Day: May 3, 2010

Helle Wentzer is speaking about her work that addresses her work with MOPEM. She is bulding on Hegel’s work, the dialectical result of home – out – home movement. Not sure I am able to follow the Hegel (and Gadamer) references, but will trust their work informs Helle’s research and will read the paper after the session.

Ahh, the true, good, and beautiful–I recall them from my philosophical studies. Alas, she is reading (perhaps from her work?) at us, and it is all going a bit fast for me as I am struggling to recall what some of these major thinkers said, and how they were being used in her work. Of course, given some of the presentation I have experienced today, it may just be me considering this. Anyway, enough about me . . .

Ahh, it seems that when we go from home – out and then back to home, we are changed (we have experienced leraning), though  the home has not changed.I think this is avery valuable insight. Re-reading my post at the end of the session before publishing it, I seem to notice that I have spent some time considering this during part of the session, as it seemed to stop me in my place to consider it.

MOPEM–Marketing Online Path to Enter new Markets is an EU research project. Why does there seem to be so much interesting work funded by the EU? Doesn’t the US have any interesting fundedd research? No, I am not saying this since I do not  haveany  funding, but stilL . . .

I also really need to read this paper, as a few things I missed left some gaps that I think will be valuable for me to fill.

Jen Ross from Edinburgh is presenting her paper, Just what is being reflected in online reflection?: new literacies for new media practices. She is exploring reflection in a professional body, and forms the current work in her dissertation. She is looking at areas of identity, authenticity, and performance, especially as found through blogs. She is using blogs as that is a technology that is being used in higher education in several of the virtual learning places, as as such is becoming more HE mainstream (even though, as I pointed out, students have generally moved on to Facebook or the like).

Reflection online needs new literacies–from Carpenter 2009. She speaks how blogging takes on a new significance. She will tell 6 stories on blogging, and will look at these through 6 different blogging lenses:

1. Authenticity–blogs should be authentic and honest
2. Risk–Sharing too much information is dangerous
3. Pretense–No one is really themselves online
4. Commodification–Your online presence is your personal brand
5. Otherness–What kind of person would do this?
6. Narcissism–Bloggers are shallow and self-obsessed

Clear, that I need to read Jen’s work, partly as I blog quite a bit, but also because it seems there may be some similarities with this, both in research as well as in practice. We have an opportunity with online reflection to think about voice.

I am attending a session at #nlc2010 that is around doing some research using social network analysis, and it has me wondering about how this methodology focuses on what we can say about the overall network itself, something that exists only insofar as the people involved are present. I like the idea of trying to deduce something from studying a composite of the individual experiences, though I am coming to realize I am more interested in asking questions about the development of individual meaning-making, rather than looking at some combination of the summation of them.

I find the more I learn about research, the more I realize that Etienne Wenger, in his comments during the morning session, is right–it is valuable to select a theory to use based on what questions or needs we have. Likewise, it seems the same can be said about methodologies–these also do not answer (or rather do not fit) any question that can be asked.

Have a research question? OK, then choose a methodology / method that works to get an answer to your question.

This is an interesting session by Carolyn Haythornthwaite and Maarten de Laat that explores the questions that may be raised from the earlier Hotseat discussions for the previous several months prior to this session.

Very interesting session of various knowledge and network maps that Caroline and Maarten are exploring. Learning is a relation that connects people, though it is also an outcome of that connection. Learning is thus both the structure as well as its outcome.

The actors are the people, relations are the connections, and network (which is the relationship between them all).

Some more interesting network maps about how certain teachers or topics are linked with one another. These can be used as discussion starters. Seems like a valuable idea, though I wonder if this cannot also have the effect of oversimplifying some aspect of reality by reducing the complexity of relationships in a single way represented by single lines between nodes in a network?

Yes, context seems to be key, and from an educational perspective the idea of value creation and linking this back to how we can understand if learning actually occurs.