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)