Month: November 2009

(Online) Identity in Postmodernity

I am starting to be a little restless with my blog byline recently; perhaps it no longer fits me or I have outgrown it. The wonderful thing about websites is that they can grow and develop with us.

My current one is:

Research and Practice in Postmodern Learning

This combines my educational research focus with my need to integrate my learning with practice, coupled with a worldview that is increasingly postmodern. Now, almost a year into my doctoral studies, with my professional practice filled with project management, teaching, conferences, and publishing; it may be time for a change.

I want something that will integrate my degree focus, E-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning, into this, while still allowing for my academic interests in qualitative research designs, autoethnography and narrative inquiry, and transformative learning as an experience in critical identity formation. Having recently been influenced by the term postmodernity in the text Identity in Question, I am considering:

(Online) Identity in Postmodernity

This feels right to me; what do you think?

A as in ADDIE

analyze-fingerprint.jpgI asked my students in my a PPOCCID class to do some searching for online references / discussions about the ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate) instructional design model. I find this model very useful in many applications (especially in project management of learning initiatives), though have recently been more intrigued with the A as in Addie.

What does it mean to Analyze the needs of the audience? Well, I have to make sure this is a need the training or learning or education or development can address. Who needs to learn what? Why do they need to learn this? What are the obstacles? Who are the proponents of this (often these are not the learners)? What do they want (and why)? Are the goals the learners have (if they even have any, and if they can be articulated) and the goals of the proponents of the learning the same (or at least close enough that they are not opposed)?

What roles does this power play, especially within organizational dynamics? Can what works for one be transferable to others? Have you ever found it is easier to analyze the needs of others rather than ourselves? Always more questions than answers; while this can be frustrating at times, I find this endless interest quite enlivening and engaging!

I suppose I am considering these issues right now as I am beginning a Module 3 in my doctoral program at Lancaster University. Nice how various parts of my professional, academic, and personal elements of my life tend to fit together from time to time!

APA 6 REVISED (and Replaced)!

apa-6-voidNo sooner am I starting to get used to the new version of the APA Style Manual (APA 6), but there are now so many errors and corrections that the American Psychological Association is offering TO REPLACE the first versions of APA 6! Not sure how many errors there were (sickenly ironic, being a style guide we are talking about) in this recently revised edition? Check out the Corrections to the First Printing of the Publication Manual (July 2009) of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition.

The Chronicle of Higher Education (sorry, subscription is required) and Inside Higher Education both reported extensively on these issues, in turn helping the APA to recognize that the extent of these problems really required the previously sold editions of APA 6 to be replaced.

Now, to re-learn the styles that were just relearned.

Tools for Online Engagement and Communication ~ Blog

blog_logo.jpg One of the weekly assignments I have for the online class I am teaching, Principles and Practices of Online Course Creation and Instructional Design (#PPOCCID), is for my students to have a weekly blog post about something to do with the content of our class. I make the assignment rather broad, as I know that learning can take place at odd times and in unlikely ways, so I want my learners to feel flexibility in what they write about and explore.

With this in mind, I wanted to follow my own assignment and discuss something I found interesting in one of the readings from this past week’s class (where I ran out of time and did not discuss), Tools for Online Engagement and Communication by Richard S. Lavin, Paul A. Beaufait, and Joseph Tomei. In this chapter, the authors do an excellent overview of a number of current web-based technologies that are useful to help people  develop their online identities, communicate their stories with peers, and begin to engage in online community.

With the focus on blogs, wikis, and technologies to assist with digital storytelling, I am reminded of how I started blogging several years ago to explore my own thinking, and still use it to help me process my work, usually with the benefit of getting additional feedback that in turns helps me move my thinking forward.

With this in mind, I like how the authors of this chapter (who do one of the better introductions to blogs and wikis) begin it:

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are

few.” (Suzuki, 2006, p. 21)

In Zen Buddhism, there is a notion of beginner’s mind (shoshin in Japanese), in which a person seeking enlightenment is asked to look at things as they are, without preconceived notions. A goal of looking at things from learners’ perspectives is to see things the way new students do, and to anticipate problems and bottlenecks that they might face, a task that takes on added significance in light of the relative newness of online education. Online education acts as a universal solvent, dissolving many of the notions and axioms that we have taken for granted.

I have thought a lot about blogging, and have engaged in it for so long that my perceptions about it may be different from how those new to the concept of blogging may perceive it. I have seen learners grow in their sophistication, professionalism, academic prowess, and even reflective practice, and am so look forward to seeing how my current learners experience this.