Tony Bates spoke about his work this week in the #change11 MOOC, and summarized some of the comments and replies he received and / or was able to track through the Daily Newsletter for the MOOC. His summary was quite interesting and very well thought out and developed; wish I could write that clearly! I decided to reply to it in a somewhat long, winding post, writing in a narrative that captured my thoughts as I had them. I decided that it may be more in the spirit of the topic to not overly refine, so that is what I did.
I wanted to point to my response, but since it is not present / yet approved on the site (somewhat interesting, given the calls for reform and expression, though I can imagine that spam may be an issue, especially for somebody with Tony’s reputation and work), I thought I would take a Snag of it and share here, and not just copy and paste it.
Now, along the same point I made in my last post, I wonder to what extent an ongoing discussion of this will occur.
Manual trackback to gRSShopper.
Many thanks, Jeffrey, both for your initial comment and your response to my second post.
First, I will look to see if I can find a way to enable people to subscribe to comments from this blog – there must be a WordPress plug-in for this!
I think one answer to coping with the proliferation and development of technology is increasingly to work in teams or through communities of practice. Many people do this already but it’s often not built into one’s thinking. I’m still finding new ways of using my iPhone and short of reading through the 400 page printed manual you have to rely on other users who have more experience or knowledge. However, it’s all random and unstructured and I feel I should be learning more efficiently.
You raise another point about being ahead of the curve. I think that’s a nice way to put it. I see it more as preaching to the converted. My struggle is to get the right people to listen to the messages, in particular, influential senior research faculty and senior administrators. I feel that most people who are interested in participating in a MOOC are likely to be sympathetic to these ideas, but finding ways to reach senior administrators and influential academics on a large scale has proved to be a challenge.
Anyway, I much appreciate your comments
Tony
@Tony Bates-
Thanks again, Tony.
As to preaching to the converted and otherwise reaching those who hold the decision-making power, perhaps just having a track record to point back to, somewhat like developing the foundation for social capital, is a start? Along these lines, constantly pounding away at this will continue to lead to the teaching and undoubtedly interesting consulting and writing work you have done, all of which provides ongoing opportunities to continue to develop into higher-profile assignments (and thus influence). We all know that promoting change takes time . . .
Looking forward to chatting again; thanks for your stimulating week of pushing the boundaries on this work.
Jeffrey