Open Suggestions
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Been doing some thinking regarding dropoffs in forum activity (but not necessarily interest) and lack-of-structure issues in the open course format -- some suggestions (please feel free to creatically rip them apart if you see fit):
1) Pre-requisites -- one way of sharpening group focus would be to establish pre-requisites for entrance into the open course. For example, learners need to be working on their own educational-future-based project, which they present at the beginning and develop throughout the course (by collaborating and integrating useful feedback) and then present to all at the end. This could also help with developing some kind of assessment or accreditation system for the course.
2) Working groups -- topics & resources for each week are presented at the beginning and working groups voluntarily formed around each week's topic of interest. The working group does collaborative research and prepares and leads the webinar for that week, with guidance from the facilitators. This could help with the time issue, as each participant would not be responsible for individually completing the work for each week. It would also permit learners to take shared ownership of the course.
3) Longer course timeline -- for me, building the future patterns map became a bit of a bog-down issue, as it required significant analysis and synthesis (which I'm still working on). Judging by the sparsity of maps uploaded for that task, I'd venture others may have felt the same. More time to develop, present and receive feedback on the product before moving on to the next topics and tasks -- which assume a completed map to develop on -- would help to maintain group focus and perhaps generate activity more representative of real levels of interest (which I think are in fact quite high).
Thanks,
Asif
Great suggestion -- chunking and offering choices.
I agree with you both, Asif and Laura, in terms of feedback, and above all, time. The topics change weekly, this force us to be alert of new material and gives flexibility and agility to the course, however, this material is sometimes lengthy and difficult to cover and understand in its entirety in just one week. Perhaps the solution would be to "customize" the times depending on the objectives to be met in each topic. Thank you.
Agree Asif...and I think feedback for every participation is needed, as well as a pair to pair systematic evaluation, which could be useful to know---compare---analyze our quality participation in the course.
Also, as you mention, maybe a week between new subjects is necessary to integrate and practice research, analysis and synthesis of the materials reviewed and be able to develop our own work with enough detail and reflection.
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if Edfutures 2 runs another season, my big suggestion would be, in a sense, counter to Asif's suggestion of the longer course timeline: when it's totally open, with no paying students tied to the traditional 8 or 13 week semester, i'd like to see the "course" broken into two or three shorter chunks and have the term "course" removed altogether, replaced maybe with "workshop."
the first workshop could focus on trends and how people think and make decisions, circling back to look at how thinking- and decision-making impact trends.
the second could look at tension pairs and scenarios - guide people through identifying and building these. the workshops would be 3 or 4 weeks max to sustain participation but allow for some depth of exploration.
the last one could be for data and analysis and mapping - so that people new to that perspective would be going in understanding of the trends and scenarios they were translating into that format. and ready to explore why that format matters in a field many of us tend to view as qualitative.
people could do all three, or only one - as they liked.