my PhD weblogs...

[Note: this entry was posted in 2006]

Last year I started a PhD with Sian and Hamish. I have a couple of weblogs, which until recently have been closed to comments - hmmm... I used them as content management, rather than as weblogs. I am probably going to merge them into a single weblog and put them up on my own server space (and get them out of beloved, yet crusty, old Blogger). The URLs are here, but will change when they merge... and move:

The Written World
The Middle Place

[Edit Nov-06: Neither of these are being used. Please go to the active The Written World weblog.]

assignment website

The website for the Introduction to Digital Environments for Learning is: here. The website will form the submitted part of my assessment. The blog is around 8000wds, so too long for that purpose. I link extensively to my blog posts, so sadly you may end up reading a lot more than 2500 wds!

analysis of results (n=2!!)

The following quotes were taken from A-M's and Ava's wiki.

AMS: 21.12.04:
Here's where I confess - I don't like blogs. I like other people's, but I don't like my own. I don't keep diaries for the same reasons. I suppose I just don't feel comfortable with airing my mental 'dirty laundry' in public! I think a lot of it has to do with the Benfield article's suggestions about sounding silly.

Ava: 21.12.04 11pm
This is very interesting. I feel quite differently. I like the 'work in progress' form that the blog has. I like developing ideas and keeping track of where they came from. I like the assimilation and processing of the new info, or the discarding of it when you recognise that it's really not needed. For example in my first few blogs I did a lot of paniced reading on RSS feeds thinking that this was crucial. Pah. Crucial schmucial. And yet this info is sitting there for me if I should want to read it again.

I love blogs but A-M doesn't. I'd like to suggest that blogs suit me because, as per my results in the learning styles questionnaire, I am a reflective and sequential learner. I like to do things on my own, in little bits at a time. The blog is perfect for me.

A-M by comparison had a rating of '1' for reflective which meant she was neutral for active/reflective pair. She did have a reasonably strong global rating of '5'.

When you think about it it is exactly as you might expect isn't it? The bloggers are the ones who like to go away and work by themselves one step at a time. Someone who likes to work with other people and prefers to work from the outside in might not feel as comfortable with blogging.

It's interesting to note that I didn't like the wiki, because I don't like working in groups where it isn't clear what each person has contributed (I have this thing about 'owndership'!). With the wiki your contributions can be deleted, edited or moved. Argghh! I don't mind working in groups if we all do our own little thing and meld it together for submission.

In this page A-M said that she liked how you can "create a totally organic structure that evolves and grows and changes over time." about wikis. Whereas on this page about blogs I said something similar about blogs: "I like the 'work in progress' form that the blog has. I like developing ideas and keeping track of where they came from." Both of us like how our favoured tool let's us add things to it and it grows and changes. I like to have control over my tool though, whereas A-M is more willing to share. [Note: I've not used a wiki collaboratively before, so I don't have experience with it to draw from.]

on 'working together'

In many ways this project was a total disaster. It started off really well though. I loved our topic, and we were both quick to set up our respective blogs, and A-M the wiki. She put up a couple of pages to get us started and I set myself up an account and tried it out and found it really easy to use. I wasn't that impressed with it, but it was easy to use, and that was significant for me.

Because I knew *nothing* about wikis prior to this, and because we were meant to compare wikis to blogs I thought I had better get my head down and do some background reading about them. I was happy to do this in the privacy of my blog. We had agreed to use the wiki as a discussion board and to keep an eye on each other's blogs. A-M was not able to post anything in her blog except the first entry, and then make a couple of contributions in the wiki.

I just kept on working away at my blog, building up a compendium of articles I'd read, and thoughts I'd had about the subjects I was researching. However given the lack of input from A-M (and not knowing when she was going to return) my research had no focus and went all over the place. I covered subjects as wide-ranging as RSS feeds, learning styles, lurking, wikis, blogs, discussion boards, online communication. They were each related to the previous post, but they did go off on a tangent. Our remit was to compare what was good about blogs with what was good about wikis. But I found myself have to define what 'good' was. And everything fed into everything else. As a result I went off on a couple of tangents that ended up being wastes of time. An example is the RSS feeds. I honestly read about 8 articles on this cos I thought it was a common element between blogs and wikis and that it was crucial that I understood it. I still don't understand it, except to know that it isn't crucial!

I was never completely certain how the wiki was to fit in, and I sort of resented doing my private thinking in my blog (which took time and effort), and then (potentially) put it up in a wiki to have the same conversation over again. However, had it worked, and had A-M been able to commit then I might well have different ideas on the subject.

I learnt a lot about myself in this project, about what works well for me, and about how I work with other people. I did also learn a lot about blogs, wikis, online communication, lurking, learning styles and various other things through my research. And I really enjoyed it.

learning styles

From the learning styles questionnaire by Soloman and Felder Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire, my (Ava's results) and A-M's (A-M's results) differed in 2 of the 4 categories.



I want to quickly get some descriptions of the learning styles. These were extracted from Felder and Soloman's: Learning styles and strategies.

[a]. Active learners (ACT): tend to retain and understand information best by doing something active with it--discussing or applying it or explaining it to others. Like group work.
[b]. Reflective learners (REF): prefer to think about it quietly first. Prefer to work alone.

[c]. Sensing learners (SEN): tend to like learning facts
[d]. Intuitive learners (INT): often prefer discovering possibilities and relationships

[e]. Visual learners (VIS): remember best what they see--pictures, diagrams, flow charts, time lines, films, and demonstrations.
[f]. Verbal learners VRB): get more out of words--written and spoken explanations. Everyone learns more when information is presented both visually and verbally.

[g]. Sequential learners (SEQ): tend to gain understanding in linear steps, with each step following logically from the previous one.
[h]. Global learners (GLO): tend to learn in large jumps, absorbing material almost randomly without seeing connections, and then suddenly "getting it."

So where A-M and I differed was that I am a very reflective learner, whilst she was neutral. And I am a sequential learner, whilst she is a global learner.

feedback & JSB

I am reading the John Seely Brown stuff, especially that which relates to lurking and learning. This quote of his appears all over the web: "The culture of the Internet allows you to link, lurk, and learn. You can move from the periphery to the centre safely asking a question—sometimes more safely virtually than physically, and then back out again. It has provided a platform for perhaps the most successful form of learning that civilization has ever seen". John Seely Brown sees non-active participation (lurking, and read-only) as having positive aspects within online learning communities. So I am trying to read a little more about the non-interactive component of online learning (to contrast it with the interactive [feedback] of discussion boards).

I also found this quote about how people learn: "Because many new technologies are interactive, it is now easier to create environments in which students can learn by doing, receive feedback, and continually refine their understanding and build new knowledge." I've lost the reference so will try to find it tomorrow. It's from the book 'How People Learn' by Bradford, but I can't find the web article that discussed it... it was interesting. I'll have another bash tomorrow.

I'd like to hover for a moment over the last part of the sentence: "...continually refine their understanding and build new knowledge" and see how it fits in with the quote the Williams paper that I looked at in my 'blogger = lurker?' post: "Discussion and sharing experience have been identified as two of the most effective means by which adults learn". The way that lurkers (and bloggers) would refine and consolidate would be *away from* the online community. This makes me wonder whether lurkers are actually getting the most from the learning experience? Is their lurking detrimental of their learning?

category of users

This is an interesting paper For Whom Should You Design Your Community? which suggests that there are 3 categories of users in an online community, each of which differs by a multiples of 10. So, for every 1000 lurkers there are 100 participants and 10 key contributors. He defines each category as follows:

1. lurkers - people who show up, but from whom you will never hear a peep
2. participants - people who show up, occasionally join a conversation, even more rarely start one
3. key contributors - people who show up, start conversations, join those in progress, help newbies, evangelize the site and their role in it and, in general, make a huge difference in the site's value to everyone else, including lurkers and participants.

He writes several paragraphs on designing communities to attract Key Contibutors (since they attract multiples of 10 and 100 to the site). I thought it would be interesting to list some of the adjectives that he uses in reference to them... as a contrast to lurkers.

Key Contributors are busy, focused, aware of the value they bring to a community; expect efficiency from a Web experience, have crowded lives; don't browse or surf, aim and drive; want to find out what's new that's of specific interest to them in your site... make their daily contribution... and get on with what's next; this isn't their life, but it is (or can be) an important part of their identity; have very low tolerance level for noise, flames, spam, and other garbage; sites which do a good job of moderating their content attract them; they may or may not expect to be rewarded or recognized, use a system of ranking, peer review and honor, or symbology.

lurking, reasons why

Here is a 42-page PDF which I may skim over the main points at a later date: Reasons why lurkers don't post:

- shy about posting
- want to remain anonymous
- posting is of no value to me
- messages or group low quality
- wrong group
- long delay getting response
- concern about aggressive responses
- fear of commitment
- new members treated poorly
- nothing to offer (22%)
- others have said it
- still learning about the group (29%)
- had no intention of posting
- no requirement to post
- just reading/browsing is enough (53%)
- not enough time
- do not know how to post
- too many messages

Below are more reasons which people may choose to lurk. It is from an interesting research project by Jacquie McDonald and colleagues (12-page MSWord).

- feel generally happy with outcomes and are learning/sharing in their own ways
- wish to hoard their information
- fear (of losing face, letting their colleagues down, or misleading them)
- are in the listening and learning stages
- think it’s not polite to interrupt or to “speak and run”
- have external time constraints
- feel it meets their learning needs, their level of commitment, and schedule needs
- feel keeping relevant requires recent involvement in online dialogue, so sporadic attendance or absence leads to lurking
- some people are naturally cautious or slow to react
- feel that participation is not a priority
- feel that a genuine invitation has not been extended to allow them to participate at the core
- struggle with language
- lost and overwhelmed and don’t want to say so
- the community may feel impermeable
- the practice may be too hard for just anyone to master
- may just want to check out the community
- may have had off-putting experiences when first encountering the community
- may be cultural or personality issues at play that are not visible even to the lurker
- shy away from any responsibility
- inability to identify with the community members

blogger = lurker?

I am just going to pick up on a couple of points raised in the Williams paper.

Williams quotes two papers stating "Discussion and sharing experience have been identified as two of the most effective means by which adults learn". This got me thinking about the potential for imbalance, when this adult learning strategy is not fully engaged with by students who read-only the discussion postings and reflect privately.

Williams refers to a comment by a student who states they are participating in the course, by their lurking. "I am participating even if I am not involved in discussion." This is a valid point - the student is contributing to their learning by reading and considering the posts. However the other students are not benefiting from his assimilation of the material - the knowledge traffic is uni-directional. Indeed Williams states "...non contributors may be meeting their learning needs, but the wider group needs active participants to 'value add' for all members in order to support the long term sustainability of the community". For the learning community to thrive there needs to a shared commitment to work together, and this involves student contributions. Or in the words of Reingold "A place where everybody builds social capital individually by improving each other's knowledge capital collaboratively." and "... collaborations that return individual effort with a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts."

A weblog does not directly contribute to the learning community knowledge capital unless there is an RSS feed, or active commenting. Blogging by its nature is private and so bloggers assimilate, process and reflect in private. If these assimilations are not recited in the discussion posts or chatroom conversations of the online course then the private learning of the blogger does not benefit the learning community (in the sense that it is not contributing to its knowledge capital)*. This lack of public engagement with the learning community is analogous to the lurker. Both lurker and blogger are actively involved in learning (reading, assimilating, reflecting) but may not contribute to Reingold's "knowledge capital" of the learning community.

*[Note: I acknowledge that I am focusing on the process rather than the outcome. Different learning styles involve differing degrees of interaction. The learning outcomes do not reflect the learning process].

I wonder whether the type of learner who lurks is also the one who is attracted to blogging? It might be interesting to note here that I *loved* blogging, whereas A-M wasn't so enthused. You can see from our learning type profiles: Ava's results (MSWord) and A-M's results (PDF) that we are different learning types. I'll look into that in a little more detail later.

A-M's contribution

Until yesterday A-M hasn't been able to contribute to this assignment. So we decided that since I've put so much effort into it we should work separately, and submit separately. A-M has read my blog and been inspired by some of my findings, and will pick those up and combine with her own research. She intends to follow my blog, and er... forgive me if I misquote as I don't have her email to hand... possibly pick up more inspiration(?). I don't have the time or the desire to follow A-M's blog, but I will dip into the wiki - both for the experience of using it (since I haven't used one before), and to share ideas with A-M.

time to reflect

Continuing with Greg Benfield's article. This is also posted in the wiki.

Benfield comments that it can be more satisfying to read a student's posting after they've had time to consider and engage with the learning material, than it is to hear a spontaneous response in a face-to-face tutorial. He recogises that "One of the great advantages of the threaded discussion is the time it allows for reflection, and the possibility for editing/refinement of one’s remarks.". Yet there is clearly a conflict in students because they recognise that the quality of what is produced 'should' be greater than that of spoken word - and this produces anxiety. Students may need the opportunity in the learning environment to explore the learning material and take guesses at what might be happening. Face-to-face comms evidently support spontaneous exploratory statements, whereas some (most? many?) students feel that message board postings are less forgiving of their 'mistakes' - and these mistakes are there for all to see, for perpetuity. This supports the assertion that tutors should reinforce the message that it is OK to make mistakes in the learning environment... and it is better to make your mistakes in public message boards (and be corrected) than alone in private blog and have them consolidated by silence [see: "it's OK to make mistakes"].