Some thoughts about community, work, business and differential profit, but recognising that community management is here to stay. Perhaps community management however is a new research object for scholars, rather than the communities themselves? It seems to me that managers are creating subjects Click to read more
This post is prompted by a discussion recently with a journalist from the excellent ABC program Media Watch about the problems caused potentially by websites (specifically news-oriented sites) that allow users to comment on stories. At issue here, in particular, is the commentary (if one can call it that) to be found at Yahoo! news in Australia. The story went to air this week (“Not all things good in moderation“) An example not covered by Media Watch is the recent report of the arrest of a man in NSW alleged to have trafficked women for sex. The comments are revealing. One asserts “Thats why these young Thai and Philipino women come here for. They work in brothels while they await some old, dirty, fat, red neck Aussie man to marry them. You see them together everywhere, these girls are young enough to be there daughters or granddaughters. Its disgusting.”. While one reply corrects the poster, pointing out that the women had no choice, another is simply insulting “Aussie men marry Asian women because they are a much better alternative than bitter twisted hags like you”. None of the comments materially add to the debate except insofar as they reveal the … Click to read more
A small rant, considering the way Internet conversations might be an antidote for the communicative irrationality of politics-media complex, and constitute the foundations for a polity based in local arguments about norms. Click to read more
See also other posts including the first one, on Web Communications 101, which explains more of the context. Internet Communities and Social Networks 204 (basic unit description) One of the most authentic learning experiences we try to offer students in the BA (Internet Communications) is the network conference, the focal point and driving force for the unit NET204. In this unit, the whole learning journey is designed around a 3-week online asynchronous conference in the latter stages of the study period: the first part of the unit involves writing the conference paper, improving it after feedback, and also designing and discussing how to run the conference and promote it. Because every element of the unit is designed ‘around’ the conference, this unit is more than just an authentic assessment task: rather, it is an authentic learning experience, with the assessment almost ‘blending’ in with that experience. For example – the ‘conference paper’ is submitted, assistance given and then students can improve it, rather than in traditional approaches simply being done and marked. Very few activities in the real world involve submission of intellectual work that can’t be improved once completed. The conference ran first in 2010 and can be viewed … Click to read more
See also other posts including the first one, on Web Communications 101, which explains more of the context. Web Publishing 206 (basic unit description) Students doing the BA (Internet Communications) learn, in WEB101, to create a web presence that acts as the primary locus of their online identity, with links to other services and applications. In Web Publishing 206, the focus moves much more directly to writing effectively for the web (where writing can also including other media, but emphasises the written word). The authenticity of the assessments in Web Publishing 206 are principally mobilised by requiring students to write regularly, on their blog, exploring different aspects and techniques of good online writing. The blog is assessed in its own terms, and also as the basis for students’ reflective essays which ensure that students are thinking about (as well as doing) this crucial online communication task. Some examples of students’ blogs are: Eighteen Songs – WEB206 Weekly Blog Percussive Sweet Spot On the Internet, No-one Knows I’m A Blog Damien’s Web Publishing 206 Weblog | The Worlds of MMO’s Notably, most students make virtually no reference to the ‘study’ component of these blogs: these are genuine blogs addressing audiences outside … Click to read more
The first of several posts, each relating to a different unit of study at Curtin Introduction Over the past two years, students in Internet Studies, Curtin University studying the BA (Internet Communications) and related courses have been doing a lot of authentic assessment involving online activities. These assignments are authentic in that they are ‘true’ to the content of their studies (that is, aligned with the outcomes), ‘ real’ within the likely fields of employment for graduates, and ‘natural’ for the the emerging dominance of knowledge networking in society. More on these three variations on authenticity in a moment. Not all assessments fit this pattern (nor should they), but we have seen significant improvements in the motivation of students to complete and exceed the requirements of assignments, as well as a greater degree of creativity and expression suggesting deeper engagement with learning. It has also, we think, improved students’ attention to more scholarly traditional assignments (such as essays) because of the variety we engendered across all assignment tasks. (And, it should be noted: essays are authentic – to the lifeworld of academic which also remains important as well as work and elsewhere). Much of what makes these assessment approaches authentic … Click to read more
A brief analysis of differences in the way three groups of students responded to a unit of study in Internet Studies @ Curtin University, using Curtin’s mandatory Evaluate student survey tool. What the analysis shows is that, at least to some extent, surveys like this reveal more about the nature of the students and their responses to our styles of teaching (for better or worse) than the actual ‘quality’ of what we do. Click to read more
I recently answered an email from a colleague asking for advice about wikis, especially in the face of his university’s (inevitable) suspicion about anything that is not authorised, locked-down, served from the campus and generally (IMO) unusable for agile teaching and learning. I thought I would share an edited version of my views, since it neatly captures some of what I’ve been thinking about as part of my ALTC project on Web 2.0 and online learning. Agile teaching: responding to needs and concerns in the learning design of students’ experiences, activities and tasks which takes account of current events, new technologies in ways that institutionalised curriculum design and enterprise technology practices can’t cope with because they are too structured, clumsy and slow-moving. Agile teaching implies agility of mind as well as design and technology – it’s being playful, picking up and putting down, making limited and short-term commitments to particular ways of teaching and content, on the basis that it’s more fun, more engaging and ultimately more realistic as an educator and thinker to be moving forward, not circling the bureaucratic wagons Yes, we use wikis in our teaching, in two ways. First, some of the students naturally set … Click to read more
Update: as evidenced by this report, on unique visitors to FB and Google, industry commentators still don’t get the difference between these two giant net companies. Equally, FB putting realtime search into its environment (acquiring FriendFeed) also doesn’t in any way demonstrate equivalence between the two. Both reflect a relatively simplistic understanding of the net as a place for searching and for getting lots of visitors. (Think, for example, of google search is embedded inside many applications and services – Google doesn’t need people to go to its hompage!) Ultimately, reflecting on some twitter comments (thanks @baym and @amuir_netecol) from my last post , I am drawn to the comparison between Facebook as the massive department store within which all wants and desires are collected, strucutured and offered: some of the ‘departments’ are franchises, essentially leased from the main store, others are owned by the store. Just like department stores are designed to lure customers in, and make it hard to leave, with astute physical environments that prevent ‘walk through’, so too Facebook acquires as much of a user’s attention as possible and then distributes it across several applications, engagements and the like. While much of what is there is … Click to read more
I commented recently on Twitter that Facebook = the new AOL and, not surprisingly, then discovered that many others (e.g. Kottke.org had already had my apparently novel insight! (This effect can either deflate one’s confidence or increase it – I am not the first, but I am as wise as the crowd – some examples from the crowd thanks to googlesearch). And, clearly, Facebook is trying to create an experience of online life / augmented reality / social and cognitive networking that stands apart from, or is potentially isolated from the ‘web’ within which Facebook exists – though it claims to be embedding itself into the web, of becoming a sort of underlying social networking of people, data and places throughout the web, I actually see the plan as one to enable its users to never leave the facebook environment except when prompted to do so by something in facebook, and then be returned to facebook. So, in this model of online behaviour, Facebook users would look out over the low walls of the garden and observe interesting things elsewhere in the jungle of the net; would at times scurry out into that jungle, but otherwise would remain safely inside … Click to read more
