Educational theories that help us understand how groups learn together, and how design of collaborative learning environments

Through an eight-week course, provide an overview of the field of CSCL, including some consideration of how it is situated within the broader fields of educational technology, and education, as well as its history. Through a focus on a few important topics, let students read seminal papers in the field, and engage meaningfully with relevant theories and approaches. Provide an overview over key theoretical perspectives, as well as case studies of a few well-known CSCL platforms.

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Building the course WE want...

This page is to facilitate discussion about aspect of the course that you might want to comment on, modify, abandon, or add (including readings, badges, conversation or meeting changes, platforms, etc).

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Jennifer Claro June 2, 2011, 4:53 p.m.

"Proceedings of the Introduction to CSCL course at P2PU, Spring 2011"

While we are brainstorming ideas here, how about this one? We were talking before about an OER that we'd make together as a product of this course. How about a proceedings? The posts that are considered for badges (either the 4-badge or 1-badge idea, both would work) could be collected in a document that would be the "Proceedings of the Introduction to CSCL course at P2PU, Spring 2011", or something like that. It could be a regular Word document or a Google doc or a wiki. This way we'd have the best of what we produce in a permanent collection that could be referenced, like a publication. As well, P2PU would have something to keep as a record of what was achieved in this course (at least as far as artifacts are concerned).

What do you think?
Joe Corneli June 2, 2011, 5:12 p.m.
In Reply To: Jennifer Claro June 2, 2011, 4:53 p.m.

I think that's a great idea! Note though that proceedings generally need to have a peer review and editing phase. The time for that hasn't necessarily been built into this course, but if people are willing to work past the end of the course, it could work out great. Each of the 4 "badges" could become a sub-section.

I feel like a publication is much more "real" than a badge.
Jennifer Claro May 12, 2011, 8:57 p.m.

Thanks everyone! What great support! :)

Cheers,

Jennifer
Jennifer Claro May 12, 2011, 6:54 p.m.

Is there a list somewhere of all the papers we'll be reading in the course? I'm sure I saw one somewhere, but can't find it now.

If someone could post a link, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks,

Jennifer
Joe Corneli May 12, 2011, 7:10 p.m.
In Reply To: Jennifer Claro May 12, 2011, 6:54 p.m.

Or someone could import them into Zotero now that it's working :)
Nate Otto May 12, 2011, 7:16 p.m.
In Reply To: Jennifer Claro May 12, 2011, 6:54 p.m.

Our reading list for each week has an entry in the list of pages at the bottom left. week 3 readings right now, and start with the last two in the list, because the top one is an enormous book. (if you do attack the Stahl Group Cognition book, I found that the beginning of section three is where he starts to summarize and bring his theory together.)
Monica Resendes May 12, 2011, 7:26 p.m.
In Reply To: Jennifer Claro May 12, 2011, 6:54 p.m.

On it!

I will create a page for WK4, and include specific readings. I'll also create pages for the remaining weeks, which we can then add to.

My task for the next Bi-Weekly was also to mine all the readings people have suggested in blogs, tweets, course discussion threads, etc. and include those in the Resources page and in our Zotero group. So, by tonight (hopefully!) there should be a whole bunch of places to access articles.

cheers,

m
Joe Corneli May 4, 2011, 5:49 a.m.

Since people are already finding all sorts of citations, a tool that could be very useful to us is Zotero. It's possible to set up a shared "group" there, for example, here's one that Charlie Danoff and I have been using for work our paragogy paper: http://www.zotero.org/groups/paragogy/

The benefits of Zotero are that all of the citations end up in one place, but they can be further organized into folders, AND annotated. (The first draft of our paper was made by mapping our outline into a folder structure, then adding the papers we really thought were relevant, and finally combining annotations in a sensible way.)

There's a small learning curve associated with this tool (install it, change Google Scholar settings to "Import into Endnote", learn how to annotate items, generate a report, export your bibliography in a suitable format, etc.) but I think worth it. You're welcome to join the paragogy group if you want to give it a try. (I would say Zotero is about as essential as Etherpad as a useful tool for open collaboration.)
Jennifer Claro May 4, 2011, 7:44 a.m.
In Reply To: Joe Corneli May 4, 2011, 5:49 a.m.

Hi Joe,

Thank you for posting this useful tool. I wonder if the resource that you were thinking of as an end product of our course was a group paper. If so, it looks like this program would come in handy.

If you could, please expand on your ideas for what you were thinking of. If it was a group paper, we might want to start discussing options/ideas in the near future. I have a presentation in the 1st week of June, and a paper to write within the following month, but I'd be in for a group paper if the plan was constructed well enough ahead of time.

Thank you for your ideas, and this useful tool.

Cheers,

Jennifer
Nate Otto May 4, 2011, 10:31 a.m.
In Reply To: Joe Corneli May 4, 2011, 5:49 a.m.

Joe, I think a Zotero group sounds like a great idea. Could you go ahead and set up a new group?

http://www.zotero.org/search/#group/cscl - There is a public CSCL group with 17 members, but we should probably start our own for cscl-intro.

I like the idea of creating OER in different spaces despite the worry that it might dilute our efforts. Links can tie them together, and collaboratively we can make sure to provide a comprehensive OER to introduce CSCL. While our main OER might be in the form of a Wiki cluster, Zotero is a better tool to collect formal references. I would be willing to help annotate some readings for the collection and make sure it is a complete representation of the ideas we covered for this intro. Not everybody necessarily needs to contribute to the Zotero portion of the OER for it to be useful, so I don't think adding a component will increase everybody's workload. We can link to Zotero from the wiki.
Joe Corneli May 4, 2011, 11:59 a.m.
In Reply To: Nate Otto May 4, 2011, 10:31 a.m.

Hi Nate and all: The new group is here:

http://www.zotero.org/groups/icscl/

Should be relatively easy to join and start adding and annotating items; please do so and let me know if you have any trouble. In my experience Zotero can be used "as a wiki" of sorts.

Good lead about the existing CSCL group - but we have a cooler acronym ;)
Joe Corneli May 4, 2011, 12:22 p.m.
In Reply To: Jennifer Claro May 4, 2011, 7:44 a.m.

A group paper, or book, or wiki - any of these could be useful. A wiki would have some benefits because people could continue to add to it later.

I've illustrated the wiki-like functionality of Etherpad at http://piratepad.net/introcscl - probably no need to set up any additional wiki tool at least for now? (Unless others disagree...)
Rebecca Cober May 4, 2011, 1:40 p.m.
In Reply To: Joe Corneli May 4, 2011, 12:22 p.m.

I don't know how ya'll feel about this, but I'd be really interested in working towards writing a group paper. We could certainly work on the wiki and zotero repository as part of the process. It would be super to have a more concrete artefact that could come out of this course. If we could submit it for publication, even better!
Jennifer Claro May 4, 2011, 3:20 p.m.
In Reply To: Rebecca Cober May 4, 2011, 1:40 p.m.

Hi Rebecca and everyone,

It's great that we are discussing this now, at the beginning of the course. I'd be very happy to write a group paper, because a) Writing a paper forces you to learn more, dig deeper into topics than you might otherwise do and b) As you mentioned, publication is important. I am all in favour of OER but I am in the publish or perish stream now and need to make headway upstream. Published articles can be OER too! :)

On the other hand, a paper is a big commitment and takes a fair amount of time, so everyone might not be into that. Maybe we could try to figure out somehow what each person envisions as a final product/OER and then those who want to write a paper could do so, those who'd like to make a wiki could do so, etc. Papers are best written by small groups anyway, so if only a few people are into the group paper idea, that would be okay. Or there could be several small group papers on different topics. There are lost of ways we could go with this.

Maybe we could ask everyone to present ideas about what kind of OER they envision and then we could make small groups? Or wait a bit and see what topics we are drawn to and at that time start discussing options?

Great to see so much enthusiasm! And some great collaborative tools too. Let's keep building on here over the next week or so and see what we generate.

Cheers,

Jennifer
Rebecca Hedreen May 5, 2011, 1:16 p.m.
In Reply To: Jennifer Claro May 4, 2011, 3:20 p.m.

I'd be more inclined towards an educational output, like a wikitextbook or something of the sort, but if the group wants to go with the paper, I can work with that. I would think that a paper woudl be more difficult in some ways, because we have to choose something fairly specific to focus on.

I haven't been using Zotero much lately, as I've been experimenting with Mendeley, which is a higher end citation tool, but still free. If you are writing a lot, I'd definitely recommend it as an alternative to a fee product like EndNote. I'll dust off my Zotero account.
Monica Resendes May 5, 2011, 1:41 p.m.
In Reply To: Rebecca Hedreen May 5, 2011, 1:16 p.m.

I'm inclined to say that we don't have to necessarily create only one product or artifact. We could simply begin to work in the area that we want to focus on and others can monitor and contribute when or if they choose as the course progresses.

I know I would personally like to contribute to a set of recommendations or some sort of document that outlines 'best practices' of CSCL for varying domains.

Basically, I think it's important we have shared goals and objectives but it's also important the course remains relevant, useful and aligned with individual motivations.
Stian Haklev May 7, 2011, 5:23 p.m.
In Reply To: Monica Resendes May 5, 2011, 1:41 p.m.

Great to see all the ideas and initiatives here! Zotero is interesting - I've spent a huge amount of time lately investigating different citation management tools etc, and which I can best integrate into my workflow. None are perfect, but I have found some that are pretty good. I plan to share this soon, when I get my own infrastructure to where I want it.

It would actually be really useful to make a small screencast of how you envisage using Zotero for this kind of collaborative work, with annotations, paper writing etc. I know the basic functionality, but some of the things you mentioned were new to me.

It's a great idea to write a paper for those interested in that! I won't be joining the group paper effort (apart from encouragement and support), since I have a bunch of other papers to write already, but I whole-heartedly support a small group of students choosing to take on this task. As far as I know, there hasn't been a peer-reviewed paper published yet that is the direct outcome of a P2PU course, so that would be very neat. It's also neat if people have other ideas for artefacts they want to generate... One of the things Monica and I thought about was finding an existing CSCL/edutech wiki, like this one, and adding articles, improving on existing articles, etc. That wiki does not have a page on Marlene Scardamalia, as just one example.
Joe Corneli May 8, 2011, 5:33 a.m.
In Reply To: Stian Haklev May 7, 2011, 5:23 p.m.

Hi Stian:

Here's a video on how I use Zotero, per your request - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c01ECF_Idc

I had just woken up when I made this but it covers the main points in 11 minutes (not bad):

Where to get Zotero, using it with Google Scholar, adding notes, generating reports, exporting individual citations, exporting entire bibliographies.

It doesn't cover joining the icscl group but that's easy to do from http://www.zotero.org/groups/icscl after registering on Zotero. I hope this will help encourage other people in the course to use the tool.
Martin Aa May 9, 2011, 9:07 a.m.
In Reply To: Joe Corneli May 8, 2011, 5:33 a.m.

Thank you Joe, this was a useful video.

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