Topic 1 in the ONL-course covered online participation and digital literacy. The scenario we were asked to work with involved challenges of being new to online courses, about privacy, new tools and a fear of seeming stupid.
When I first read the scenario I thought that privacy was the most important thing we as a group could/should/would focus on. I thought that privacy online meant a lot to me (and others) in their digital life and in social media. After ”massaging” my thoughts on this it turns out it doesn’t mean any more or less to me than in my regular life. It seems to be about the same. More on this in a later blogpost.
One of our tasks was to watch films including one of two by David White of Oxford University (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPOG3iThmRI&feature=youtu.be) where he discussed “visitors and residents” regarding the use of digital technology. If I use David Whites model my online persona seems to be mostly “visitor”. I use digital services mostly to learn new things, get information and to get inspiration. I seldom engage in discussions (especially personal) in forums, in social media or on a blog. In that sense according to Davids graph I am an extreme “visitor”. Maybe this will change as the course goes on, maybe not.
Some of the things I have thought about during this topic is preparation, facilitation and the importance of time before (digital)learning can occur, at least for me personally.
Preparation
Create workflows that are as smooth and unobtrusive as possible. The tools have to be intuitive. In my daily work, if the objective is e.g. to create a piece of recorded music, you try to make using the relevant tools/functions you need in ProTools or Cubase become second nature. The objective in my field is often not to learn every feature or function, it is to create something and learn in the process. Too many and complicated Tools (and ways to use these tools) can confuse instead of inspire and in turn kill creativity. If the objective is to create and write a blog, then spend some time on choosing, creating and setting it up. Then develop a workflow on how you interact with the blog. Give yourself time to do this.
Facilitation
You have to take into account the surroundings, the mindset and how you focus, for example: When I go to my “analogue” workplace I get into a different mindset, I set up my desk/classroom, I may speak to a colleague, I might meet and have a talk with students. Working from home I could take 10 steps from my breakfast to my computer and enter a meeting/class. This is not a good start at least for me. My preferred digital workplace is definitely also my physical workplace.
If I were to setup an online course at this moment I would try to find necessary and appropriate facilitation regarding platform and software -alternatives for digital collaboration depending on what it is I want to achieve. I would think about how I could remove the static from the experience. For example regarding future ONL-studies I ask myself why we aren’t using Teams or Canvas as a means of group-communication instead of a website+Zoom+Google docs+Twitter? (I’m not suggesting we should, just using it as an example). Using Teams may need a newly developed workflow for some students but so does the ONLwebsite. Do the benefits outweigh the drawbacks (the time spent altering/creating workflows)?
More thoughts to come in the coming weeks.
Reference list
White, David: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPOG3iThmRI&feature=youtu.be
