Module 4 Blogroll

This module we looked at learner engagement, but the focus of most of the readings was on the instructor role. I agree that the DE course designer has a hand in putting together activities to increase activity, and like most of my classmates, I do not believe that the responsibility lies solely with the instructor. We were encouraged to create our own graphic organizer to show tools and technologies to "involve learners in building content knowledge, engaging in communication with peers and instructors, and working on authentic, collaborative, problem-based tasks."

I responded to:
Erin Rocha
http://erinrocha1981.blogspot.com/2013/01/engaging-learners-with-new-strategies.html
I commented on the clarity of the graphic and common theme of discussion boards to communicate content via collaboration.

Lori Dodd
http://loridodd.blogspot.com/2013/01/module-4-engaging-learners-with-new.html
This graphic also made a lot of sense to me, I could see easily how the tools line up to support the combination of the Content, Communication, and Collaboration. In this case, I noticed that blogs were the common tool to unite the three components.


Reflection
Curation is an interesting idea; a couple of years ago I got in on the beta version of a site known as Curatr by a British guy I met on Twitter. I tried it out and while I was curious to see how parts and pieces worked, I would consider it a chore and work if I had to do visit it for a class. They also realized the complication with forcing folks to visit content and included a game-like achievements component so that as students used the content they were unlocking additional content and gaining badges/accomplishments.

I definitely see the need to coax users into being motivated to participate if they are not intrinsically motivated to try out all the parts and features available in their online environment. I also think that social networking norms can be used as a bridge to engage users with things that are familiar and work into the higher level participation that DE requires. I have quick voting/rating buttons on my blog because I believe even minimal feedback is better than no feedback at all.

It's great that there are plenty of Web 2.0 tools available to support learner engagement, it's a shame though that they aren't all in corporated into one LMS. Blackboard has the ability to do that, but it seems our version of it at Walden is missing that key Collaborate portion to allow for live webinars, shared screens, video and audio display. Is it a matter of paying for the extra features? If so does that  mean that software developers are going to control our educational offerings?

Cheers - Shar