevo.
• Open Source. Las iniciativas Open Source se organizan sobre este modelo, y como ellas cada vez más comunidades unidas por un interés o una causa común, sin soporte corporativo. Saber cómo colaborar con estas iniciativas es cada vez más clave.

Y nos dejamos muchos otros modos en los que una comunidad influye y beneficia a los procesos de negocio a los que afecta.

Pero lo importante es que ya lo están haciendo. Incluso en las empresas en las que nadie ha decidido crear comunidades, sus empleados están, con toda seguridad, accediendo a comunidades externas para averiguar lo que necesitan saber, para consultar dudas específicas, y para sentirse parte de un colectivo con el que se identifican a veces mucho más que con su organización.

También hay empresas, entidades públicas y otras organizaciones que han tomado la iniciativa y están impulsando comunidades propias, ya sea internas o externas. Es algo que ya es habitual en mercados como el estadounidense, y cada vez más frecuente en el resto de Europa, pero del que aún hay pocas muestras conocidas en España.

¿Qué están haciendo las organizaciones?

Precisamente para eso se lanza este Estudio. Para conocer el modo en que las organizaciones que usan comunidades lo están enfocando: las áreas desde las que se promueven, los objetivos que se plantean, la forma en que crean y capturan valor, el grado en que cuentan con el respaldo de la organización, el modo en que evolucionan, el ecosistema en el que se mantienen.

Esa información nos permitirá identificar no sólo el grado de desarrollo y madurez de las comunidades en diferentes ámbitos, sino encontrar correlaciones entre prácticas concretas y grados de éxito, entre formas de enfocar las comunidades y su capacidad para crear algo importante. Dicho de otro modo, para identificar mejores practicas.

Nuestra intención es que este estudio sirva de barómetro con mediciones regulares, para seguir la evolución de esas variables y dar pie a conclusiones mucho más sólidas que una medición puntual.

¿Porqué sólo en España?

Un buen amigo me comentó, al ver el primer borrador de la encuesta, que no entendía porqué nos centrábamos en España en lugar de abarcar todo el ámbito hispanoparlante. Le respondí que el plan es empezar por una muestra en España, y ampliar el alcance más adelante. La razón es triple:

• Contexto. Queremos deducir causas y efectos de las correlaciones, lo que requiere que podamos separar la mayor parte de las variables exógenas. Por tanto, es interesante que dispongamos de datos de comunidades creadas en lo que es esencialmente un mismo entorno legal, social y económico. O lo que es lo mismo: si lo único que varía entre una comunidad y otra son sus prácticas de gestión, podemos deducir que éstas son la causa de las diferencias en sus resultados. Si hay más diferencias (distintos contextos) no podremos. Ademas, este primer análisis permitirá identificar y analizar la influencia de dicho contexto socioeconómico y legal cuando empecemos a tomar datos de otros países.
• Alcance. Queremos asegurar una masa crítica de datos significativos, para lo que parece práctico centrarse en un conjunto manejable de organizaciones y centrar nuestro esfuerzo en procurar la máxima participación. Una vez establecido el Estudio, su propia existencia ayudará (esperamos) a estimular la participación de otras organizaciones, lo que permitirá ampliar el ámbito del estudio.
• Elaboración. El diseño concreto del Estudio y la encuesta que se deriva de él han llevado varias semanas, y eso a pesar de las limitaciones de alcance y temática que nos hemos impuesto (y del hecho de que teníamos muy claro lo que queríamos buscar). Si hubiéramos abierto más la variedad, no habríamos podido cumplir los plazos de referencia que nos habíamos fijado.

Próximas fases

El plan de trabajo es el siguiente:

06-2009: Encuesta de modelos de gestión (la que nos ocupa)
09-2009: Presentación de resultados

09-2009: Encuesta de prácticas de gestión de comunidades (diseño, dinamización y moderación)
12-2009: Presentación de resultados

12-2009: Primera encuesta ampliada (entorno hispanoparlante)

En el ínterin, esperamos ampliar sustancialmente los acuerdos de colaboración con diferentes organizaciones para ampliar el alcance y el interés del Estudio.

Publicación de resultados

De acuerdo con lo previsto (que puede variar), el Estudio tendrá tres resultados:

• Un informe público con las grandes variables y los datos más llamativos, que será presentado en colaboración con AERCO y otros colaboradores, y ofrecido gratuitamente a la comunidad empresarial.
• Un informe ampliado, con datos mucho más precisos y análisis más detallado, así como una identificación de mejores prácticas por sectores. Este informe se entregará gratuitamente a las personas y organizaciones participantes en el Estudio. A día de hoy no está previsto otro modo de distribución o publicación.
• Una segunda oleada del Estudio, con revisión de variables y preguntas.

¿Porqué eme ká eme?

La otra pregunta que me he encontrado es “¿Porqué os metéis en esto?”. Está claro que el Estudio es interesante, pero ¿qué tiene que ver Macuarium, y éste proyecto en concreto, con estudios y con publicaciones? ¿Porqué no buscar otro canal?

La respuesta es sencilla. Macuarium se fundó como una iniciativa de investigación en comunidades online. Hace diez años. Llevamos ese tiempo (y seis meses más) investigando activamente en comunidades: creándolas, evolucionándolas, experimentando con medios y canales. Hemos hecho proyectos para clientes tan diversos como portales o agencias (tributarias), y asesorado a organizaciones tanto privadas como públicas. Hemos participado en proyectos notables de la Unión Europea como KnowledgeBoard. Nuestras metodologías (y hasta nuestras FAQs) se han extendido por muchas otras comunidades. Y llevamos mucho tiempo destilando lo que aprendemos en white papers, artículos, ponencias y estudios.

Al mismo tiempo, no estamos casados con ninguna marca, ninguna oferta, ningún producto, ningún interés. Lo que nos interesa es saber como son las cosas. Somos lo más objetivo que se puede encontrar.

Dicho de otro modo, creemos que eme ká eme (la “pata” de investigación de Macuarium, cuyo reflejo es este blog) es probablemente el mejor cauce posible para desarrollar un estudio de estas características en el mercado español. Además, la carga de propiedad intelectual y trabajo que lleva es tal que no lo haríamos gratuitamente para nadie más.

Están en su casa

Dicho esto, sólo me queda repetir la invitación a pasar a ver y cumplimentar la encuesta… y por supuesto, a hacerla llegar a todos los contactos que tengáis y que puedan estar interesados en ella. Buscamos personas a cargo de comunidades, sea en su aspecto de moderación, gestión, o supervisión técnica o empresarial. Nos interesan comunidades corporativas (internas, externas, patrocinadas) e independientes (negocios, o sin ánimo de lucro), basadas en software de pago o basadas en listas de Yahoo, con 300.000 usuarios y con 300, centradas en gestionar una imagen de marca o en lo más puntero de la innovación abierta. Buscamos a esas personas, sean trabajadores para esas organizaciones, proveedores de servicios externos, voluntarios, o cualquier otra forma de colaboración.

Buscamos la foto global, con todos los que están. Ayúdanos a construirla.

Victor Wong and Gerry Hanley

Prior to 2006, MERLOT was represented on our campus by one or two “lone rangers”, and MERLOT had limited impact on our large decentralized campus.

Fast forward to 2009.  Rather than “lone rangers”, we now have a team of a dozen faculty, staff, and students going to the MIC 2009, with a similar number of sessions/workshop accepted for the MIC 2009 program (see list below for a preview).

How did all this happen?  With some funding help and a lot of teamwork.

In 2006, we tried an experiment and sent a small selected group of faculty and staff, mostly first-timers, to explore the MIC 2006 and to kick-off a new team on campus for MERLOT.  We spent our first year together meeting and building a team – a cross-disciplinary MERLOT community of practice of faculty and staff on campus – and the team won the MERLOT Institutional Stewardship award in 2008.

Most importantly, through a grant in 2008, we added students to the mix and remixed the team to focus on the deployment of good learning objects in gateway undergraduate courses on campus.  We selected graduate students with tech savvy and domain expertise in these courses, and they became our key and fearless collaborators on the team.  Through this teamwork, the cross-disciplinary MERLOT community of practice on campus has grown in 2009 to include chemistry, English and composition, foreign languages, mathematics, medicine, nursing education, physics, psychology, teacher education, and statistics.

My point is simple.  If you’re a “lone ranger” on campus for MERLOT, and you want to see greater impact at your institution, my advice is “Get a Team!”  A team always wins.  Furthermore, make students the key collaborators on the team and, if at all possible, bring them to the MIC!

By Victor Wong, University of Michigan

Here’s a preview of the MIC 2009 presentations and workshop by faculty, staff, and students from the University of Michigan.  The graduate students, as key collaborators in this team effort, are in italics.

Joel Vaughan, Dave Childers, and Brenda Gunderson, “Bottom Up Faculty Development”, Saturday, 10:00 – 10:30 am

Jay Holden, “Creating an Interdisciplinary Collection of Learning Objects to address Basic Skills”, Saturday, 10:45 – 11:15am.

Irene Knokh, “Baby Steps, Introducing Instructional Technology”, Saturday, 10:45 – 11:15am

2-hours Hands-on Workshop:
Perry Samson, “Let Them Bring Their Laptops!  Incorporating Learning Objects into Lecture”.  Saturday, 1:30 – 3:30pm

Michigan MERLOT Team Award Presentation:
Nancy Kerner, Brenda Gunderson, Brian Malley, Lynne Crandall, “Innovative Use of MERLOT”, Saturday, 2:15 – 2:45pm

Tanya Breault and Nancy Kerner, “The Process of Integrating Learning Resources into a Large Introductory Course, Saturday, 5:30 – 6:00 pm

Perry Samson, “New Evidence from the Trenches: Laptops are Good!”, Saturday, 5:30 – 6:00pm

Plenary Presentation:
Carl Berger, “Recognition, Reward, and Tenure: You’ve Got to be Kidding!”, Sunday, 8:00 – 9:30am

Dave Childers, Joel Vaughan, and Brenda Gunderson, “Make them YOURS: How to Package LOs”, Sunday, 10:00 – 10:30 am

Jonathan Maybaum, “Giving and Getting Credit Where Credit is Due”, Sunday, 10:00 – 10:30am

Porscha McRobbie, “Actualization of mathematical and abstract subjects using computer-based guided tutorials”, Sunday 10:00 – 10:30 am