Rhizomatic Learning

This research is now complete. It has resulted in three published papers.

Mackness, J. & Bell, F. (2015). Rhizo14: A Rhizomatic Learning cMOOC in Sunlight and in Shade. Open Praxis. 7(1), p. 25-38

Mackness, J., Bell, F. & Funes, M. (2016). The Rhizome: a problematic metaphor for teaching and learning in a MOOC. 32(1), p.78-91 Australasian Journal of Educational Technology.

Bell, F., Mackness, J. & Funes, M. (2016). Participant association and emergent curriculum in a MOOC: Can the community be the curriculum? Research in Learning Technology.

Below are the posts we made to share updates on our progress as went along.  Further posts which for one reason or another I think are relevant to rhizomatic learning can be found in the Category labelled ‘Rhizo14’ –https://jennymackness.wordpress.com/category/rhizo14/ 

RESEARCH STUDY ON RHIZO14

Following our participation in Dave Cormier’s open online course – Rhizomatic Learning – The Community is the Curriculum, Frances Bell, Mariana Funes and I are keen to research what happened, our shared experiences and what we learned in this course. We invite you to participate in this research by completing our survey which you can access here – http://bit.ly/Rhizo14survey Details of how we are approaching this research are included in the survey site. The following table indicates how we plan to use research data in our study.  Please contact us if you have any queries.

The survey will remain open until 11.45 pm GMT, Sunday 27th April 2014.You may edit your responses as many times as you wish until this time and date.

Frances Bell (email: frabell@gmail.com)

Mariana Funes (email: queries@marianafunes.co.uk)

Jenny Mackness(email: jenny.mackness@btopenworld.com)

 

Updates on Rhizomatic Learning (Rhizo14) research (most recent update first)

Update 16-07-16 Our third and final paper has now been published

Bell, F., Mackness, J. & Funes, M. (2016). Participant association and emergent curriculum in a MOOC: Can the community be the curriculum? Research in Learning Technology.

Here is the associated blog post  – Third Research Paper on Rhizomatic Learning

Update 19-01-16 Our second paper has now been published. See also associated blog post: https://jennymackness.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/the-rhizome-a-problematic-metaphor-for-teaching-and-learning-in-a-mooc/ 

Mackness, J., Bell, F. & Funes, M. (2016). The Rhizome: a problematic metaphor for teaching and learning in a MOOC. 32(1), p.78-91 Australasian Journal of Educational Technology. 

Update 27-06-15 
On the 18th June Frances Bell and I presented a session for the Liverpool John Moores University’s teaching and learning conference. The title of the session was Teaching and Learning in the Rhizome: Challenges and Possibilities. Follow the link for further details.

Update 13-02-15
Our first paper has been published by Open Praxis today.

Mackness, J. & Bell, F. (2015). Rhizo14: A Rhizomatic Learning cMOOC in Sunlight and in Shade. Open Praxis. 7(1), p. 25-38 

We also have a second paper in submission and are working on a third.

Update 14-01-15
It has been a long time since we have posted an update, but we have not been idle. In November we submitted our first paper to Open Praxis and heard yesterday that it has been accepted for publication. It was accepted without any requirement for changes, but we are doing some final edits. Hopefully it will be published in the Jan – March issue.

Mackness, J. & Bell, F. (2015). Rhizo14: A Rhizomatic Learning cMOOC in Sunlight and in Shade. Open Praxis. (Accepted for publicaton).

Many thanks to all those Rhizo14 participants who supported us in this research, by responding to our surveys and questions.

But our research is not over. We are currently working on two further papers, which we hope to have submitted before the end of March. We’ll see. We’re not in any rush and are very much enjoying the process.

Update 01-09-14
We have now completed the final stage of our data collection, which was to have a conversation about Rhizo14 with the course convener – Dave Cormier. Frances has reported on this conversation on her blog in this post – Getting another perspective. And here is Dave Cormier’s take on the conversation:

 http://davecormier.com/edblog/2014/09/01/you-know-what-you-need-you-need-a-learning-contract/

We now have to complete our data analysis. We think we have enough data for at least two, if not more, papers and hope to be ready to submit at least one, if not two, before January 2015. We will also think about alternative ways to share and publish our work. That’s the aim, but we are not in a rush. The more we analyse the data, the more we learn and the more we have to learn.

Update 27-07-14
Here is the information about the presentation we gave at the ALTMOOCSIG conference in London in June.

June 27 2014 ALTMOOCSIG Conference The Rhizome as a Metaphor for Learning in a MOOC. See also Emerging ambiguities and concerns for blog posts about this presentation and the related Prezi.

Update 11-06-14
We have now sent out a further set of email interview questions to those survey participants who agreed to this. For further information see this post: https://jennymackness.wordpress.com/2014/06/11/next-steps-in-rhizomatic-learning-research-rhizo14/ 

Update 28-04-14
The Rhizomatic Learning Survey is now closed. Very many thanks to all those who took the time to think about and respond to our questions.

The next step is to code the responses we have received and identify significant themes. Once we have done this we will be contacting respondents who indicated that they would be willing to answer follow up questions in an email interview.  I think we will soon be wallowing in data.

Maybe we will end up with enough data for more than one paper. I hope so. I always find research more satisfying if it is ongoing, rather than a one-off.

Update 21-04-14
I wrote a final reminder about the survey in this blog post_ https://jennymackness.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/rhizomatic-learning-research/

Update 20-03-14  
We have just sent this email  (copied below) out to survey participants who have, to date, participated in our survey. I am posting it here in the hope that those who posted anonymously might see it and also keep up to date with where we are up to. Survey participants can continue to enter the survey and edit as many times as they wish up to the closing date – April 27th. Many thanks to all who have participated so far, including those who have participated anonymously. There is still plenty of time for others to complete the survey. We welcome all responses, acknowledged or anonymous, whatever your level of participation in rhizo14.

Dear Rhizo14 participant,

Thank you for participating in our survey. We wanted to update you with where we are up to and what will happen next.

We have had some very interesting responses to the survey, some anonymous, all of which have left us with more questions! You are receiving this email because you identified yourself as being willing to be  interviewed further by email.

We will wait until the survey closes (April 27th) before doing this. We will then spend some time analysing the survey responses, so it will be sometime in the middle of May when we will contact you again. We hope that is OK with you.

In the meantime, the survey can be entered and edited as many times as you wish until April 27th. If you do make changes, it would be helpful if you could let us know (by email) as of course we have already started to analyse your responses.

Many thanks for your participation in this research. We are very pleased with the number and quality of responses we have received so far.

Best wishes,

Jenny, Frances and Mariana