Synthesizing it all...

Introduction: Context, Subject Matter, and Target Audience
I would like to create an online Children’s Literature course. Cameron University has a high population of non-traditional students who are returning to college with full-time jobs and families. These students often have difficulty creating schedules that allow them to continue to make a living for their families and make sufficient progress toward a degree. Because Children’s Literature is a prerequisite for several reading and methods courses, it will be especially advantageous to offer it as an online course.

Children’s Literature offers an overview of the various genres of literature available for children from birth through completion of elementary school. In addition, the course presents library collection and organization techniques and beginning methods of unit creation for elementary teachers.


Course Concept Map
(Note: I created a visual representation that goes here, but can't get it to cut and paste into the blog...any suggestions, guys? It was created using the drawing canvas in Word.)
Course participants would engage in a circular learning process beginning with individual reading of the textbook and supplemental articles with supporting notes provided by PowerPoint presentations with built in audio tracks. When available, videos will be hyperlinked that compliment the reading and PowerPoints. After exposure to the necessary concepts, students will proceed to the discussion board to answer guiding questions and respond to classmates’ posts. Finally, each student will write a weekly blog entry that summarizes learning, insights, discussions, and outstanding questions and synthesizes the current topics with past information and personal experiences. Each week, this cycle will begin again with individual reading. In addition, each month a Skype conference will give an opportunity for the course instructor to demonstrate read aloud techniques and reemphasize main points.


Strategies
In recognizing the differing needs of learners, the course concept map addresses Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences by offering opportunities for interpersonal and intrapersonal learning through the independent reading and the discussion boards and Skype conferences (Gardner, 1983 & 1999). In addition, linguistic, visual, and auditory learners’ needs are met by utilizing a textbook, PowerPoint presentations, and audio features.

Another learning theorist, Vygotsky, concentrated on the social aspects of learning (Vygotsky, 1978). Personal blog pages allow students to create an online identity by uploading photos and customizing their page design, further encouraging social interactions both through the blogs and the discussion boards as students get to know one another.

During the course, students will also be required to complete a service learning component by volunteering at an elementary school or daycare reading aloud to children. The goal of this assignment is to build a bridge between new knowledge and classroom practices. In addition, read aloud skills are needed in the field experiences students have during their final three semesters in our program. Video hyperlinks and Skype conferences will offer modeling to support this assignment.

In response to the weakness found in the case study I conducted on Ning in Education, where a lack of leadership in the forums led to a lack of involvement and depth in discussion, I will assign discussion leaders each week. This will meet a central goal of the course design, to encourage leadership, ownership, and participation. The discussion leader will be asked to facilitate conversations as needed, pointing out main threads and posing clarification questions as needed.


Influence of Literature in the Framework
In addition to the foundational learning theories discussed in the strategies section above, Renninger & Shumar's Building virtual communities: Learning and change in cyberspace, was a heavy influence on this course design. Chapter 12 of the book points out how the shift from modern to post-modern era has influenced today’s knowledge building communities which share a mindset of individual learning and subsequent knowledge sharing. The circular weekly flow of the course reflects this ideology with students individually viewing the resources prior to engaging in discussion then reflection.

Additionally, both asynchronous and synchronous discussions are utilized in order to encourage higher levels of understanding (Koschmann, Hall, & Miyake, 2002). While I’m initially planning for Skype discussions once each month, adjustments will be made in subsequent semesters if additional synchronous interaction is needed to encourage accommodation of knowledge.


References
Gardner, Howard. (1983) Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books.
Gardner, Howard. (1999) Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century. New York: Basic Books.
Koschmann, T., & Hall, R. P., Miyake, N. (Eds.). (2002). CSCL 2: Carrying forward the conversation. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Renninger, Ann & Shumar, Wesley. (Eds.). (2002). Building virtual communities: Learning and change in cyberspace. Cambridge University Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Virtual Communities Case Study 1

CASE STUDY A: MySpace, a Virtual Community

Introduction
I chose to study MySpace because it is the virtual community I use most often; however I have never examined it from the perspectives we are gaining through the readings and discussions of this course. I have used MySpace to stay connected with distant friends and to reconnect with old High School friends. I routinely post comments, send messages (which are more private as the comments are visible to anyone on the individual’s friend list), upload photos of my family and our activities, and update my status so friends can see what is currently going on in my life.

Analysis of the Community
MySpace is a social community site which offers users a completely customizable profile page. On this page, photo slideshows and music players can be created, backgrounds and fonts can be changed, users can share their music, literary, and cinema interests, and store photo albums. The profile page contains a blog feature and a comment wall, along with applications too numerous to mention from bulletin boards to daily bible verses.

Users may set their profiles as private or leave them open to the community at large. Private profiles cannot be viewed until the owner approves a friend request. This is an added safety feature that allows users to more freely post private information and photos; thus increasing activity and membership. While I am often hesitant to upload photos of my children to other websites, we have a family photo album slideshow as well as themed slideshows on MySpace to share our lives and the growth of my girls with distant friends. In turn, I am able to watch my friends’ children grow and change and read about their development in their blogs. Several of my friends have decreased their use of email since we have all been on MySpace and can leave comments and send messages within this community.

Users are also able to search for friends by entering school sites (both public schools and universities) to search existing profiles and scan new members. Another search tool allows participants to search music sites to learn more about musicians and add them to a friends list. In this instance, the participant regularly receives updates about the musician through the new blog updates and bulletin space on the user’s home page.

While I have been a member of the MySpace community, improvements to the system, new functions and applications are consistently made in response to the needs of the community. For instance, when I first joined, members could only have one song on their profile page, but an upgrade was made so members can create a song list that plays continuously.

Conclusion and Implications
MySpace continues to be a force in virtual social communities because of responses to the needs of members and the security of the profile pages. Varied methods of searching for friends and lists of recently added profiles allows users to continue to build friend lists, contacts, and activity levels on the site. The membership shows consistent growth and high levels of participation.

CASE STUDY B: Ning in Education, a Virtual Learning Community

Introduction
I visited the Ning website (http://www.ning.com/). Ning is a site that allows individuals to create their own social networking site for anything. There are Nings for truck drivers, new media job hires, and subsets of religious groups to name a few. I soon found a Ning expressly for educators. The site is Ning in Education (http://education.ning.com/). This is a community of people who are exploring the uses of Nings in Education (NE). I created a profile page for myself, customizing my page to reflect my personality a bit, then dove into the forums seeking answers to the question, “How can I use Nings to enhance my online courses?” In my search, I found a useful thread with several links to offsite information. I also replied to the thread hoping to get further information about how people have used Nings specifically for college courses.

Analysis of the Community
NE is a practice-based learning community. Its members all share the same profession and join voluntarily. Mentoring and apprenticeship behaviors occur as members pose questions in the discussion forum and contribute to the shared group knowledge by posting prior experiences, pedagogical ideals, and suggestions for practice. While any member can set his or her participation level as desired, there do not seem to be identified leaders in the community, such as forum managers, etc.

The site contains a main menu containing the following choices:
Main – This choice takes the member to the main page of the group where he or she will see the latest forum and blog posts along with information on new members.
Invite – This selection allows a participant to invite a colleague into the community.
My Page – The “My Page” button displays the group member’s personal page which contains the member’s latest activity within the Ning, profile information, and a comment wall where other members can leave messages.
Members – This is a directory of members with profile information along with any photos or videos each member has uploaded to the community.
Forum – The forum functions as the discussion board for the community.
Groups – Within NE, members can form subgroups based on shared interest. These groups are listed here.
Blogs – Each member has a NE blog. Unfortunately, the site does not allow a member to connect an existing blog here.
Ning Help – This is a help area with frequently asked questions.

While I was initially excited about the possibilities of a Ning, I noticed that the forums were not especially busy. Posts that were a month old only had two to three replies. As I continued my exploration, I found and requested to join group within NE specifically for college instructors; however, I have not received a confirmation of the acceptance. Since several days have past, I assume this is not an active group.

Within the group forum, a discussion thread exists for users to request new features. Some users are asking for statistical tools that D2L and Blackboard currently have, showing student user’s data and grade book options to name a few. These are useful suggestions if Nings are to be used for educational purposes; however, I did not see a reply from a Ning administrator, only various professionals voicing their wish list of new features. I wondered if this thread was monitored by a site leader who could pass along the requested upgrades. It seemed to only add fuel to the fire, so to speak, to open the thread without monitoring and responding to the requests.

After clicking on the tab for blogs and reading through several pages of blog posts, I found many advertisements for political ideals, fad diets, etc. that were listed as blog posts. I wondered what kind of security measures are available to make a Ning closed to advertising, but later read that educational groups could get ad free sites or users could pay for an upgrade to an ad free Ning.

Conclusion and Implications
The features of the site are comparable to MySpace or Facebook, but on a professional level, allowing more constraints on the shared knowledge and interests of the community members. While the site allows the user to customize a personal page with design features and photo uploads, allowing users to create an online identity, it does not address user suggestions and concerns. Without the personal attention to these aspects, the community participation has decreased and the site is not being utilized to its full potential.

Perhaps removing unwanted advertising in the forums and promoting the most active members to thread administrators would encourage active participation. With thread administrators, threads are monitored more closely and posts receive a greater number of replies as the administrator leads and directs the discussion. Knowing the importance of consistent assessment and meeting the needs of group members, I do not believe this particular Ning will continue to grow and retain active membership.

Renninger & Shumar, Chapters 11 & 12

In my continued reading of Renninger & Shumar's Building virtual communities: Learning and change in cyberspace, I've come to understand both the possibilities virtual communities offer and the rigorous investment needed by their founders to maintain a climate of success.

In Chapter 11: Learning in Cyberspace, the authors point out three types of learning that take place within virtual communities. They are as follows:

• Curriculum of Initiation and Governance – making the decision to create and maintain a virtual website
• Curriculum of Access – accessing and becoming socialized to a virtual community itself
• Curriculum of Membership –actual interaction within the community including the gains people expect from participation (both traditional learning and affective areas)

It is important to note attendance may be passive, as it is for lurkers. For these participants, learning may be an undetectable act. While these members of the community are not gaining full benefits because of their lack of active participation, they remain as passive learners. Lurkers will continue to learn through reading and processing, but they are not achieving the higher-order thinking and processing skills of Bloom's Taxonomy without active participation.

Chapter 12: Finding the Ties that Bind centers its discussion on building successful online collaborations. The authors follow the changes that occurred in the business world through the modern and post-modern periods, from a hierarchical, top down approach to collaboration to today's knowledge-building communities which share a mindset of individual learning and subsequent knowledge sharing. This gradual shift shows the progression society has witnessed as we grappled with the concept of collaboration. Society as a whole transformed from a centricist ideal toward goals of decentralization throughout this time period.

The authors suggest eight areas of inquiry that help meet the goals of virtual community designers:

• defining learning communities
• examining existing practice
• identifying potential changes to improve practice
• finding ways that technology might effect these changes
• designing and building the technology
• advocating the technology and cultivating a community of use
• understanding the consequences of the technology
• evaluating the community with respect to the original goal

I believe these eight pieces could be used in a linear fashion for my university to examine existing online courses and enact subsequent improvements as they provide a systematic way to assess and suggest proactive changes.

In addition, in this same chapter, I found a nugget of truth that may help support the use of virtual communities in my dissertation. Here is the excerpt, "When using SpeakEasy in a middle school science class, the inclusion of features such as an anonymity option erased the typical significant gender differences in student participation and learning." In my last blog entry, I posed a question about the validity of using a virtual environment to add anonymity to the qualitative data I'd like to collect about my students' experiences with ekphrasis. This nugget of information from the chapter will most likely lead me to look into this study as a piece of data to support my ideas for research.