FSLT - to blog...or to comment...hmmmm

It's week 2 in FSLT, and the topic of this week is group participation. One of the things mentioned this week by the facilitators are the roles that people take in group work, which was quite interesting, as I could see people in my past group work experience taking on those roles consciously or subconsciously. In the MOOC forums there is quite a lively discussion this week (as there was last week), which got me thinking.

One of the things that I've been pondering is the mode of participation.  In MOOCs like Change11 and CCK11 the main mode of participation seems to have been Blogging, and aggregation of those blog posts through a daily newsletter.  Other modes included tweeting, posting on delicious, and using the basic commenting systems on gRSShopper.  It is true, at least for me, that in these two MOOCs I did not miss the discussion board element and I fully embraced blogging (and commenting on other people's blogs) as a way to participate and follow the learning action.

In MobiMOOC11, EduMOOC11, FSLT12, BonkOpen, and LAK11 we had some sort of management system in place that had discussion boards  FSLT12 and LAK11 used Moodle, BonkOpen used Blackboard, and MobiMOOC and EduMOOC used Google Groups.  In these systems, while I have blogged a bit (mostly a meta-learning and meta-cognitive pondering type of blog post), the main action is happening in the discussion forums. I know that FSLT12 has a blogroll, which I consult a couple of times per week (but not as frequently as the daily CCK11 and Change11 newsletters), and load up my Pocket (aka "read it later") account.

I was actually wondering if I should blog more...or if it's OK to not blog as much, but participate in discussion forums. It seems to me, that my own personal strategy is "biggest bang for the buck" - so wherever there are more people, that's where I participate. Since time is a zero sum game, any time blogging, is time spent away from discussion boards, and vice versa.  What do fellow learners think?


Comments

Apostolos K. ("AK") said…
Hi there AK. It's a while since I have been in a MOOC but I have a number of RSS feeds in my reader which allow me to get an idea of what's on the minds of some of the people I found interesting.

I would not have seen this question (or other stuff you have written in the interim) if it had been locked away in a discussion forum. So I hope you continue blogging.

More generally, my own preference (expressed in CCK11) is for people to use open searchable/feedable channels for public or semi-public communication with trackback/pingback to enable the following of conversational threads where everyone is in control of access to their own content.

Unfortunately, take-up of this idea seems to be hampered by a perception that it is harder than it is, and the number of active independent voices is swamped by those who choose closed and limited systems like Facebook and LinkedIn.

But I am not ready to give up yet and I hope you don't either.
May 31, 2012 at 2:43 PM
Apostolos K. ("AK") said…
Hi Apostolos - this question came up in CCK08 and I ended up writing a paper on it with Roy Williams and Sui Fai John Mak

Mak, Sui, Fai, J., Williams, R. & Mackness, J. (2010). Blogs and Forums as Communication and Learning Tools in a MOOC. In Networked Learning Conference, Aarlborg (pp. 275-284). Retrieved from http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/organisations/netlc/past/nlc2010/abstracts/Mak.html

I don't think there's any right or wrong with this. It's a matter of personal preference and where you think you can learn the most. It depends on how much you want fast interaction with other partipants - which is what happens in the forums - or how much you want a slower, possibly more reflective response to the ideas emerging - in which your blog would probably be more appropriate.

As you say - it's difficult to keep up with both.

Jenny
 
June 1, 2012 at 2:56 AM
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