Stefanie wants to research use of OER at P2PU

[Alison Jean Cole]

From Stephanie - through the site:

Hi!

I am an educational technology researcher from Ulm University (Germany) and currently conducting a long-term, webnographic study on the learners' use of of OER. I want to move beyond mere download rates and registration numbers and understand how OER can enrich the personal learning environment of informal learners.
I recently discovered P2P University and would like to use it as one of my field sites. I am particularly interested in gathering qualitative data, but I am also interested in your findings from logfile analysis and other sources to corroborate my findings. I am currently following two courses and I would like to get in touch both with learners and teachers of courses. Also I would like to contact Mozilla Web Development School. Since I read on your about page that you encourage research activities I would love to discuss my plans - as well as share the results.
Also, I am editor for social software at Educational Technology and Change Journal and would like to do an interview on P2PU. If you are amenable to an interview, I can send you the questions by e-mail.
Best regards,
Stefanie

[Philipp Schmidt]

Can you resend with her on copy (or is she on the research list
already). Otherwise we have no way of communicating with her. ;-)

P

[Alison Jean Cole]

I've asked her to join the list so she can discuss her research goals with us in further detail.

[Heather Ford]

I have shared this with some of you but wanted to send the final report that Alex Smolen and I wrote investigating P2PU's privacy policies and proposing new privacy practices with wireframes etc. We would love any feedback from P2PU folks as we develop this into more publish-able versions for general distribution among academics and open edu types. I really believe that privacy in online education is important - not just because it's our moral right to be able to learn in a way that advances personal freedoms, but also because it seems from the initial research at least that better privacy controls are connected to meaningful participation - and participation by people beyond the current profile of p2pu students.

Thanks so much to those of you who helped in the writing of this!

You can download the reports from here: http://blogs.ischool.berkeley.edu/masks/

Best,
Heather.

Heather Ford
Ethnographer: Ushahidi / SwiftRiver
http://ushahidi.com | http://swiftly.org
@hfordsa on Twitter
http://hblog.org

[Stefanie Panke]

Hello everyone!
I have joined the group!
Best,
Stefanie

[Jessica Ledbetter]

Wonderful! Welcome to the group, Stefanie!

--
Jessica Ledbetter

http://jessicaledbetter.com

[Niels Sprong]

Hi Stephanie,

Welcome to the research group!

Your research plans sound great. I think you can send any of the people who replied to this thread some questions, both on an interview on 'P2PU' and on course organisation and learning questions, as most peopleon this list have had multiple roles in the past.  (In any case, you can contact me at any time)

2Qs:
What exactly are your research questions?

Do you need any help in executing your research?

Niels

[Rebecca Kahn]

This is really wonderful, thanks and congratulations, Heather and Alex.
I'm forwarding this to the P2PU dev list too - there are plenty of people there who I think will be really interested in the research, and I think it may well spark some discussion (and possible development) on the tools you've suggested.

We're so glad P2PU could be part of your research...

Bekka

[Philipp Schmidt]

I'm just coming out of a meeting with our pro bono lawyers where we
discussed privacy. The bottom line is that users' perception is
crucial and influence all aspects of their experience and engagements.
And there are ways to deal with that through UX (which sometimes are
more effective than legal mechanisms.)

I haven't had a chance to read the full report, but we should take the
recommendations seriously in the design of our user interaction.

Thanks for your work on this Heather!

P

[Heather Ford]

Thanks, Bekka and Phillipp!

Definitely agree on the UX solution - you'll see Alex's screenshots of proposed features in the docs :)

Best,
h

[Jessica Ledbetter]

Fascinating read! Some of this I never even thought about!

One of the things we're working on is allowing organizers to see participants' time on the site. So, that's interesting that that is in your research. Interesting way to "opt in" being tracked.

By the way, this one is a broken link:
http://blogs.ischool.berkeley.edu/masks/files/2011/05/Privacy-Design-Analysis.pdf

[Dan Diebolt]

Okay I read the report quickly and have this to say ...

It is interesting that one of my statements was quoted without attribution on the first page of the report and was perceived by the researchers as crystallizing the privacy debate:

One contributor [me] noted that making every click  public by default, in a way no other major site on the web did, could lead to a privacy backlash.

In adopting a completely public policy can you guarantee that no personal data could be inadvertently released due to an oversight or lack of a review process?

This kind of question is at the heart of current debates about privacy.

But unfortunately the debate was essentially between two people and the issue rapidly evaporated without any resolution or action. And to be honest this was one of dozens of my experiences within P2PU that forced me to downgrade them and eventually withdraw my participation.

While I give credit to the researchers for casting their report as an "audit" and introducing methodology and offering concrete suggestions I doubt the work will have much impact. Despite billing themselves as open and seeking consensus, participation and engagement, the core P2PU group still still suffers from being insular, idealistic, and infatuated with pedagogically worthless technobuzz like gravatars, activity streams, badges ecosystems, gamification gimmicks etc. The participation rate, course offerings and platform features continues to be weak.

In contrast other online learning initiatives such as Kahn Academy, Canvas LMS and Sitepoint's Learnable are growing nicely because they are focusing on developing (1) quality reusable course content appropriate to their constituents and (2) an technical infrastructure that supports online learning within their respective platforms.

Sorry to be so harsh in my judgement, but it does not take months of research to reveal the obvious. 

[Heather Ford]

Thank you so much, Jessica :) 

[Stefanie Panke]

Hi Niels!
Thanks for your feedback! I would love to get back to you with some
questions on course organization and learning, based on the
observations I have made so far.
Answering your questions:
1. What is the point? My research seeks to make sense of open
educational practices as a distinct learning culture (I assume that
there is such a thing) by engaging in open learning communities. I am
interested in explicating the social meaning and activities of a
community - or borrowing a term from Clifford Geertzthe "webs of
significance" - that spin the open learners' networks. As a result I
hope to achieve a conherent interpretation that makes the communities
comprehensible for people who have not experienced it. Also, the
account should still be recognizable by the members of this
community... Ethnographic research does not by the very nature of its
methodology aim at representativeness. That said, I am trying to
attempt some generalization by choosing different field sites and
finding recurring themes /patterns. It also allows mew to not fall
head-over-heels into one community but maintain a critical distance or
somewhat neutral oint of view.
2. Do I need help? YES! I would appreciate the option to share and
discuss preliminary results as well as theoretical perspectives on
open learning. Maybe the above mentioned interview would actually be a
good starting point for that.
Best,
Stefanie

On Aug 5, 4:23 pm, Niels Sprong <nielsspr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Stephanie,
>
> Welcome to the research group!
>
> Your research plans sound great. I think you can send any of the people who
> replied to this thread some questions, both on an interview on 'P2PU' and on
> course organisation and learning questions, as most peopleon this list have
> had multiple roles in the past.  (In any case, you can contact me at any
> time)
>
> 2Qs:
> What exactly are your research questions?
>
> Do you need any help in executing your research?
>
> Niels
>