We'll meet here for the last meeting in CSCL intro, with champagne to celebrate a course well completed! :) To think back, and plan for the future. 

Shall we put our ideas in buckets and talk about each one?
So, this is a Post-Mortem for the course say?
It's whatever we want it to be :) For once the organizers have no plan :) 

Bucket 1: Content, readings

• I felt maybe some of the weeks' reading suggestions were too heavy for my level of availability. I thought we were better focused when we named one reading as primary must-read for the meeting.This is where prompts come in.
• Yeah this is a hard balance, there's so much good stuff we want to get through :) But having one central reading, and then a bunch of optionals to expand on that seemed to work well, although I often wanted to provide at least two different points of view on the same topic. (I like having two points of view on a topic as well, so maybe 2+nice-to-haves)
• I think having ONE wiki page with the readings as a bibliography would be a nice way to go (the whole idea of doing a big OER that we discussed).  Blog posts are OK but a bit scattered all over -- this would do the same sort of thing, but with more organization (and a natural division of labor).Yes I agree :)
• Yeah totally... I want to look at how we can pull things together at the end to make the syllabus and the resources we came up with much more available to people "coming after us" - and would love help with that...I'm willing to help. I've a number of resources from the Ed School that I think are relevant; will excavate them. I think the individual task pages worked well because we could have comments below etc. But it would be nice ot have an easier way to "pull it together". I'd love help with this. Of course I'm willing to help with this as well. Usability is key here I think. I've glossed over many a course-finale wiki and haven't found them all that useful, to be honest. I dont' think they were designed with what we have in mind though, so I'm not worried that we'll be producing something similar. 
• Thinking of myself as a learner, what would be useful for me would be a wikipage or what not listing each week, the topics, links to the readings (which are all OA, which is a huge boon for people, we spent some time carefully choosing very good and open resources) - and links to the blog posts and discussions for tha tweek. I agree... I think that it would be great to have key words or tags or whatever simple descriptors for 'messier' spaces like blog back and forths on the 'top-level' of such a wiki, as this is where I typically get lost in similar type resources. So I could read Scardamalia etc, and then if I wanted to, i could go read Jennifer and Monica about Scardamalia... ALL in one accessible format. I'm sure that would have been super useful to me half a year ago!I toally agree with you, Stian: This is the kind of "legacy" that continues to evolve, from Day One. It could serve as a kind of notebook for each of us. ,And of course it would also be interesting to think about how a future class (if there will be one, we hope there will!) would interact with this artefact in a productive way... I'm thinking that there could be 2 'versions': one dedicated to the class itself, with we participants; the other the 'legacy", which continues to evolve, as other participants chime in.ANother thing that would be great would be for us to identify a few "key findings" and "key questions that we didn't resolve" that other groups can build upon... YES! because knowing how busy we were, future groups are not going to have time to read all of our blog entries (apart from eager beavers). but if there was some guiding "key ahas" and "key questions" from us to add to their discussion, that could be a real boon.Yes, absolutely. And this is where, perhaps, the notion of tagging -- I remember Joe mentioning this, and I find it a useful way of capturing the essence, and enabling discoverability at some future point. It's also something that can enable future research and publishing

 / reporting

• I liked it that some of the readings were heavy. I need challenging articles. But I agree that one primary reading for the week with several suggested readings would help us to focus.We can have different categories of content: ranging from academic to more generally accessible Yes a mix is a good idea
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• I liked how the Bi-weeklies brought discussions together for each week of the course, I think collecting the links and summarizing what we did could be a useful format for (at least part of) a finished product. I can devote a few hours of collecting time.Yes the biweeklies were so awesome. I always found things there I had missed.They were / are terrific. A way of distilling key takeaways, and providing a sort of record
  • Thank Downes and Siemens for that format! :) What format? The Biweeklies?Yes. It arose from their "The Daily" email from their MOOCs.
  • Cool. Are they going to run more MOOCs?They seem to do them pretty regularly, with slight topic variation. One or two a year. (They did Connectivism and Connective Knowledge 2011 earlier this year)
  • There will be a big one starting in fall, with like 20 different presenters or something - it's a massive effort. And some _really_ impressive names on the list of presenters (including one or two key CSCL profs actually). How do you sign up? Where? Is it free?
  • MOOCs are always free, here is the draft schedule: https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?authkey=CPSOtI4C&hl=en&key=tbZJJJ4brzDy9xtAtREQDZw&hl=en&authkey=CPSOtI4C#gid=0 
  • course site: http://change.mooc.ca/  thanks I will check it out
  • (one of my ideas was to have a P2PU course that would essentially be a "student support group" within this MOOC - given that the MOOC is providing amazing content, but often feels very unwieldy in terms of number of people etc, it would be neat for a small group of people to get to know each other, do the readings, attend the big talks every week, and then discuss internally (but publicly), maybe evenbe even do ocassional small group meetings to dicuss the issues etc. It would be a neat model to try out. (And I'd love for someone else to step up and organize it, which should be minimal. I'd probably be interested in participating)I think this is a great idea! If you do it for the next MOOC, please let me know
  • That's a cool idea. (More) formally organized subgroups haven't been explored much in MOOCs so far to my knowledge... though informal groups naturally devlop.

Cool! It could even be a research project. Massive MOOC, smaller peer-supported group doing its own thing and interactinf with the big group
very interesting research-wise
exactly.Okay, let's do it! :) Well, it depends on timing, for me at least
The MOOC will be all next year, from September to May!
holy cow! it's 8 months?
they've got 25 presenters!
incredible
but I guess participation is up to participants
I could lurk... :) That's what usually happens :)Hmm if we set up our own sub-group would it be for the whole 8 months? that is a big commitment


Bucket 2: format

• Upload participant photo of each session--group mashup, at the end, with text quotes maybe of key statements "branding" that person...Nice idea, good for social presence and general feel-good
• Have a rotating faciliator, where each of us (or a team, depending on numbers signed up) are responsible for a session, for creating prompts (one or two) that are sent out a week ahead -- or mentioned at the end of a session -- as an "incentive" for broader participation. This puts the "peer" into the Peer to Peer...
• I will be interested to see if any of the "followers" respond to the survey. I wonder if any of them got much from what we did here so far.You know, that's something to consider: a "peanut gallery" section, where comments and questions could be posted. Sort of like when Jay Leno or David Letterman go out into the audience... :) There were spaces available, though I didn't see any other participation... besides getting a couple links in "hey look at what these people are doing over here" that popped up on the blog search in Netvibes and on Downes' newsletter. I didn't really see much substantive interaction with the content... though I don't know what those people were aiming to get out of it at least.This could be the "social presence" problem: that lurkers are, well, anonymous, and are less inclined to take the initiative unless they're called upon or there's a special design intervention that stimulates their participation.
• The following function is brand new, so it makes sense that it takes a while for people to understand how to use it etc. I think many people use it as a kind of bookmark - I want to go back here and have a look some day (maybe long after the course is finished). But this is the kind of stuff I'd love to know more about. There was some "amplification" of the course through retweeting etc, but it seemed to mostly follow existing social networks (ie someone who was already reading my blog before the course retweeted something I posted as part of the course... in a way negative - the course in itself doesn't provide a platform for amplification,.. in a way positive - the fact that we are using existing personal spaces like blogs means that we can tap into the amplification networks of each individual - the people who read Marcy's blog are different from the ones who read mine, but they all at least have some concept that there was such a course going on :) it's interesting that there wasn't a week that went by without more people 'following' the course, all the way til week 7 or 8. I intend to ask some people personally what they got out of it, if anything:)  thanks! share with us :) I have a feeling many people followed soon after signing up to p2PU (or starting to use the new platform ) - kind of trying out functionality. I also follow a few users, but never got anything out of that... 
• Applied track (perhaps with technological support using site-wide tags.) I really like this notion of tagging and think it's something that can be useful, both at a high level and more granular, such as with each of us as participants, re: learning goals, strengths, weaknesses, "asks" re: what we want to get out of this, and whether or not we got it, or how far are we (50%? 80%?) from achieving our goal of understanding. 
• Above, "applied track", I think is really crucial. That is, if I'm understanding this right. I guess I'm thinking of "applied" as "how does this work in practice?"--e.g., the application of the concept or ideas or even the "paragogy" (Joe, I'm so grateful for that concept!) to real-world conditions and aspirations.Interesting. I know that for this course that probably would've taken up quite a bit of preparation time ... it was an effort to narrow down good readings for each week. But it's definitely a useful approach and something to think about for other classes Hey Joe you are being quoted! Paragogy is useful :) Not sure about the preparation time, Monica. What I was thinking is, if there's a column or category or space on the weekly Wiki or whatever the template... That it's called "Implications for Practice", and we brainstorm that. ahh okay I see. I actually really like this idea because it also opens up the more theoretical concepts to different contexts. This is something I struggle with alot. Some of us (like me) will have alot to say, whereas others who are more researchy (or completing a doctoral program...:) ) may have less. The idea is to have both. And we "map" the continuum, which is self-reinforcing, between theory and practice.And we also provide evidence for this, such as "well, I tried this the other day, and that happened. It raised X, Y, Z questions about how I could have done it better." That sort of thing.
  • ok!
  • great idea. and I actually have a lot of ideas of how this can be applied in practice too - the reason I am researching this is because I want to make P2PU and other places better : )
  • They introduced "practitioners note" at British Journal of Educational Technology. In addition to the abstract, you have to answer three questions: What is already known about this, how does your article add to our knowledge, and how does this change what practitioners do? Interesting, both for us to see the answers, and for people to be forced to reflect on this when they submit an article.This is fantastic. This is exactly the bridge that needs to be built. But as you said, there's another bridge, too: to practice what you profess...

Marcy you are right on with that last bridge!
And a great example is how the quality of teaching at schools of education is often quite poor! :( It's better at OISE, than it is in many places in China, but that's only because the basic model which the profs themselves went through in grad school is a bit better... but they all do exactly the same, without very much critical thought.

Bucket 3: design of site, affordances of p2pu online environment.

• Stian will try to assemble ideas and forward to design team. Everyone are welcome to participate in discussions at p2pu-dev and p2pu-community of course. 
• This is really good. I think these are the critical issues: the plumbing, so to speak, of these environments.
• Task page placement - low visibility/accessibility
• Forum discussion threads - too much screen real estate, hard to navigate (I liked Stian's mockup of a compact alternative design.)
• Carryover tags or something that show frequency of references to keywords / topics. Kind of like a Wordcloud or ideacloud
• was just thinking about how we are using Etherpad - it would be nice if it could somehow slowly fade out the colors given time... so that if I go to a new section of the page, I can quickly see what has been "newly typed".  Mmmm, It does fade the color for people who are logged off at the present time, but your idea may be a more useful approach to color-coding.Yes it's hard to see what you already read and what you haven't yet read. I mean what has been newly added

Bucket 4: Politics
Well, I don't know if this is the best place to discuss the issues but I think somewhere it would be nice to discuss "how P2PU works".  Perhaps it's not inherently relevant to this course, but it has certainly shaped everyone's experience of P2PU.This becomes, for me, the "implications for the public interest" frame that's part of my default "what's in it for me", "what's in it for the work I do", "what's in it for my colleagues / friends", and "what's in it for the public interest" approach to, well, life. I spend most of my time on the political / policy implications of the sustainability / social justice equation / vector, and know how important it is to get enabling systems and technologies and processes right. So I'm more agnostic on the political dimension of this particular experience, because the mechanics are key, as well as how we participate and generate insights / content / knowledge.
I think a discussion about the dynamics of a space like this one is important to have (and keep having) - they will change depending on the nature of the course and the participants and I think its important to have an idea about what kind of 'community' or 'network' or whatever you want to call it is important from a facilitation p.ov. and a participant p.o.v 
Hm... I think we need to figure out *how* to have this sort of conversation!!! A question - how has "paragogy" worked with respect to the buildig of P2PU?  I don't know if it has been taken up in detail, I've just kept tinkering away at the theory.  On the other hand, if we ask the question in another way, I would say that P2PU has been built by peers -- Stian would be better at telling that story than me, because he's one of the people who has been involved from the beginning!  It would be lovely to get that "story" down.  (And I'd be happy to provide that analysis.) I think there's another political dimension here, which is the generation of new knowledge that hasn't been packaged / distributed by existing structures (Culture building?) . That these environments are enabling, they help give rise to new structures. For example, at this conference I was just at, there was a guy from Egypt. Well, we know what's been going on there (!) . But they're dealing with the challenge of building a new economic system, non-corrupt, more populist / pluralist. This technology provides a vehicle for helping them do that, by connecting him and others to folks all over the world who can funnel knowledge and expertise, thus helping the creation of new knowledge and expertise, as a new social and political and economic order emerges.Actually, interesting point: if you look at the places where traffic has been coming to piratepad, some of the top countries are places like Tunisia.  So I think the data backs up your point of view.  Actually, recently this has switched to more Eurpean countries http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/piratepad.net 
but point taken/made/agreed...
Lots of thoughts here! And in the spirit of the notion that 'it's not neccesarily the technologies but the ways people use them' it would be wonderful to have 'the story of P2PU' as a representation of a peer-based networked environment where real knowledge creation, as well as knowledge sharing, artifact building, resource creation work is going on (with all the messiness and difficulties included  of course)  Yeah, I wonder about the story (partly because it's still being made).  They say that victors write the history books.  But how do people "win" in P2PU ? (tacky question). well there's an interesting tension i think between the idea of these technologies engendering very rich communication and knoweldge creation and the difficult of sustaining a truly horizontal organizational structure (I'm thinking of your questoin earlier about *how to have a conversation about power/community dynamics in these new spaces.) There's something, too, about rotational expertise, that there are those experts who may be elevated on this or that, for this or that specific need, but said elevation is not permanently endowed--as it is in the Academy.New mindsets, indeed. Yes. A forward spiral. What P2PU does is create a more fluid power-sharing environment that ebbs and flows as contextual forces ebb and flow...

I think people "win" in P2PU by shaping their destiny, and relying on community in doing so. It's a blend of individual self-direction / constructivism, with appreciation for (a) historical knowledge; (b) peer-based knowledge; and (c) the need to tackle "wicked problems" in ways that build in reflection, the capacity to adapt, and a sense of humility YES. I like this three-pronged descescription.

@Joe: what's revolutionary with this is that the whole idea of "authority" becomes deconstructed and situational...