Mashing Up The Open Web - Mar 2010

I've tried to write up some of my thoughts from the course. Thanks to all of you, it was great! Request you to provide feedback - any suggestions for additions or edits would be really appreciated. Even if you just agree with most of it, that would be very helpful to know as well.

The notes are incomplete. I decided to post them anyway, for early feedback.

Thoughts on experiences with P2PU:

Course: Mashing up the open web
- The course covered a broad range of topics for 6 weeks. But I would say it acted as a good launchpad for someone who had working knowledge of web technologies. Probably not so much for someone who was not too technically equipped.
- I liked the emphasis on “open” web. Apart from the technical knowledge for building web mashups, the course touched on what is an open web, how is it important and how can we go about building useful application and contributing towards/ supporting the openness. I thought that this approach was quite unconventional - and was made possible because of John’s (the course organizer) personal commitment to the field.
- The topic was very relevant for today as web mashups are relatively new and popular. They are also generally a useful skill to have? I would assume the course content/ topic had to do with the popularity of the course. I do not know how this course compares with others on P2PU. It might be interesting to create a mashup/visualization for P2PU that compares different courses wrt enrolled students and other aspects.
- That the course was project based was a differentiating feature (from some other course offered).

Participants

25+ students were enrolled on the course. Around 8-10 were active in terms of participation (showing up at the weekly classes, submitting assignments and working on the project) - There wasn’t a huge attrition in the sense that perhaps 12-13 people showed up in the classes on the first day, and several continued till the end.
Sudents came from a variety of backgrounds, and had different experiences/ expertise. Those who participated were motivated and interested.

The course organiser was very motivated and energetic. His commitment to open source, open web, open education was visible through the course content and discussions. It possibly also seeped through to the participants as well.

Weekly Discussions

- Tokbox completely changed the nature of the synchronous discussions as you could “see” each other. It was like attending a round table discussion as you were facing all the students.
As John mentioned in the final discussion, Tokbox increased commitment and connection. Personally, I would agree with it.
Once, when I joined the class, my video did not turn on. Stian had joined the class and had just finished speaking when I entered. Somehow, there followed a 2-3 minutes of silence. I was not on video and felt that allowed me to not feel any pressure to talk at the moment. Had I been on video, I would have felt much more uncomfortable - and would have probably tried to initiate a conversation.
Often, John would take updates on the project status. Having not been regular about my work as a student, I felt slightly uncomfortable saying that. I think the video had a big part to play in it. I assume that I would have worked more if I had more time on my hands.

- I would think that the comfort level in the class increased as the course progressed.

- The discussions in class were quite formal and focussed. Participants were not too associated with others’ projects and hence did not have suggestions directed towards each other. Reasons could be a combination of the following:
1) Everybody’s projects were quite separate - different technologies/datasets being used and talked about.
2) Six weeks was perhaps less time for one time to work on a project enough to discuss it with people around.
3) The learning environment did not encourage feedback and conversations in class.

(Personally, I often did not have any suggestions as the problems faced by students were very specific. Sometimes I would miss a part of the description of the idea or problem, and did not think it was appropriate to interrupt and clarify. Also, we were all kinda firming up the idea/ implementation and needed to work a bit ourselves before seeking external feedback.)

- John’s experience in this class was crucial. He often helped students with ideas/ solutions. I also thought that his technical expertise/ experience was handy and useful in the course. The students had somebody to learn from, and direct individual problems to (which I think is often important for sustained motivation and learning). Perhaps in the absence of an experienced organiser, one of the students might have stepped up to help. However, that is speculation. A couple of student did offer to help in certain technical areas. (There sure could/ should have been separate interaction between participants that I completely missed)

- As brought up in the last session, John put together all the course content and lead all the classes for the course. There was not too much effort in terms of sharing knowledge by the participants. Interesting ideas were shared for making such a class more collaborative.

- I thought the usage of the IM was very interesting. There were fewer barriers to talking here - It provided a place for more casual conversations, sharing links and thoughts, issue resolution. Conversations here did now require one to wait, or a permission to begin to talk.

Asynchronous Discussions

- Students submitted their assignments (write-ups) through the P2PU discussion forum for the course.
- Apart from that, there weren’t too many discussions on the discussion forum.

Navigation Issues/ Suggestions for the P2PU website:

(to be continued..)