12 mongrels wanted: small group for those of no particular pedigree

Moodle or Facebook is fine with me–especially for discussions with many tracks. Have tried both in MOOCs and the most heavily used was Moodle which drove the organizers crazy as it dis-anforded (is that a word?) the theoretical premise that if everyone broadcasts from their own platform (tower of babble / self-actualizing-node-in-a-sea-of-noise effect) the interaction will be more meaningful.
If we intend to produce and display objects as part of the process here then we can simply link out to where ever they are. At one point small discussion groups scattered about were likened to individual camp fire gatherings across a large landscape. MOOCs always seem to evolve into smaller groups and in spite of the assumed advantages of many voices contributing to diversity my sense is too many members actually silence the quieter participants.
Anyone have data on optimum discussion group size? Medical schools use groups of 8 and someone at a conference said they were experimenting with 12 or 16. (Having been a patient in a teaching hospital more than 8 interns poking at me seems like too many:-)
Anyway, the physics of MOOCs suggests to me that discussions tend to focus down to smaller groups and as many as necessary to suit group needs. This is all still about the quality of meaning and participation to the individual person’s mind and largeness has no intrinsic value that I can see. Scott

Hi Scott

On a personal level I’m with you and have spent many hours wandering cyberspace.

But on both a personal level (sometimes) and a professional teaching level (often) I feel that I am standing knocking at a door and when eventually I work out that the lever you call a handle opens the door – it’s locked and I need a key which I then have to work out where to get.

So yes, new strategies needed and that is exactly what I’m here to learn.

Hi David,
Our instructional staff have been waiting years for training in the basics of online teaching and working in the office where we build in our VLE Moodle we spend a lot of time helping faculty as do a few of their collegues. The problem is professional development is a mix of many missing pieces and an expectation that after a long day in class teachers will be eager to learn new skills taught by sales staff from a software manufacturer in their spare time. There’s just something about being told how to do your job by someone who has no clue what you do (and can’t teach either) that puts professionals off–hard to imagine as that might be. 
Our new director of teaching has some great ideas about focusing on teaching and learning and then filling in with the technical stuff that would best present what each  individual teacher feels will serve their students best. Unfortunately our trainer is off on indefinite sick leave, her back-up has no training in online delivery herself and won’t begin until this July as part-time trainer, and our online development office staff  has all either been recently fired or are quitting.
There’s free training available through Oxford Brooks coming up call First Steps… and every year Mira Costa College in California does a free online course called Pedagogy First that you might like. MOOCs like this one are a good way to learn how to navigate through chaos but since my first one it seems the polite thing to do to provide some direction. Those of us who naturally ignore direction won’t even notice anyway:-)

I have 10 people now added to http://mycourse.solent.ac.uk/mongrels

Any other mongrels that have not sent me a mail, please do to roger.emery@solent.ac.uk with the subject “mogrles” and I’ll set you up. (Scott Johnson -I don’t seem to have a mail from you, or if you have can you resend it, may have got lost in the flood.)

Roger

Reading the Diana Laurillard essay on digital technologies cleared up some of my thoughts on technology in education though I need to clarify to myself why so much of the rush to present everything as having a technological solution leaves me cold. “…using technology to solve a specific problem, not finding the problem that technology is a solution for ” suggests a test by which you remove the person and leave only the technology. Does it still work to convey meaning?
Not sure I understand what I mean here (not uncomon for me) except that most of courses we are building at the moment seem to be going backward while being presumed to be forward thinking because it takes a computer to access them. I.E.: teaching that is unable to read student response and adapt followed by simplistic multi-choice exams read by other machines. Strange how we do everything possible to remove the human element from learning and call it progress.

Sharmina posted the following at the Mongrels site:

2. Liz mentioned that students prefer consistency across modules in terms of what’s available online – is that realistic and should students expect that and should/can we maintain this level of consistency?

Can we be sure students prefer consistency. Anything that can be turned to the advantage of the institution makes me suspicious. Consistency and orderliness are what I constantly hear from the upper level editors I prepare courses for but who’s say these people are anything more than herd thinkers or slaves to some school of homogization and sensible behaviour?

There’s a constant debate at our college over safety and comfort for our students and I think this betrays our duty to present the world as uncomfortable, inconsistent and wonderfully weird. Consistency is something you seek in manufacturing to assure reliably similar products and not something to value in human beings facing a changing world.

Maybe we should change consistency to harmless? Or “familiar” sounds comforting. Like Day-Care thinking.

My question is: do we really know what facilitates learning? In design there’s a rule about the interface not distracting form the message. You don’t make books out of bricks or runny oatmeal. Is there one universal principal of presentation for all subjects?