E-Learning 3.0 : Identity Graphs

We are now in the fourth week of this E-Learning 3.0 open course/MOOC. The task for this week is to create an Identity Graph, which Stephen Downes (convener of this course) has outlined as follows:

Identity – Create an Identity Graph

• We are expanding on the marketing definition of an identity graph. It can be anything you like, but with one stipulation: your graph should not contain a self-referential node titled ‘me’ or ‘self’ or anything similar
• Think of this graph as you defining your identity, not what some advertiser, recruiter or other third party might want you to define.
• Don’t worry about creating the whole identity graph – focusing on a single facet will be sufficient. And don’t post anything you’re not comfortable with sharing. It doesn’t have to be a real identity graph, just an identity graph, however you conceive it.

Here is my graph, which I created using Matthias Melcher’s Think Tool – Thought Condensr, which is very quick and easy to use.

Like Matthias,  I puzzled over why Stephen required that the graph – “should not contain a self-referential node titled ‘me’ or ‘self’ or anything similar”. How could I avoid this if the graph is to be about my identity? In the event, it became obvious that not only is it possible to create the graph without referring to me, but also that doing this clearly demonstrates that knowledge of my identity is in the network rather than any specific node. My identity begins to emerge from the graph, without me having to specify it.

You can see from the graph that there are three links which don’t connect. I did this by simply cutting them off for the screenshot of the graph, because I wanted to suggest that this graph could, in fact, go on and on. This image provides only a glimpse of my identity. I could not only expand the graph, by making more links and connections, but I could also make more connections within this section of the graph. I am also aware that if I started afresh and drew this tomorrow it would be different because my identity and how I think of it is fluid and evolving.

I was also aware in drawing the graph that pretty much all of it is traceable online. It reminded me of the introductory task that was set on Etienne Wenger’s online course  Foundations of Communities of Practice that he ran with John Smith and Bron Stuckey in 2008. The task was based on the idea of six degrees of separation. “Six degrees of separation is the idea that all living things and everything else in the world are six or fewer steps away from each other so that a chain of “a friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps” (see Wikipedia). At the start of that course we were given the name of an unknown fellow participant and had to find out enough about them to be able to link to them in six steps and then share this information. This was a very good way of learning more about fellow participants at the start of the course, but also of recognising that we can easily connect to anyone across the world in just a few steps.

Stephen set some further optional questions for us to consider:

• What is the basis for the links in your graph: are they conceptual, physical, causal, historical, aspirational?

They seem to be physical and historical, whereas Matthias’s graph seems to emphasise the conceptual. 

• Is your graph unique to you? What would make it unique? What would guarantee uniqueness?

I think it must be unique. The nodes are not unique, but the relations between the nodes, whilst they might not be unique individually, as a whole must be unique. I think it would be impossible to guarantee its uniqueness if it remained static. Anyone could come along and copy or mimic it. Uniqueness can only be guaranteed if the graph is continually updating, evolving and new connections are being made. I am not sure whether old connections can be broken, or do they just become inactive and move way off to the edge of the graph?

• How (if at all) could your graph be physically instantiated? Is there a way for you to share your graph? To link and/or intermingle your graph with other graphs?

I’m not sure if I have understood the question correctly? Isn’t the graph I have created using Matthias’s Think Tool, and posted here, a physical instantiation? Does physical instantiation have a specific meaning in relation to graphs? I think I might have missed the point – but I can see that it would be relatively easy to intermingle my graph with Matthias’s graph. It might be necessary for us both to add a few nodes and links, but not many, to be able to connect the two graphs fairly seamlessly (a bit like the six degrees of separation task described above).

• What’s the ‘source of truth’ for your graph?

This is a big question as it raises the whole question of what we mean by truth. I have been grappling with this for quite a few months now. In my most recent blog post about ‘truth’ –  I reported that both Gandhi and Nietzsche have expressed the view that “human beings can only know partial and contingent truths and perspectives; there are a multiplicity of truths and perspectives.” So in these terms, the truth of my graph can only be partial or contingent. Even if I have not knowingly lied, I have selected what to include in the graph and therefore I have also selected what to leave out.

But Stephen’s question is about the ‘source of truth’. Is he asking about ‘source of truth’ as defined in information systems?  This is not a subject I know anything about.

In information systems design and theory, single source of truth (SSOT) is the practice of structuring information models and associated data schema such that every data element is stored exactly once. Any possible linkages to this data element (possibly in other areas of the relational schema or even in distant federated databases) are by reference only. Because all other locations of the data just refer back to the primary “source of truth” location, updates to the data element in the primary location propagate to the entire system without the possibility of a duplicate value somewhere being forgotten. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_source_of_truth

In these terms I’m not sure how to answer Stephen’s question about ‘source of truth’. If someone could enlighten me that would be great.

Thinking of knowledge as a graph

This is a response to the E-Learning 3.0 task  for course participants created by Matthias Melcher. See https://x28newblog.wordpress.com/2018/11/09/el30-graph-task/

The task requires that we select from one of the topics of this course, and create a map from the list of keywords for the topic provided by Matthias. Matthias took the keywords from the synopsis for each topic written by Stephen Downes. The task is to connect and annotate the keywords.

Matthias provided links to two types of mapping tool – cmap.ihmc.us  and  a tool he has created himself – http://condensr.de/download-page/ . I have used both tools in the past, but I am more familiar with Matthias’ tool, so I used that.

I selected the ‘Cloud’ list of keywords, to create this map.

• storage
• electricity
• server virtualization
• vmware
• docker
• amazon web services
• edx
• coursera
• yaml
• vagrantfile
• jupyter
• redefine textbooks
• experience
• algorithm
• containers
• load-balancing

Creating the map

Since I have used this tool before (see A new mapping tool: useful for research purposes) I did not find it technically difficult.

Here is a screenshot of the map I created. Click on the image to enlarge it.

And here is a link to the interactive map, which is much more interesting, because by clicking on a node you can see the annotations – http://x28hd.de/tool/samples/JM%20Cloud%20Map.htm 

(I contacted Matthias to ask him to create this link for me. WordPress does not host .htm files; at least, as far as I am aware it does not)

Despite the lack of serious technical difficulties,  I did somehow manage to inadvertently make 4 copies of my map, one under the other. I found that it took a while to delete each node and link individually. And at another stage I managed to lose the map entirely (I think I swiped it off the screen). I have done this before, but I couldn’t remember how to get it back. I had saved the xml file though, so just uploaded it again. I know that Matthias is refining this tool all the time, so a block delete function sometime in the future would be great. (Update 13-11-18 – See http://condensr.de/2018/11/12/a-user-question/ for Matthias’s video explanation of how to overcome these minor difficulties that I had)

I created the map using the text from Stephen’s synopsis. This revealed the aspects of the topic that I still haven’t understood. I made a note of these in the text annotations (in italics). I did look up definitions and explanations of some terms and added text if an explanation wasn’t evident in Stephen’s text, e.g. algorithm. If I were to continue to develop the map, I would do more of this.

Thinking of knowledge as a graph

This is the real challenge, i.e. moving from thinking and seeing knowledge in a linear way to thinking and seeing knowledge as a network/graph.  I like lists, but in recent years I have come to appreciate that when you organise and categorise terms in lists you miss the richness of connections. Some terms need to be in more that one category. A map shows us how ideas are interconnected. A list cannot do this. Matthias explains this really well at the start of his video, which is posted on his website download page – http://condensr.de/download-page/

I know from my experience of using this tool, that my tendency is to use it as a repository for resources. It is actually great for this. I have used it for research purposes, as a place to store information and thoughts about related articles, but as Stephen writes –

The graph, properly constructed, is not merely a knowledge repository, but a perceptual system that draws on the individual experiences and contributions of each node. This informs not only what we learn, but how we learn.

To develop my knowledge of the Cloud, to learn and understand more about it, I need to grow my connections and the links between them. The state of my knowledge can then be represented by the map. A  key affordance of Matthias’ Think Tool is that it is easy to ‘grow’ the map, adding nodes and links, and storing information about them, as this growth occurs.

A graph is a distributed representation of a state of affairs created by our interactions with each other. The graph is at once the ­outcome of these interactions and the source of truth about those states of affairs. The graph, properly constructed, is not merely a knowledge repository, but a perceptual system that draws on the individual experiences and contributions of each node. This informs not only what we learn, but how we learn. (Stephen Downes – https://el30.mooc.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=68472)

I do not yet fully understand the link that Stephen makes between graphs and the “source of truth”. I have yet to read the article he links to – Epistemology in the Cloud, which I think might help. Stephen has written

The source of truth, if there is any, lies in how those links are created and maintained ….. and that …. it’s not the individual idea that’s important, but rather how the entire graph grows and develops. It protects us from categorization errors and helps prevent things like confirmation bias.

This links to what Matthias says, at the beginning of his video, about the dangers of pigeon-holing things.

These ideas go beyond what Matthias asked for in his task, but I do see that in order to start thinking of knowledge as a graph, we probably need to start by creating graphs, and his Think Tool helps to make the shift from thinking of knowledge as a representational system to thinking of knowledge as a perceptual system.

And finally, I now realise, more than before, that I have already been thinking about this, implicitly, in my search for understanding what Iain McGilchrist means by ‘betweenness’, which I was writing about last month on this blog. See

‘Betweenness’ : a way of being in the world – https://jennymackness.wordpress.com/2018/10/02/betweenness-a-way-of-being-in-the-world/

Understanding ‘Betweenness’ – seeing beyond the parts – https://jennymackness.wordpress.com/2018/10/10/understanding-betweenness-seeing-beyond-the-parts/

Edusemiotics, the Divided Brain and Connectivism https://jennymackness.wordpress.com/2018/09/17/4436/

Resources

Matthias Melcher Thought Condensr website – http://condensr.de/

E-Learning 3.0, Part 3: Graph – https://el30.mooc.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=68472 and associated video https://youtu.be/WiaxHxiN_IA  (Stephen’s summary of the week)

Understanding ‘Betweenness’ – seeing beyond the parts

In a previous post, I began to explore and share my understanding of what Iain McGilchrist has written about and means by ‘betweenness’ as a way of being in the world.

I thought that maybe a ‘both/and’ view of the world, rather than ‘either/or’ might explain it, but this explanation feels over-simplistic and unsatisfactory. It seems to miss the depth that McGilchrist is exploring. Whilst more ‘both/and’ thinking might serve, at least in part, to  counter ‘either/or’ thinking, it wouldn’t get to the heart of the problem.

Gary Goldberg in commenting on my last post about ‘betweenness’, has written that he considers the issue of betweenness to be ‘ effectively addressed …. in the architectonic philosophical system of Charles Sanders Peirce…… the issue is a tolerance for ‘vagueness’ when one considers the universe as fundamentally relational and context-dependent.’

Martina Emke wrote ‘Betweenness’ is related to the concepts of ‘rhizome’ and ‘becoming’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). ‘Betweenness’ is a counter-narrative to the idea of identity, a constant process of transitioning that pertains to humans and non-humans.

And Matthias Melcher in a private communication emphasised the similarities between the idea of ‘betweenness’ and connectivism. For example, in his article ‘An Introduction to Connective Knowledge’, Stephen Downes has written ‘Connective knowledge requires an interaction. More to the point, connective knowledge is knowledge of the connection.’

But McGilchrist’s idea of ‘betweenness’ as a way of being in the world, goes, I think, beyond all these three quests at seeking understanding of how we learn to understand and live with the uncertainty,  ambiguities and complexities of the world we live in. It even goes beyond language.

‘Any one thing can be understood only in terms of another thing, and ultimately that must come down to a something that is experienced, outside the system of signs (i.e. by the body). The very words which form the building blocks of explicit thought are themselves all originally metaphors, grounded in the human body and its experience.’ (p. 118. The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World).

If this is the case – then how can we talk about ‘betweenness’ so that we can share an understanding of it and so that it can be applied as a way of learning and being? How can the idea of betweenness be made explicit without losing its meaning. This would mean ‘seeing’ the relationships between concepts as a whole, and avoiding separating concepts from experience? It would mean recognising ‘knowing’ as a reciprocal, reverberative process, a back and forth, reflecting the way in which neurones behave, which is not linear, sequential, unidirectional. As McGilchrist writes, p.194,

‘It seems that this reciprocity, this betweenness, goes to the core of our being. Further than even this, there is fascinating evidence that betweenness and reciprocity exist at the level of cell structure and function within the single neurone, even at the molecular level, as the brain comes to understand something and lay down memory traces.’

I suspect that any attempt to fully articulate and define what ‘betweenness’ might mean is going to fail, if only because, if it is embedded in experience, then it will necessarily be personal to each and every one of us. The nearest anyone I know has come to presenting a holistic view of ‘betweenness’ as expressed by McGilchrist is Matthias Melcher with this map, which he sent me in a personal communication and has given me permission to share in this blog post. (Clicking on the image will enlarge it).

To fully appreciate the power of this map in articulating the idea of ‘betweenness’, you will need to engage with the interactive version, which you can quickly see via this link – http://x28hd.de/tool/samples/betweenness.htm

The interactive map allows you to click on a node (as seen in the example below where the node ‘reciprocation’ has been clicked on, to reveal text from p.194 of Iain McGilchrist’s book – The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.)

This view of ‘betweenness’, a view resonant of the right hemisphere’s holistic approach (the view that McGilchrist has suggested is being lost in favour of the left hemipshere’s fragmented abstracted view of our world, in which we see things as parts rather than a whole), has been arrived at by reading through The Master and his Emissary’ to find everything that McGcilchrist has said about ‘betweenness’. There is no one section or chapter addressing this point. (It would be rather ironic if there were.) ‘Betweenness’ is a theme that runs through the book. Having collected all the ‘parts’, Matthias, using his Think Tool, has been able to look for relationships between the parts and create this ‘whole’. Someone else, of course, would have created a different set of connections, a different whole, but there would probably be enough similarity to come to some common understanding.

Is there then, some value to thinking not in terms of either/or, nor even in terms of ‘both/and’, but in terms of maps of relations? Would this be a better way to understand ‘betweenness’?

Further information about Matthias Melcher’s Think Tool

It may be that on viewing the map that you can see different or additional connections that you would like to make. If you would like to edit the map you can download Matthias Melcher’s Think Tool from his website – http://condensr.de/  and then upload his file, which is accessible via this link  http://x28hd.de/tool/samples/betweenness.xml by dragging and dropping it into the tool.

Many thanks to Matthias Melcher for creating this map which helped me better understand ‘betweenness’ and for sharing his open website and the file links.

PhD by Publication – Selection of Papers

In her book, PhD by Published Work, Susan Smith writes that one of the disadvantages of this route to a PHD is that ‘it is tricky to retrospectively shoe-horn diverse papers into a post hoc theme’ (p.34).

This statement seems to suggest that researchers jump from project to project that have no direct links between them. Maybe this is the case for researchers, associated with universities, who may have to work on projects which are not their principal area of interest, either because these projects bring in funding, or because papers from these projects will contribute to their University’s research excellence framework (REF). I can see that this might lead to diverse papers that are difficult to pull together, but neither of these constraints applied to me, since I have always worked as an independent researcher.

Despite this, it wasn’t immediately apparent to me which papers I should select for this PhD by Publication or what the focus of my supporting statement should be. I think there were at least three possible routes I could have gone down, depending on which and how many papers I selected for submission and which papers I left out. As Ian McGilchrist says on p.133 of his book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World:

It is not just that what we find determines the nature of attention we accord to it, but that the attention we pay to anything also determines what it is we find.

Perhaps not surprisingly, in order to select papers, I first had to refresh my memory about these publications. Once a paper has been published I tend not to go back and reread it multiple times, but instead move on to the next research project. Although I knew the general gist of all the papers, I didn’t remember all the detail. So I started by working on a mini literature review of my own papers, critiquing them, summarising them, checking the number of citations and how and where the work has been disseminated. Looking back at my journal, I can see that I didn’t find this process particularly easy. It was time consuming and my first summaries were streams of consciousness rather than summaries. Ultimately, I ended up with the summaries of the papers I selected that are in Appendix 3 of the thesis – Jenny Mackness PhD (Pub) 2017.

To decide on which papers to select, I used Matthias Melcher’s Think Tool, which allows you to enter text into a mapping tool and look for links between the entered texts.

Since 2009, I have published 20 papers and one book chapter. I entered the Abstracts of all these publications into the Think Tool and as a result was able to create 6 groups of papers and identify cross-paper themes.

Interrelationships between all publications by group and keyword. (Figure 1 in the thesis, on p.16)

I blogged about this process at the time – A new mapping tool: useful for research purposes. From this process it became clear to me that whilst a large body of work was related to emergent learning, and I could have focussed solely on that, in fact even those papers resulted from participation in MOOCs and a deep interest in how learning occurs in these open environments at the level of the individual learner. I felt there was only one group of papers that diverged from this and that was the group that looks at whether and how learning design can be influenced by an embodied view of the world and a view of perception and action as enactive perception using all the senses, but even these papers originated from an interest in the design of learning environments.

Having decided on which groups to focus on there still remained the question of how many papers to select. For Lancaster University, there was no advice on the number of papers to be submitted other than that the material submitted must be “sufficiently extensive as to provide convincing evidence that the research constitutes a substantial contribution to knowledge or scholarship.” At this stage I went into the department to look at the PhDs by Published Work already awarded, to discover that there had only been three since 1999 (1999, 2003, 2010) and each of these was awarded to a member of staff in the department, who submitted 9, 11 and 10 published works respectively together with a supporting statement of around 40 pages, although I have seen other examples from Lancaster University considerably shorter than this. Ultimately, I submitted 13 papers and a supporting statement of 101 pages. I mention this not to suggest that the number of pages is in any way significant, but just to illustrate that it seems that at Lancaster University there is a wide variety of practice. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the case across universities. The uncertainty associated with this was not easy to work with, but on the other hand seemed to mirror the unpredictable learning environments I have researched, where I have worked with no externally imposed rules or expectations.

Throughout this process I felt I was working in the same way I have always worked, i.e. working it out as I went along, and letting the process and structure emerge. One of my ‘critical friends’ who gave me feedback on the thesis after I had submitted but before the viva thought that my important work was related to the ‘Footprints of Emergence’ framework and emergent learning rather than the empirical papers and I think that my colleague Roy Williams, probably thinks the same, although he hasn’t said this. But the analysis of my papers, using Matthias Melcher’s Think Tool,  revealed my ‘golden thread’ (as Susan Smith calls it) to be ‘learners’ experiences in cMOOCs’, so that is what I focussed on.

On reflection and given the open structure of the PhD by Publication, I can see that in different circumstances at a different time, I might have selected a different set of papers and ended up with a different thesis. Now there’s a thought! But I’m not going to test out this idea  🙂

Drawing to think

I will start by saying that I do not draw to think, even though I do occasionally draw. I write to think, which is why I am writing this post. Let me explain.

Next week I will attend a one day symposium at Lancaster University on ‘The Materiality of Nothing’

The purpose of the symposium is ‘to extend conversations initiated by the AHRC funded ‘Dark Matters’ project which considered the provocations around Thresholds of Imperceptibility’ I attended the Dark Matters workshop at the end of last year and wrote a couple of posts about it.

• Dark Matters: Exploring Thresholds of (Im)perceptibility
• Interrogating Thresholds of (Im)perceptibility 

For the symposium next week, the invitation from Sarah Casey included the following text:

The Materiality of Nothing is a one day symposium at Lancaster University bringing together practice and perspectives on negotiating the absent, unseen and unknown across art, science and social science. Across the arts and sciences that we call ‘zero’, ‘absence’ or ‘nothing’ remains a potent and powerful entity shaping the way we make sense of the world. It is staggering to reflect that 95% of our universe is invisible to human sensing; the provocation of the unknown and unseen is arguably at the core of creative thinking in the arts and sciences.

This event brings together a range perspectives on materialising the absent, unseen and unknown to reflect on the following questions:

• How can ‘nothing’ be embodied?
• How does it feel to encounter the immaterial and how might we negotiate it?
• How might mathematics – as a speculative ‘messenger’ to and from the unsensed – be understood as a medium for generating touch and relationship (or not)?
• How might absence, uncertainty be used as provocations and tool for creative thinking?
• What can this offer in terms of understanding relationship and non-relationship, affect and non affect?

For me this resonates with my interest in Absent Presence and also in what Peter Shukie has called the ‘voice of the voiceless’. In other words, how can we give voice to the voiceless and how we can become more aware of the influences of what is not in plain sight?

A final paragraph in Sarah’s invitation asks us to ….

…. bring along a drawing , notebook or object that could be described as something you think with. The principal editor of Drawing Research Theory Practice Journal  published by Intellect has been in touch and is keen to link up this aspect of the symposium with the journal.

Hence the title of this post.

This invitation has highlighted for me that I do not draw to think, although I am interested enough in drawing to know that many people use drawing to think. Here are a few people that come to mind.

Marc Chagall’s sketchbook

Source of image

Peter Checkland’s soft systems methodology rich pictures

Source of image

Nick Sousanis – sketching entropy

Source of image

From the Research Theory Practice Journal website it is clear that the journal is interested in physical drawing as opposed to electronic drawing.

This journal seeks to reestablish the materiality of drawing as a medium at a time when virtual, on-line, and electronic media dominates visuality and communication.

This is interesting when artists such as David Hockney are using iPads for drawing. Hockney is on my mind at the moment as I will be going to see his portraits exhibition at the Royal Academy in London in September.

So knowing that I write to think, rather than draw to think, and knowing that the activity for the symposium next week really wants physical drawings rather than ’electronic’ drawings, I am a bit stumped. But I can only do what I can do, so I am taking along the following two examples of drawing/mapping that I do electronically.

This example above is how I think about and reflect on any given learning experience. I use the Footprints of Emergence framework which Roy Williams, Simone Gumtau and I developed for trying to understand learning in open learning environments. This has been published as a research paper.  The ‘footprints’ above reflect my experience in the Modern and Contemporary American Poetry MOOC and were included in a book chapter that we published in 2015.

Williams, R., Mackness, J., & Pauschenwein, J. (2015). Using Visualization to Understand Transformations in Learning and Design in MOOCs. In A. Mesquita & P. Peres (Eds.), Furthering Higher Education Possibilities through Massive Open Online Courses (pp. 193 – 209). IGI Global book series Advances in Higher Education and Professional Development. doi:10.4018/978-1-4666-8279-5

The second example is a mapping exercise

For this I used a mapping tool developed by Matthias Melcher to trace the development of my thinking through my research papers. I blogged about it at the time.

I suspect that neither of these is considered examples of drawing to think, but they’re as close as I can get.

I am very much looking forward to the symposium next Thursday.

A new mapping tool: useful for research purposes

I have never felt comfortable with mapping. It seems to involve a way of thinking that just doesn’t come naturally and interpreting other people’s maps seems to be beyond me. Three years ago I attended Howard Rheingold’s online course Towards a Literacy of Cooperation, where mapping was a weekly activity. I blogged about this and without realising it found I had the title Minding Mapping in the Social Media Classroom. I thought I had written Mind Mapping in the Social Media Classroom. It was only later when I came back to the blog post that I realised what the heading was.

But this year I am giving it another go, using the Think Tool Matthias Melcher has developed. I have been looking back through all my published papers and I wanted to see if I could trace my development of thinking through these papers, what the common threads are, what links there are between the papers and what the maps might reveal about my research interests and development as a researcher.

Matthias has made the tool freely available. Here is a direct link – http://x28hd.de/tool/ 

The tool can also be accessed from his blog where he discusses it further and provides a wonderful explanation of how it works in this video which you probably need to watch if you are going to make sense of what follows. (Allow 5.44 mins to watch the video).

As he explains in the video this mapping tool is particularly useful for:

1. Maintaining an overview of multiple connections and not having to organise ideas into discrete categories.
2. Maintaining the richness of the associated text alongside the map. The text does not have to be visible, but can be accessed with a simple click of an icon.

These two affordances seemed perfect for looking for connections between my own research papers.

I have created my own video to show how useful this tool is and how I have used it to date. (This is a 12-minute video. It is a bit blurred, but hopefully not impossible to follow).

From using this tool I now know that my 22 papers can be organised into six groups, which can each be summarised as follows:

Group 1: Implications of community tensions for communities of practice

Group 2: The affordances, tensions and constraints of open environments, notably MOOCs, for learning experiences and connectivity with reference to the theory of connectivism.

Group 3: The design and visualisation of emergent learning experiences within open learning environments, such as MOOCs, where learning is uncertain and relies on self-organisation

Group 4: Focus on a specific MOOC – FSLT12 – to investigate experiences of the learning community, course design and the implications for teaching and learning in a MOOC

Group 5: Whether and how learning design can be influenced by an embodied view of the world and a view of perception and action as enactive perception using all the senses

Group 6: Focus on a specific MOOC – Rhizo14 – with particular reference to learners’ experience of community and curriculum formation and the teacher/facilitator’s role in this

I have also been able to identify major and minor keywords that crop up across the papers and how methods and theory are referenced, again across all 22 papers.

Finally, as I worked on these maps, entering text from the Abstracts and looking for connections, some continuing cross-paper themes began to emerge. At this stage of the mapping process, I see these as:

• Factors of open learning environments; factors that influence teaching/learning
• The impact and consequences of ‘open’ – including an open mind and a more right hemisphere view
• Emergent learning; research itself as emergent learning
• Liminality – the space in between spaces for learning
• Learner experiences – particularly ‘hidden’ experiences; what cannot be seen; the alternative view or people on the boundaries
• Individual dimensions

As I say in the video, Matthias’ Think Tool has been extremely helpful in enabling me to see the connections between my papers and the common threads. For anyone looking for connections across a multitude of concepts/ideas, I can recommend giving it a go.