Web 2.0 Tools - Patterns of Participation

This week we have learnt a lot about online course participant behaviour and building for social presence. Very useful!

First we had a look at © G. Salmon's Etivities: the key to active online learning (2002), Kogan, Page 171

Type	Behaviours	E-moderator response
The wolf	Visits once a week, lots of activity, then disappears again until next week, or even the week after!	Nudge wolf by e-mail to encourage to visit again and see responses that s/he has sparked off.
The elephant	Steady – visits most days for a short time.	Congratulate. Ask elephant to encourage and support others – especially mouse and squirrel.
The squirrel	Always catching up: completes two weeks in one session then disappears again for some time.	Nudge squirrel by e-mail to suggest life is easier with more regular access. Check on other commitments. Provide regular summaries and archiving to enable squirrel to catch up easily and contribute.
The mouse	Visits once a week, reads and contributes little.	Check that mouse can access all messages. Check language difficulties. May need boost of confidence. Give specific role.
The mole	Inclined to post disembodied comments in a random way.	Try to include relevant comments from mole in summaries and invite responses. Needs support and e-stroking.
The rabbit	Lives online, prolific message writer, responds very rapidly.	Rabbit may need counselling to hold back and let others shine through. Give structured roles such as summarizing after a plenary.
The stag	Tendency to dominate discussion at certain times.	Invite stag back frequently. Offer a structured and specific role.
The magpie	Steals ideas without acknowledging.	Foster a spirit of acknowledgement and reinforcement of individual ideas. Warn magpie directly if necessary.
The dolphin	Intelligent, good communicator and playful online.	Ensure dolphin acknowledges and works well with others. May annoy participants who think it’s all very serious.

We then decided what animal we are regarding our own participation patterns and created a Glog describing ourselves. What a funny mix of animals we had! :)

Next we did some reading and discussed it.

And finally we watch an online presentation by Prof Curtis Bonk about Building Instructor and Social Presence which was quite interesting. However, there was a very big point missing in it: how to make online course participants interact with each other as I think student-student interaction is as important as teacher-student interaction. But the video was actually only about the latter.

Still very useful and interesting.

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