Well it's been an interesting week - the first full week of term for the students.

As expected it's been a quiet one for Community@Brighton with respect to social blogging although my lusting after the new Apple iPhone seemed to trigger a good few comments!

However, there have been some interesting developments:

1. We've decided to run a competition for students to design a new anonymous icon
2. I've been playing with code that provides a section of our home page that keeps posts that have had more than a certain number of comments prominently listed. The idea here is to maintain discussion - a number 0f people have commented on how interesting discussions can vaporise because the post is knocked off the home page by the volume of new posts. However it's a tricky issue. The code itself is relatively easy but what criteria do you set? More than 3/5/7 comments in the last day/week? The danger of course, is that you set criteria that result in just a handful of discussions dominating and other interesting discussions falling by the side simply because they don't fit the algorythm properly?
3. I've had some very interesting discussions with various people about student attitudes towards blogging and, particularly, blogging in an education context. The consensus here (and more on this later) is that undergrads essentially don't get it (nor for that matter do they get the value of reflecting on their learning) whereas post grads are far more likely to understand and value these facilities. Currently, with respect to our UG projects using elgg specifically within course settings I'd say the success rate is actually quite good - we've got a number of pretty active UG communities but I do wonder whether there are different expectations here between learner and tutor - perhaps the latter expecting far greater participation?
4. I've been invited to speak at a Blog workshop in Birmingham - which is nice
5. Our Institute of Nursing and Midwifery got an award from the NHS for education and its use of studentcentral was cited as one of the main reasons for the award - which was great
6. We got labelled as cutting edge by the great Josie Fraser WHICH WAS SERIOUSLY COOL http://fraser.typepad.com/socialtech/2007/01/guardian_profil.html
7. ..and now Dave has reminded me of a post I wrote a while ago about Shared Learning Environments and, having re-read the post, apart form it being a bit drivelly, it still makes a lot of sense to me - just wish I had a few more ideas as to how to create an effective SLE but I'm pretty sure we'll learn a load of very valuable lessons form our experiences of the use of Community@Brighton as well as form everyone else out there who are using or plannign to use Elgg.

Maybe, but Dave got me thinking again...

So if the sum of all these PLEs is a glorious shared learning environment where information is exchanged, discussed and the totality of the learning community is so much greater than the sum of it's parts, what are the key requirements for such an environment to work - what makes people want to share stuff.

Well, there are at least three key elements as far as I can see:

1. Making it easy for people to share information and others to find it
2. Motivation for sharing learning
3. Agreed  protcols for best enabling a learning society????

Well 1. is easy - just use Elgg. And if it isn't easy in Elgg then it soon will be. Equally there are plenty of other technologies out there that enable sharing.

2. is far more difficult and something that's been troubling me for a little while now. This is the apparent gulf between undergrads and post grads. The gulf I'm talking about here is in the culture of learning. I know this is a sweeping generalisation, but the impression I get is that UG study these days is far more about the most direct route to a degree and therefore a career than it is about intrinsic interest in the subject of study. Certainly, the impression I've got through the students I've introduced various Elgg projects to, is that reflection is virtually an unknown aspect of learning and what appears upper-most in their minds is what do I need to do to pass this assessment. Post grads on the other hand are far more likely to both have an intrinsic interest in their subject area AND wish to share their learning with others and learn more collaboratively.  Nothing new there then and probably depressingly familiar to anyone teaching in HE (I really hope it isn't and my view is just jaded).

What this says to me is that there are likely to need to be different motivating factors in sharing learning between UGs and PGs. Just off the top of my head, the following are all players in this mix:

1) Intrinsic pleasure of sharing with others (is this enough?)
2) Rating of how useful shared objects are found by others - kind of self-competition motivation
3) Directly assessing contributions to shared learning
4) Feedback/comments for contributions
5) The extent to which you can put this stuff on your CV

Equally, there are potential demotivating factors to take into consideration:

1) Competition - why give away stuff I can get assessment credits for?

2) What's the point?

3) Is any of the stuff others have shared of any use?

4) So if we all share this stuff, what am I actually being assessed on? 

There's much more to think about here I'm sure....

As for things for best enabling a learning society, there are probably many of these but the following spring to my mind immediately:

•     Sign posts to essential reading/resources
•     Sign posts to additional resources
  
•     Identified guide/hand-holder to help you get familiar with the community
  
•     Participants self-ratings on their expertise - know who else is a newbie/expert
  
•     Ratings/flags for key posts
  
•     signs of what's not visible for guest to appreciate how active a community is
  
•     obligatory feedback for contributors (motivation - learn through comment/discussion)