Our summer has been extraordinarily rich of sunshine hours and now we're adapting to rain and wind, but this weekend again we had sunshine. Not exactly something to keep me indoor and working. Still things are in progress - the Nordic Voice project is coming to an end for the official part with our competition - I'm writing on the last newsletter to announce this. The media literacy course is getting closer. And my candidate thesis is in progress after a very long period of doing all sorts of other things, now I'm full of fresh energy and good ideas for getting this done. But first of all I'm going to the last meeting in the Teaching Culture diploma course  - a multinational EU pilot project where we'll get our diplomas in Siegburg, Germany. Anne Fox has been my patient and understanding tutor and most of the course has taken place online -  here is my online course portfolio

Janet Salmons, Ph.D was interviewed by Beth Kanter about her dissertation and her work  in general as an online educator at Capella

Her dissertation  on collaborative e-learning,  was based on interviews with  ten educators from five countries, using a multi-media platform and voice over Internet. 

Janet developed this Taxonomy of Collaborative E-Learning - a "framework for understanding levels of collaboration and ways to organize learning activities so participants learn to achieve collective outcomes. A premise for this work is that we need to be better at working collaboratively—whether the collaboration is across sectors, disciplines and organizations, or within a given organization, with participatory decision-making and teamwork. I'd like to see people have a variety of purposefully designed collaborative learning experiences so they are prepared to work collaboratively in professional life."

I've been reading a summary with the taxonomy, which I find is eye opening and helpful. I really like the illustrative way she is using icons with arrows in more colours  intertwined, circling or parallel.  I would like to examine some WIA  CoP related data with this approach in a near future.  Janet Salmons will be one of 6 new PhDs presenting their thesis work in the CPSquare dissertation fest (for members and invited participants).