Sunday, September 27, 2009
Post #2 Troy
The article Evaluating Online Learning Communities was very interesting. It tried to take a systematic approach to classifying how online learning communities are evaluated. It broke them down into four categories: evaluation purpose, evaluation approach, measures for evaluations, and evaluation techniques. This article found that it is not possible to generalize online learning communities into a one-size-fits-all measure of good or bad. Instead, this article recommends a comprehensive, on-going, diagnostic approach to measure clusters of indicators. Overall, I found this article a little dry and not as informative as it sounded at first. I thought it got bogged down in lingo and was difficult to follow. Overall, I was disappointed by it.
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The lingo is a bit over the top. I was involved in "learning communities" at a high school in Florida where the community you belonged to guided your course of study. It sounds like this community approach is a bit different. On-line communities certainly have different agendas and opportunities for its members. Ultimately, though, I believe the idea of an online learning community is a good one. One of the beautiful aspects of being online is that you can share uninhibited successes, failures, progress, and complaints with people who have similar interests. It's amazing how we can connect with others all around the world simply by sitting at our computer.
ReplyDeleteOn the topic of evaluating the communities, why would you need to? If the members feel like they are getting what they need, why bother? It feels a little bit like too much "Big Brother" involvement. I'll fall back on that old saying, "If it isn't broke, don't fix it."
I can't get to the article...the link appears not to work. I will try again later. Since I can't read the article, I will give my impression...
ReplyDeleteWhen I think of online Learning Communities, I think about Nings, Twitter, Delicious, and social networks. I am a member of several Nings and gain a ton of information professionally from them. Classroom 2.0 has over 31,000 members who contribute to the learning community. Delicious is a great source to find resources from other teachers and educational professionals. I only Twitter professionally and follow educational people. Facebook is not a professional learning community for me, but I do see others that use it that way. I agree with Jessica about evaluating the comuunites. If I didn't like it, I wouldn't contribute or be a part anymore.