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Course Design Orientation
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How is your course going? Let us know!
Go back to: General discussion
Hello course organizers,
We're a few weeks into courses now. I'm really curious to hear from all of you about how your courses are going.
- How many folks were accepted into your course and how many are still participating?
- If you're having meetings, are they going well? What tools are you using?
- Are there any particular discussions that are worth sharing? Any cool projects participants are working on?
- Have you encountered any big barriers to learning or participation? If so, what do you think they might be?
Don't be shy. We need to hear from you!
My participants seem really excited by what they are learning. my course is very hands on so they can see the result of what they are doing.
My course is around 10 people and I think I still have about 8 people participating.
* I accepted 75, expecting around 20 to really participate, with 10 projects or more at the end. Only a few people have dropped, but participation in chats has been low. Only a few people have asked questions or shared links.
* We're using Chat a few times per week so that everyone can connect at least once. I used an EtherPad to see people's time availability and to offer collaboration on walkthroughs.
* People haven't been sharing links, but we've just arrived at a step where creative, visual projects are possible. Hoping for cool projects sooner rather than later.
* People with knowledge about the first topic had a great chat, but we alienated some newbies. The second topic (ongoing) was easy to set up, but difficult to explain (similar to when your first Java course teaches you to write the main function and only explains the syntax later). We couldn't adequately explain one concept, and the chat focused on that over sharing people's work.
How many folks were accepted into your course and how many are still participating?
>> 20 were accepted in my cofacilitation. But now just 7 are actively participating.
If you're having meetings, are they going well? What tools are you using?
>> I am using join.me for the visualization of my screen when solving exercises. and collabedit for initial chat (vefore join.me) and code and ask help.
Are there any particular discussions that are worth sharing?
Any cool projects participants are working on?
Have you encountered any big barriers to learning or participation?
>>> Users said that there are too many email from p2pu from the other facilitator, what disturbs their attention. I created a group for them, that helps in this.
Thats is for now.
Email notifications are an issue for many. I pointed everyone at the information on how to limit emails to a digest but still every new page creation and comment to the forum is notified. Can you explain how you used groups to limit the number of messages? Thanks!!
Hi,
it does not limit, but helps to focus the messages on just one place. then the guys start to focus their attention just to the google groups i created,letting out the forums and others. i know it is not cool to "kill" the forum, but it is better for them and for me...
that is it.
I accepted about 125. With that many people, it's a bit hard to tell what percentage are participating. Unsurprisingly, there are some individuals with many forum posts and many with one or none.
I really like having a big class because I don't feel that I need to "force" people to participate; there's always someone that will step in if others don't want to. They're really getting into the spirit of the P2P aspect as well; someone recently had a problem with buggy code and someone else helped debug!
All the courses are experiencing the same phenomena: Participation Inequality.
Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html
It shows up even in this "Course Design Orientation" course. Here are the numbers on a chart:
The author suggests these strategies to change the slope of the participation curve:
The first three of these strategies are generally technical and platform related while the last are more qualities of the community.
Point taken, Dan!
however, we may find some consolation from those who argue that lurking may not be seen as a form of non-learning
According to Nonnecke and Preece (2000)
"Lurking is not free-riding but a form of participation that is both acceptable and beneficial to most online groups. Public posting is only one way in which an online group can benefit from its members. All members of a group are part of a large social milieu, and value derived from belonging to a group may have far-reaching consequences".
Nonnecke, B. and Preece, J. (2000) Silent Participants: Getting to Know Lurkers Better? Chapter 6. pp. 110-132. In. From Usenet to CoWebs. Available online: http://www.cis.uoguelph.ca/~nonnecke/research/silentparticipants.pdf Accessed on: 4th September 2003
I also found this other interesting comment, which I think applies a lot to what we do at P2PU:
Learners generally like being part of a peer group that they can interact with, whether as an active participant or as a passive onlooker. That is why in OpenLearn the OU has added tools and technologies that encourage and enable sharing, collaboration, and knowledge generation between educators and educators, educators and learners, and learners and learners—as much as its own content
and to have much of that interaction recorded for others to look at and review." this quote is from page 160 of the chapter: Widening Participation in Education through Open Educational Resources
by Andy Lane
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262033712pref1.pdf
Zipf law ftw!
#1, let's ask *which* Zipf law, or, rather, which Zipf laws -- and what they really mean. Working with data from this course *and* the other courses could be really informative in this regard!! Low-frequency posters in this course may be high-frequency posters in their own courses. It would, at any rate, make a very interesting 3D plot.
#2, I'm thinking back to high school, when attendance was mandatory, but excellence was not. We can again ask what the percentile system for SATs or what-not "really means". For example, 95th percentile score in any one of the subject areas was around 700 points (http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat-percentile-ranks-...). Such a score is approximately typical for students attending "top public universities" (http://collegeapps.about.com/od/sat/a/SAT_Public_Univ.htm).
It is presumably NOT appropriate to equate verbosity and value added (some people like myself just talk a lot!), but speaking of SATs, that's apparently what SAT assessors do! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#MIT_study).
Note that, as Marisa mentioned^*, value added and *value delivered* are issues to keep separate. If we had "attention data" (e.g. perhaps in the form of rich Google Analytics or something similar) about who spent how much time looking at what, we might be able to get some interesting numbers out about the "transactions" involved. (But this would only be a sketch.) Let's see if we can clarify the questions that are worth asking here.....
#3, how did you gather the data to make that graph? Counting by hand, or do you have a data dump of some sort?
*: Actually that's not what Marisa mentioned, but is related to what Marisa mentioned.
Very interesting, I'll try to adapt the advices to my course. For example try to imagine an activity for "playing" with the "I like" bulb at each message to see if it turns easier to participate at some spot...
Hey all, some notes from my course: I accepted 17 people from an initial 10 seats, but the sign-up tasks and profiles were very good, and I knew some people would drop out, so I added 7 more to the course anyway.
At first I went for a full p2p model, opened the initial syllabus, and encoureged people to change it, but all I got was a couple of comments/suggestions, and no one really went ahead and changed anything by themselves.
My course is about Open Wonderland development, which is a virtual worlds toolkit, something similar to second life. We meet in the world itself once a week, and we use asynchronous communication out of the meeting hours (forums, wiki, blogs, etc.)
The first two weekly meetings were 'crowded', but participants were not really following the topics in the syllabus, so conversations were unfocused and meetings felt (at least for me) very unstructured. So for the 3rd week I decided to go for a more instructional approach and I organised a lecture on the topics that people had reported difficulty with. And the meeting was almost empty!
The people that turned up happened to be the ones that have no problems with the material, so at this stage I don't know if I scared the others with the progression to a more instructional way, or it just happened that they couldn't make it for that meeting.
Communication is still happening, so I will continue with the course as planned; it will be all group work from now on. So let's see how many participate in the groups. That should give me an idea of how many are still following the course.
cheers,
Jos
I am really enjoying my course and learning a lot.
I had 84 applicants and accepted 41. (My original plan was to max out at 25.) Of those 41, three officially dropped out after we started. (I did invite people to do this before we started.) Week 0-1 participation was 100%+ -- people were going crazy. After week 3, participation fell off. Multiple reasons for that I thing: http://www.k12opened.com/blog/archives/441)
The peer learning aspect of the course has gone really great. Everyone has taken on the role of both learner and coach/teacher in their discussions.
Our attempts at synchronous chats have not gone so well. They have not been well attended, but those who have participated have liked them (and people have said they wanted asynchronous communications, we just haven't been able to work out the logistics).
The biggest barrier people have reported is the communications situation. Because of the large number of participants, the large number of forums posts, etc., most have just turned all notifications off. Even my broadcast messages are not being read by most people. This was been one of the problems with arranging chats as well. I also think that some have just been overwhelmed by the volume.
I think that next time I will require an email address for all participants as a part of the application and communicate that way instead.
Because my class is focused on marketing projects for actual enterprises (businesses, causes, hobbies, etc.) and most of the assignments are geared toward that, we've had many report exciting progress.
One participant said "My website... needs to be worked on, and because of this class, its going to get done." Another said "Up until now my mission was incredibly broad and unfocussed, actually pretty bad compared to the standards we have been looking at in the other forum discussion....My partner and I spent a fair amount of time this evening trying to narrow down what I actually want to do...This process will definitely help me to focus on what I really want to do with my business."
The real fun will come in weeks 6-9 when participants will be doing the project of their choice. I just hope everyone hangs in until then!
I accepted 9 out of 16-ish applications, 2 of the accepted haven't joined us yet. We have 2 actively participating members, 3 additional who've done some work and 2 silent. I've written 2 reviews of the action so far:
* Week 1
** http://www.danoff.org/leftinfront/?p=1603
* Weeks 2 & 3
** http://www.danoff.org/leftinfront/?p=1612
Hi there,
Participation in my course about MediaWiki, which started with 20 accepted applications (20 was the maximum I set) and some declined, has been quite slowered after week #3. I think it started pretty well with the majority of participants introducing themselves and following the introductory questions and eliciting of first days.
However, at some point between week #2 and #3 we lost momentum and some active people, maybe due to the lack of practical tasks (installing, customizing, editing, etc) as one of the students suggested me in a private message.
I'm doing my best to engage people now that we have entered a practical phase that will continue until the end of the course. % participants I think are doing well and still making/learning stuff as described in week #4, and I just sent a private message to some others that did well or showed interest previously.
A kind of last call for them not to get lost before we enter into more customizing and advanced stuff...
I want to write a quick note - it's not data, it's a conclusion. Next time around, I will think in terms of CONSTANT RECRUITMENT as well as nurturing the active people. Recruitment should happen among lurkers, but also from larger networks - and for that later one, we need the course to be plugged and visible and alive in larger networks. Those of math courses that use LearnCentral's webinar network, for example, are gaining energy and people from there, which activates lurkers. The MOOC CCK11 I am observing also does that.
"Recruitment should happen among lurkers, but also from larger networks - and for that later one, we need the course to be plugged and visible and alive in larger networks."
This so well sums up my thought about why mathematics may be easier to learn in a "problem-solving space" than in a "course". Such a space should accommodate both casual, incidental learners and dedicated, high-achievers.
There may be ways to usefully blend the nonlinear networked space and the structured course, and use them to energize one another.... But isolating people in a course seems to be precisely the wrong move, at least in the online informal learning context.
Does this have any ramifications for students in formal education (high school or college?). It's long been my feeling that the tripartite textbook/teacher/way-of-thinking-about-things kills creative thought and limits learning.
Perhaps we are seeing more general support for a very far reaching and at-least-somewhat-similar conclusion??
PS. This came up in a side-thread with Dan Diebolt - to ponder: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/math-and-the-city/
I really like this suggestion. Although we did not apply the idea in our course - in the sense that we did not plug the course into a larger network - we thought that increasing visibility of course activities through a blog could be a way to broaden the pool of potential participants outside the course. Well, although people outside the course had not participated at all, they have certainly lurked, as the number of views per blog entry shows.
Another point I want to make is that P2PU courses can be forms of interest-driven networks in which people share specialized and niche interests of various kinds. In these interest-driven networks, people may find new peers outside the boundaries of their local community. They can also find opportunities to disseminate their work to online audiences, and to gain new forms of visibility and reputation.
I wonder if this can be something to leverage motivation on.
Perhaps we can apply the idea next week by inviting participants in this discussion to join in the course-design exercise I have planned...
+1 Constant Recruitment
I've been thinking a lot about "rolling participation" and how the current course model we encourage doesn't support that. It would be interesting to test out a fluid "study group" model of participation for a course, where entering and leaving (as groups) is encouraged with some element of facilitation of the process - think about the "rounds" you were taught to sing as children..
My quick responses:
1. We have about 24 people in the class, about half of whom have been of varying levels of active.
2. I'm using the Forums and a once-a-week live discussion on Elluminate. I think the live discussions have been the most interesting and valuable. However, a good number of people who aren't in the course have wandered into the live discussions. They have been interested/interesting and have contributed to the dialogue, but it also makes things kind of disjointed because they haven't done the assessments or read the other material on the forums.
3. Nothing special to report here.
4. It's really cool having people from all over the world, but that also presents a challenge in terms of finding a time that works to talk and having a common reference from which to discuss issues. And, mostly, people are just busy and haven't participated as fully as they might have liked (myself included).
It's a real different approach to learning, and I think it just takes some time for people to get accustomed to this mode. This is my first time leading stuff in a format like this and using Elluminate, etc., so my learning curve may be damping the effectiveness of the class somewhat. But what can you do? We all start somewhere...
Hi Carol,
I had to check that I had not written this message myself -- I have certainly been meaning to write a response to the discussion but between facilitating my P2PU class: "Find, Author, Share OER" and regular work -- time has been short.
I have about 25 in the class, only about half who are active. I use the forums and Elluminate (almost weekly). Sometimes I have prearranged someone in the class to present a short tutorial during our live Elluminate, other times someone does an impromptu demo -- these are valuable.
Working with about 5 timezones is challenging and we have settled on one time that meets most needs -- i.e. not the middle of the night for anyone unless they like that.
In addition to weekly curriculum/discussion, about 5 team projects have been kicked off with varying members. Week to week one team project is making progress and others are not. Losing a team leader has seemed to kill off the most popular project unfortunately. I'm trying not to be attached to outcomes of the team projects because I think the most important takeaways from these projects are the relationships formed and the "group think" of sifting through ideas.
My best guess is that one or two projects will have something to present/report at the end of the course.
Hello!
I've been invited to P2PU community and I don't grasp how the practicals work in P2P. I grasp the general ideas and I know about Edupunk and related subjects.
The practical side is a confusing. I was directed to the course of course creation as a initial experience. There were a lot of people asking technical questions about the course as if you should know how the site worked. And it's not easy to find out.
I think there should be clear ways to adress newbies.
Hi,
Lluc, I have the same problem : I'm new and I don't know how to start ! Were can I create the course draft ? Who can guide me / us ? Is it a defined time to create the course, or to take the course ? There are so many informations, so many pages, I'm lost...
Yesteraday we finished the course "LibreOffice Basico", just 4 weeks. 8 participants no one retired, however only two participants sent 1 and 2 of the 8 tasks. I invited to stay in the group to the people that wanted to help to organize it's next version and to join the translation effort of LibreOffice.
Just for clarity am I understanding your numbers correctly with the following math:
(2 participants * 2 assignments ) / (8 total participants * 8 total assignments)
4 / 64 = 6 %
Six percent of the planned work was completed? If so these number are NOT different than what other courses experience and it makes me wonder what the core problem is as it is hard to justify a course organizer pouring hours into a course if this is the outcome.
Mi hope is not from this world
Today we are beginning a new course about command line (in spanish):
http://www.p2pu.org/general/interprete-de-comandos-y-unix
It is also short (1 month). There will be also a presential part, I hope in some cities (the presential part requires donations, there are already dates for two cities in Colombmia, Soacha and Barranquilla, if you read spanish see https://www.pasosdeJesus.org/index.php?pag=m3 )
Inscriptions began on 9.Apr, initially I expected 15 people, there are already inscribed 19.
Vladimir: Congratulations on your 19 sign-ups :)
I can't read Spanish, but your course looked quite cool, and its excellent that P2PU is starting to get courses going in other languages. The presential part is especially exciting. Please report back to us here how those go. Something which may be helpful for organizing those off-line events is Skillshare (http://www.skillshare.com/)
Thank you Charles, now there are 32 and I had to close sign-ups. I sent a course idea to http://www.skillshare.com/ some days ago.
In this study group "Interprete de comandos y Unix" there is more activity, the results of tasks of the first week are on a spreadsheet (puntos.ods) attached to: http://www.p2pu.org/general/node/27673/document/27674
We already had two chat sessions, however yesterday in our latest chat session someone trolled us. After his/her "contributions" some people exited the chat room unfortunately. He/she was rude with me for some minutes with around 6 participants in the channel.
Since I was not channel operator, because I didn't create the group --cause I got late unfortunately-- I couldn't execute the /kick command on time --after the troller went away with the collaboration of the other participantes I became channel operator.
I'm preparing for the next time, being operator continously of the channel, my method is: (1) in a server I have started tmux (multiplexer like screen) (2) I installed and use ircII and connected to freenode to the channel of the course (ircII -c "#p2pu-interprete-de-comandos-y-unix" vtamara chat.us.freenode.net), (3) Since I entered first to the channel I can become its operator (/mode #p2pu-interprete-de-comandos-y-unix +o vtamara), (4) To avoid being disconnected while I'm away it seems to me that staying in the /help prompt is useful. If the server goes offline I will have to make the previous steps again.
In case of being trolled by (let's say troller) it is useful to execute "/whois troller" to track the IP, it is also useful that the operator executes "/kick * troller". If the troller exits beforer executing /whois, it is possible to execute "/whowas troller"
The documentation of the chat is useful: /help
Since the data of the troller was bd8fd37d@gateway/web/freenode/ip.189.143.211.125 (i.e IP 189.143.211.125) and he/she knew the time of the chat and details about the course (for his/her messages and because he/she directed his/her atacks against me) I gues he/she is a participant of the course who connected from the web interface of p2pu.org with a fake identity. I would like to test this, but in order to do that, I would like to scan the Apache records, so i would like to know if it is possible for the p2pu staff to send me the Apache records of the server where the irc cgi runs, with all the connections around 20:00 (-5:00GMT) of 25.Apr.2011 from the IP 189.143.211.125 ? Where should I ask such petition? If I identify the person I would ask him/her to apologize with me and the people that was on the chat, do you think that would be a good way to proceed?
Well in any case we took advantage of the situation during the chat session to show and use some commands (dig, nmap) and to inform us about IRC --it would be nice to add documentation for situations like this in p2pu. This post and all my posts are in the public domain.