I'm running new media 3 next semester and the students (around 15 to 20 of them) will be doing major production works through the semester. I'm planning to get them to use blogs as a production diary and to show evidence of engagement with a broader community of practice and ideas - in other words, I want them to keep me updated on their progress but also make their thoughts and progress explicit. We'll also be extending our use of del.icio.us from this semester and encouraging them to use the online space as a place to share ideas. Would this be the kind of thing we could use?

PROJECT ONE

1. Project Name

KCB202 New Media Technologies (2/2007)

2. Participants
This is a large second-year undergraduate unit.

3. How does the project address peer learning?

We're working in a Confluence wiki environment to develop an online encyclopedia of new media terms and concepts. I've been running this unit for a few years now and I'm continuing to make further changes; a 2005 paper on the introduction of the wiki to the unit is in the proceedings for WikiSym 2005, and an update is under review for WikiSym 2007. For this semester, I'm building in more self-reflection and peer assessment. Being about new media, I'm also keen to use this cohort to get more baseline data on students' media use and references, so they'll be the principal target for the survey.

Wiki use in the unit began as part of a QUT Large Teaching & Learning Grant project, which has now completed. The outcomes of the project are covered in the project wiki, including especially student responses from a focus group in KCB202 (see especially pp. 15ff. of the report document).

Our assessment methods try to ensure that students gain a first-hand understanding of collaborative work in a wiki environment: we mark on evidence of group collaboration in the wiki, over the period of time preceding the assignment due date. I've attached a sample marking criteria sheet here.  

4. Domain - What will be shared domain of scholarly interest? What is the unique problem and/or context of your group/community?

5. Community - How will you (and others) use social software to engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information?

6. Practice - How will you develop a shared scholarly practice? What will be the project’s most significant experiences and ways of meeting the group’s scholarly learning needs?

7. What are the key social technologies you want to use?

8. What technical and research support will you need?

9. What data/evidence will you generate? Using what methods? (i.e. focus group, interview, etc)

PROJECT TWO

I'm likely to run this unit in 2008, and we're making moves to turn KCB201 and KCB202 into a more coherent two-unit new media sequence. The unit has already used blogs in the past, and we'll likely continue to do so, but I haven't fully worked out the details yet.

I'm also looking to use podcasts throughout both units, freeing up lecture time for more interactive workshop activities. I'm interested in exploring use of the community.mashedlc site for podcasting and other functionality.

I'm also wondering about another possibility, and would like your input on this. I'm on another Carrick project that involves the Australian
Association of Writing Programmes (AAWP) - tertiary creative writing courses around the country. That project looks to set up spaces for cross-institutional information pooling and collaboration within the univserity creative writing community, possibly including databases of students, supervisors, reviewers, and other practitioners, blogs, wikis, chat rooms, and other tools. To what extent would it be feasible to use community.mashedlc as part of the infrastructure framework for this ?

1. Project Name

KCB201 Virtual Cultures (1/2008)

2. Participants

3. How does the project address peer learning?

4. Domain - What will be shared domain of scholarly interest? What is the unique problem and/or context of your group/community?

5. Community - How will you (and others) use social software to engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information?

6. Practice - How will you develop a shared scholarly practice? What will be the project’s most significant experiences and ways of meeting the group’s scholarly learning needs?

7. What are the key social technologies you want to use?

8. What technical and research support will you need?

9. What data/evidence will you generate? Using what methods? (i.e. focus group, interview, etc)

OK, first fly in ointment is that I am not teaching any undergrad programs in sem 2 07, though have an ideal course in sem 1 08.
However, all our media students will be available for surveying, all use blogs (and from year 2 most will also have used a wiki for their
writing at some point). In addition there is a small group (<8) in semester 2 in honours using blogs so I will also use this as part of
a pilot project.

PROJECT ONE

1. Project Name

Labsome - Semester 2: 2007

In our original application we said we would develop of a series of projects across the three universities. These projects would focus on the identification, development and evaluation of a range of pilot studies that sought to engage learners with emerging social technologies.

I propose that we each take responsibility for developing a small pilot project appropriate to our local context/setting (and within our personal skill set) that we will run next semester - it would be great if we can get some of these projects running across the campuses. In the next few weeks I would like us all to share our ideas (about 1 paragraph by 1 June 2007) that you will develop into a fuller pilot proposal using the template outlined below.

Press Release – Social Software in Higher Education . Canberra – 24 August 2006

Competive Grants - 2006 Grants Scheme, Project Summary . The Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. 2006.

Ethics Approval - DLC . Committe for Ethics in Human Research. University of Canberra. 2nd April 2007.

Fitzgerald, R. N. (2007). Digital learning communities . The Centre for the Enhancement of Learning, Teaching and Scholarship. University of Canberra, 14th February.

Fitzgerald, R. N. (2006). Digital learning communities . Learning Communities Research Area. University of Canberra, 5 September.

Fitzgerald, R. N. (2007). Building research communities . Postgraduate Research Students Orientation Program, University of Canberra, 17 February.

Ryan, Y. (2007). Do you Youtube? Wanna come to MySpace? Keynote Speaker, FYHE Conference, QUT Brisbane, 4-6 July.

Ryan, Y. (2007). Do you Youtube? Wanna come to MySpace? Slideshow . Keynote Speaker, FYHE Conference, QUT Brisbane, 4-6 July.

Bruns, A. (2007). "The Future Is User-Led: The Path towards Widespread Produsage." Paper to be presented at PerthDAC conference, Perth, Western Australia, 15-18 Sep. 2007.

Bruns, A. (2007). "Produsage: Towards a Broader Framework for User-Led Content Creation." Paper to be presented at Creativity & Cognition conference, Washington D.C., USA, 13-15 June 2007.

Bruns, A. (2007). "Produsage, Generation C, and Their Effects on the Democratic Process." Paper presented at MiT 5 (Media in Transition) conference, MIT, Boston, USA, 27-29 April 2007.

Bruns, A. (2007). "Beyond Difference: Reconfiguring Education for the User-Led Age." Paper presented at ICE 3 (Ideas, Cyberspace, Education) conference at Ross Priory, Loch Lomond, Scotland, 21-23 March 2007.

Fitzgerald, R.N., Barass, S.,Bruns, A.,Campbell, J.,Miles, A.,Hinton, S.,Whitelaw, M. & Ryan, Y. (2007). Digital Learning Communities (DLC): Investigating the application of social software to support networked learning . Poster to be presented at ED-MEDIA 2007 --World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications, Vancouver, Canada.

Miles, A. (2006). Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning. Screen Education. 41. 66-9.

Miles, A. (2007). Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge. Screen Education. Autumn, 45. 24-30.

Ryan, Y. (2007). Do you Youtube? Wanna come to MySpace? Keynote Speaker, FYHE Conference, QUT Brisbane, 4-6 July.