Thursday, February 26, 2009
Group project
Pulling it out of Google docs, an issue I noticed was that the formatting was then very funky and required some extra effort on my part, so I'd like to keep it in Word format now; however, Johanna expressed understandable concern that having different Word docs floating around could be problematic, but i think as long as we keep it all in the same place, it'll work out fine. But of course I am an optimist :)
Last week I was so busy I didn't feel as on top of things as I have in the past, but this week I'm getting an earlier start on reading and posting, so I'm feeling much better about that...enjoying the process.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Brief thoughts on this week
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Group Work moving ahead
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
followers
Midterm and Final Paper Thoughts
I am getting nervous about our group efforts, as we don't currently seem to be talking. I posted on our group site yesterday and sent an email today. Hopefully we can get our act together soon; actually, I am confident we will. In any case, I need the group interaction to know what direction I personally will be taking, as I don't feel I have a good handle on the specifics of our topic (which came from Johanna). I do have the notes we've generated so far and have downloaded info relevant to the topic. I think if I look through all of that and make my own notes as to where I think we should be going, I'll be ready for our next meeting to set our roles and goals.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Midterm topic
As we, as trainers and educators, take ever-increasing advantage of collabortive online/remote/distance learning to reach out to students all over the country, or especially around the globe, we need to become cognizant of cultural differences that may affect how our students perceive our courses, how they interact in their collaboration, and how we can avoid that certain cultural groups may be advantaged or disadvantaged in the coursework we design and offer.
Cultural bias in everything we do is inescapable (Tylee, 2001); therefore, when I design online content, when I try to motivate participation in the coursework, and when I determine the value of participants' contributions, I am doing so from my own cultural mindset, which may lead me to attach more importance to the contributions of some (namely, those more like me) over others. In order to offer more equitable evaluations of students' work, I need to take certain cultural vairables into consideration, as well as how I can best structure my training to be meaningful to all course participants. These are some of the cultural variables my paper will attempt to address.
-culturally-determined social roles, including those of student and teacher, and issues related to -power distance
-relationship v. task orientation
-high / low context societies
-educational systems and methods the participants are familiar with
-individualistc v. group learning orientations
-predilictions for group harmony (including saving face and group traditions) as opposed to -----seeking the truth at the expense of group conflict
-attitudes toward technology and towards f2f v. distance learning
-directness v. indirectness
-levels of uncertainty avoidance
Some of the effects of the above cultural variables may be seen in:
-how material is presented, perceived, and accepted
-who has access to what
-motivators for work and accomplishment
-how individuals are addressed and what & how much personal information is exchanged
-modes of interaction
-writing styles, amount of information and detail expected
-levels of cooperation and expectations of group and individual work
-amount of choice available to participants
-use of technology, e.g., to reduce ambiguity
-differing approaches to problem-solving
Finally, what can we do to avoid some groups being culturally advantaged or disadvantaged compared to other groups in online collaboration, or, in other words, how can we be more inclusive in our online training?
Tylee, Jennifer (2001). Cultural issues and the online environment, dowloaded 1/25/09.
Rose, C.P. et al. Exploring the influence of culture on collaborative learning, downloaded 1/25/09.
Germaine-Rutherford, A. An inclusive approach to online learning environments: models and resources. From the Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, April 2008, v 9, no 2, downloaded 1/25/09.
This, as I said in my last posting, is too much to address well in a 10 or so page paper, but I will pick out certain points to address as the coming week progresses.
Thoughts on Week 4: Moving forward
As to my midterm topic, Datta Kaur said what I indicated I'd be addressing is too broad; I agree completely, and I realize what I have posted re my midterm topic on the discussion board probably still addresses too many aspects, but I will continue to narrow it down, while still keeping the same focus.
As for our group (the Inter-Networkers), we were all over the place in our communication, writing emails, using the class wiki (sidebar) and the group area with the result that we were often repeating ourselves across the different sites. Although I'd say that our group also skipped the "storming" stage as mentioned in the Johnson article (p. 385), I think we were getting a bit frustrated with lack of direction until I suggested we use a different (synchronous) tool to meet, AT&T Connect, which I have access to via my work. We were able to meet for a little over an hour, agreed on our guidelines and how to go forward, and generally found this 'side' medium to be a quick and positive way to get ourselves organized (and increase our own social capital).
I feel ready to move on...