Connectivity/life balance

I have just read Steve Sorden’s post about the difficulty of keeping the balance right in relation to how much time we spend on this course.

This reminded me that I wanted to make a note of Stephen’s post (or was it George?) on how many hours we should be spending on this course. 8 hours a week.

From what I have read I expect people have spent more than I hour on their assignment – probably much more. 

Some additional time that might be needed depending on your prior experience would be for setting up your blog, or other aspects of your personal learning environment. This could take quite a lot of time

Beyond this, what is needed are the skills to save time – so multi-tasking skills, ability to skim read and so on will all save time. I think Stephen or George said on the Ustream call that it was expected that people signing up for this course would have the basic technical skills, but as Stephen also said, typical internet behaviour is to sign up and then wonder if it’s the right course for you after signing up. A pre-course skills/technical skills/computer spec type of checklist might help to prevent people just jumping on the bandwagon – but on the other hand if I’d completed a checklist I probably wouldn’t be here now

The course does seem to be all consuming though. If I’m not actually online, I am thinking about it and relating it all the time to other areas of my work. I can see that it will leave a hug gap once it is ended, but I think this is a common experience with online courses.

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Understanding norms

I wasn’t able to attend the Ustream session on Friday – so I’ve just listened to the recording. These sessions are really valuable in providing an overview of the week and Dave Cormier does a great job in hosting them.

The session started with Stephen talking about his view of what this course is offering. ‘This is not an instructor led course. The point is that people learn to manage their own learning.’  Dave doesn’t disagree with this and neither do I – but Dave follows this up by asking – ‘At what point does this mean, just go to the internet to learn?’ This was a good question.

Stephen answers that this obviously is a course  (more than just going to the internet to learn)- but not the sort of course that many of us are used to. It’s very easy to see the structure – and Stephen was able to point this out very clearly when talking about The Daily, Moodle, the wiki, the readings and so on. I don’t think either Stephen or George need to justify the structure. It’s very obvious. Stephen pointed out that it ‘s also a course because the University of Mannitoba says its a course with associated accreditation and assessement criteria.

I think that possibly some people’s problems have not been with the structure, but with understanding the norms. Stephen feels that we have a culture of learned helplessness, where many expect to be led to the learning and told what the learning is. I don’t think that people necessarily want to be led. What is most important is finding the conversations and feeling connected. For me this has been particularly difficult on this course and I think its because I didn’t understand the norms quickly enough. I am used to traditional online courses with a facilitator, and to online communities with community leaders and mentors. I have for a long time known that I can find out whatever I need to know from the internet. I suppose what is new for me, is the degree of autonomy that is offered by this course – not just offered, but expected. This is a norm on this course which I have needed to understand.

Understanding norms is a critical part of the learning experience. It’s interesting that one of the norms here is that you would have an understanding of the norms associated with open courses before starting the course. Isn’t this a bit of a tall order, given that the whole concept of open courses is new?

Thinking aloud again. If these posts are coming across as criticisms, I’m sorry – they are not intended to be. I am fascinated by how this amazing course is working – what makes it successful, where people are struggling and so on. By the end of the course, I hope to be clear in my own mind about how education in the future might change and how I might change my existing practice.

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