Building Communities - ROI Continued
As we begin to design our learning communities I search for evidence of “experts” who are building and advising on community design. As I am a visual learner I like these two graphs from Passionate - Creating Passionate Users which have relevance for community building. Previously I have looked at ROI and found this interesting graph on Community ROI which explains that there still needs to be investment but the community will provide pretty sound ROI with additional activities which are usually beyond the original investment.
“Think about all the things a strong user community can do for you: tech support, user training, marketing (evangelism, word of mouth), third-party add-ons, even new product ideas”……”Yes, there’s still a budget… but we’ve all seen third-party fan/user groups that got no support at all from “the mother ship” and yet thrived and gave users a level of support and training the company didn’t provide” (Creating Passionate Users).
The second image relates to user needs and I notice at the top of the hierachy is flow and engagement. From my readings and experience I would support flow and engagement being at the top of my list - we have all experienced the concept of “internet time”…..and we often wonder where has the time gone as we sit online day after day……mmm I must have been engaged or in Csikszentmihalyi moment of flow.
Csikszentmihalyi defines flow as ‘the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.’
CoPs, Reflections | Comment (0)Anyone out there? Weblogs - A one-way conversation?
In his article , Blogging as pedagogic practice: artefact and ecology Marcus O’Donnell answers a lot of questions I have been thinking and experiencing about blogging and how we are integrating it into our learning.
“In the simplest case, a weblog post is fully and only embedded into “a conversation with self”, a personal narrative used to articulate and to organise one’s own thinking. A single blogger could have several of such conversations simultaneously, returning to ideas over time. Next, each of the posts can trigger a conversation with others that can take several rounds of discussions as well.” (p5)
So far my experience has primary been personal, a discussion, reflection and dialogue with myself (thanks to John , an experienced blogger, I have had one comment and was able to reply!) but that has been about it. Not sure what is happening with others but on observation the comments have been few and far between….. (it goes without saying that I completely understand I must have something of relevance or interest to solicit a post…will try!)
Marcus O’Donnell goes on to say
“The personal conversation or the monologic aspect of blogging can be simply left to grow spontaneously or we can learn to work with a blog as an evolving hypertext essay by thoughtfully linking backwards and forwards to our own as well as other’s posts. In fact new software plug-ins encourage this type of practice by allowing authors to display a series of related-post-links with each entry.” (p5-6)
Ok so it got me thinking…. I will start linking and replying to others blogs as I way of saying “Hi I dropped by….or I like what your doing or agree or disagree with what you are saying…and here is a link or two!.”
Oh yeah…great distraction to getting the assignment done!
Happy Easter 
Observations of the speed of learning
Can’t quite believe it was only just over a week ago I sat in the E-Learning Experience Block Class as a Newbie. I was excited but definitely worried about how/if/what I was going to learn.
In the last week I have:
- Participated in a Collaborative Web space - Ning
- Set up this weblog from scratch - Edublogs
- Learnt a whole new range of technologies I didn’t know existed
My learning style has been definately influence by immersion and trial and error. I have completely thrown myself into the online space by spending time and concentrated effort on acheiving some tangible outcomes to show progress and have little milestones to remind myself of how far I have come.
For example, this Weblog is tangible evidence to me that I have acheived a certain level of competency in mastering the edublogs software.
Each day I would go back and re-look at my weblog and think of ways I could improve it.
I would add a widget here, delete a widget there and rearrange pages and categories. I am sure it will be forever a work in progress.
The readings have supported and reinforced my learnings however I realised I much prefer playing in the online space. I prefer to search for videos and slideshows which discuss and visually represent the theory.
Part of what is working for me is understanding my own learning style and finding knowledge and information in the online space which engages me and is relevant to my current learning focus.
I am still amazed it has only been 7 days…..
Reflections | Comment (0)Early Reflections of Learning with new technologies
Some observations so far:
Wanting to reach for instructions/help manuals or someone to guide the learning process
Reinforcement that we are on the right path or doing the right thing. Not really knowing what the norms or online social conventions are.
Support of the Ning community with profiles/faces and dialogue feels like an extension of a classroom (although meeting everyone F2F in a block class helped reinforce this)
Extended periods of time spent online as opposed to reading journal articles is a new phenomenon for most of the group (feelings of guilt are interesting - however it would be interesting to speak to younger generations who probably would not have those feelings)
Is there a perceived less value in the learning that is occurring with your weblog experiences than reading a journal..?
Perception would certainly be there as learners of a generation where this was the norm. It is about breaking these beliefs and perceptions with awareness and achievement. However at the moment definitely feel I am achieving more and learning more through the weblog experience.
Is that the tension between formal vs informal learning? Or between structured vs unstructured learning?
Threads of “feeling guilty” or words such as “playing” seem to denote this.
Is it informed by your expectations of University study - which is supposed to be about copious readings and formal essays?
University and particularly Masters study does conjure up images of being locked in a library with a maze of bookings/journals and trying to remember how to use the Dewey Decimal system or the latest technology “microfiche”.
Sigh of relief that times have changed…..
Reflections | Comment (0)
