Community Call 9 August 2012
Standups What have you been up to? Short written notes (we'll discuss only if there are questions)
- Bekka
- Last bits of Berlin recon
- Beginning to think about rounds
- Getting the feel fo the admin side of the site (trying not to break anything)
- Email, talking to organisers
- Vanessa
- User testing of course creation
- User interviews
- Q: Do you have any interviews with course organizers that abandoned their courses? (I haven't abandoned totally.. but sort of. I'm perpetually working on one.. in my head)
- I can maybe help with users.
- Usertesting.com Screencasts <- love these!
- User 1: https://www.usertesting.com/videos/42K77HnmZFA%3d
- User 2: https://www.usertesting.com/videos/hS5QE8b0WtA%3d
- User 3: https://www.usertesting.com/videos/H%2b1aF%2bmmBtc%3d
- Usertestng research on the course signup/ creation flow is being done because there are questions about collapsing courses and challenges together - that's the short-term goal. Longterm goal is to create a process that makes it feel like you're already in the course (based on feedback from users)
- VMG created a protocol which allows newcomers to create a course, so we can see where people get stuck, what they like/don't like.
- Will follow this up with interviews with many different kinds of organisers
- These will all be put into a big and lovely report (see below)
- Report and design plan will be along Monday afternoon
- Dirk -> one thing that would be really interesting would be to see why people come to the platform, create a course and then disappear. Do they just run out of steam? Maybe with a survey or interview we can find out why they didn't carry through (see discussion on the mailing list)
- VMG: It would be good to track that now, especially since we have the "DRAFT" status, and it would be good to see how many of these are people who created test courses
- Webinar for Connected Educator Month
- Luka was there!
- Luka -> I was lurking more than following along... But it seemed like a bit of a hater-fest: people just wanted to talk about what was wrong with badges, and it was very hard for people who wanted to talk about what the context and the reasoning behind badges.
- VMG-> The design that we're working on for the assessment programme answers a lot of the motivation problems - P2PU has the solution! It's coming!
- I had wanted to talk more about other issues - see VMG blog post: http://info.p2pu.org/2012/08/09/reflections-on-badges-peril-or-possibility/
- Criticism is good (there shoul be a badge for that!)
- Also working closely with Mozilla people on this -> it was interesting in the call, becuase Mozilla have invested in badge issuers, as well as producing bdges of their own, so they are taking a neutral position.
- Jane -> wondering for when we create our own badges for school of open if we should go ahead with creating our own?
- Event planning for SoundCloud + P2PU event @MIT
- Mechanical MOOC copy things: http://mechanicalmooc.org/
- When is this launching, when should groups be made?
- Beginning to think about research agenda & DML
- Assessment plan testing with community members
- VMG <3 Dirk +1
- Philipp (away)
- Dirk
- Release (IT IS SPECTACULAR!) http://info.p2pu.org/2012/08/08/lernanta-release-2012-08-08/
- API (interested ot see if people use it and see what they request)
- Draft course indicator
- Notification format (waiting to see if people complain about this breaking their email filtering)
- etc
- Conversion tracking
- "Draft status" got appreciation in the Twitterverse -saw- thankshttps://twitter.com/mozzadrella/status/233242127952384000
- Jane -> Process question: if we have a feature request, how do we get the request to Dirk?
- Dirk -> There are several options - if it's a small thing, send an email to Dirk or the Help desk. If it requires discussion, sending it to the community list is the best way, especially if it is going to have an impact on other people.
- Depending on the size of the job, I might do it quickly, but better to get it into the project pipeline to be discussed in the dev call.
- Chris
- Jane
- Add your name (optional)
News of the week Written notes on what's going on in our world (bring up special announcements on the call)
- Blog posts you wrote
- Articles you read
- Initiatives you heard about
Key updates Super short updates about P2PU
- New courses to check out / help out (Bekka)
- Development priorities (Dirk)
- Platform direction
- CSS framework
- Been a while since we've heard from Chris (Chris, where are you?) but this will be the next big thing
- Mechanical MOOC
- VMG and Dirk to talk about mechanical MOOC details (when to send emails etc)
- Unified course
- Dirk to communicate some of the discussions we had in Berlin - pull the essentials out of the discussions and see how to talk about them, and then strat working on them
- Metrics
- State of the mustard (Philipp)
Agenda Core of the call. Focused on four types of conversations (invited guests, challenges you need help with, proposals you want feedback on, ideas you need collaborators for).
- Luka - question for the group: Do you think open education is open to everyone?
- Background on the question -> Luka is a Sociologist, researching online education, interviewing people from P2PU, Skillshare, Code Academy, etc
- Asking about networks, experiences, what they're learning and why
- Questions about access are the focus
- Dirk: I think there is a technology/infrastructure barier to entry
- Vanessa: language barrier, cultural barrier--but I think we strive to be for everyone. I've heard that who usually does it are overachievers who know the material anyway :(
- Bekka: I agree with Dirk - we're not providing anything for people who cannot get online. BUT this is not just a developing/developed world issue: many people are "digital natives (ugh, hate that phrase) but don't trust online education becuase it's free.
- Jane: I think there is a communication problem -- people don't know about it! or what it is. (CC issued this competition to attempt to resolve this, fyi: http://whyopenedmatters.org/)
- It's also jargony. Wtf is OER? Who cares? Why call it OER?+1
- Luka -> spent a good 6 months "going native" learning the jargon, getting a sense of what things mean, and the learning curve is steep, but there is good stuff there
- Luka -> people I am looking at thend to be 18-34 in the US
- Have been looking a lot at the idea of Cultural Capital and what this means
- In the US, people who are 1st generation college students (lower cultural capital) tend to defer to professors, less likely to question authority etc.
- With this in mind, how does the student who doesn't come from an educationally priveledged background interact with the online platform and content?
- reflections, preliminary findings from research
- Seems as though people who "do well" in the online space are those who are better at curating their content - they get the followers on Twitter, their blog posts get picked up, etc.
- Bekka -> So are we just reinforcing elites?
- Luka -> I think that this will happen no matter what, but it can't stop us from doing this stuff anyway (becuase there is so much good stuff coming out of the open education movement)
- blog on 21st century skills sans 20th century inequality: http://blog.demolesson.com/how-you-teach-21st-century-skills-without-reproducing-20th-century-inequality/
- People come to the higher education world and think of it as a "classless community" but this is not always the case.
- OER can make a difference here
- VMG -> Luka and I have discussed the idea that open education can cultivate/reinforce self-actualization, and nurture shy people, and make people feel comfortable in a learning community
- Luka -> One interviewee comes from a culture where people tend not to put themselves out there, but doing online courses has helped him/her feel more confident/
- Move from consuming to producing----VERY IMPORTANT, how can we flip folks from consuming to producing? maybe think about it as two sides of the same coin that doesn't necessarily require a flip? eg. in School of Open brainstorming, we realized dthat using was in same bucket as remixing, oh sure but I would say remixing is producing :) see we thought it was that originally, but creating came in its own bucket. maybe just encouraging this type of thinking -- like when you share something on the web that you read, it's definitely part of reusing/remixing... see badges brainstorm! we can talk later
- Cool--something that's important to project-based learning is that learners aren't just consumers of media (ie ipad, play games) but makers of media--writers, artists, make games
- Online ed is about the feeling of having someing to "offer" and it's important to make people feel like they have something to offer - the expereince of evaluating people's work can be something that builds a connection - that's where the actualisation takes place.
- Open ed has the potential to let anyone in on this experience.
- VMG -> within project based learning this move from consuming to producing is really important, and it's key for us to help people feel like they are contributing, in many different ways.
- Next cycle of rounds - 17 October
General discussion and questions
- Anything else that just needs to be said out loud
