Sunday, February 3, 2013

Week 2: Collaborative Communities

I had two big areas of learning this week in Collaborative Communities in E-Learning, one technical and one pedagogical.  Technically, today was the first time that I have used a Blackboard product. My partner and I began planning our Checklist Project in a Blackboard discussion.  It was a good reminder of how unfamiliar such spaces can be to newbies.  It took Lenore and I quite a while to figure out how to talk to and see each other, but once we got going we were able to talk and to share screens.  We will be creating a checklist for facilitating student blogging.

Pedagogically, my small group had a rich forum conversation on factors to consider in grouping students.  The "aha" moment for me was considering the power of using a single question to do rough grouping at the beginning of a course.  Classmates brought some very interesting, complex inventories to the discussion, but ultimately these may take too much time and provide too much information.  Less clear to me is which question to use, although of course that depends on the purpose of the grouping.  In general, our instructor's strategy in this course of initially grouping type A students with other type As and type Bs with each other seems sound.  Removing possible frustrations seems especially important in E-Learning where the technology side can always provide obstacles.

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