User talk:Countrymike/Notes on Reading groups

Thanks
I just wanted to say thanks for outlining so clearly the process of creating something in relation to other things you have seen in Wikiversity (problems of structure, suggestions for improvement..). Also, the page itself is a good one in enabling you to keep tabs on what could indeed become an exciting model for Wikiversity projects (or even may already be such). Thanks for all your good work in this area, Brent. :-) Actually, it strikes me to ask: would you care to outline what kinds of reading groups you would like to start? I know I've been talking for ages about contributing to the Illich reading group - but I suppose the way I now see it is that the collaborative momentum behind it is somewhat over, and that I'd like to feel part of something that others were simultaneously trying to get to grips with. The Wittgenstein one could develop, but it might be a bit much for me at the moment - or, at least, I'd rather get into something that's more immediately aligned with the search for what makes a good learning community, or the wider context in which Wikiversity exists. Any ideas there? Cormaggio talk 18:14, 20 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Cormac, I think that for a long time I participated in Wikiversity with the notion that I was helping "others" to learn by performing maintenance, participating in discussions of structure and policy, and guiding newbies, etc .. I am starting to view it from a different angle now; perhaps somewhat ironically after all the hype has died down on the idea of the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) I'm starting to view the space from just such a personal perspective as the perfect environment to facilitate and record my own learning. I'm sure that you must feel similarly, as it is the space where your PhD is emerging -- you will be a pioneer in this respect I'm sure.


 * In re: the the Reading groups; for me one of the great pleasures about the traditional seminar type university course is the opportunity to participate in the collective readings and subsequent discussions that go on. I often still read quite complex books and pine for the opportunity to discuss them in such groups. One of the features of wiki based Reading groups that I really like is the fact that the group can exist over long periods of time and experience fluctuations in activity, but because of the written nature of the discourse it doesn’t suffer from the temporality of the face-to-face Reading group which is dependent on synchronous interactions around a specific text. So even by starting groups now, even though we may not actually take them much further than just starting them at this point, the fact that they are extant means that someone - perhaps with less wiki skills or confidence than we do - may be likely to take them up in some fashion, at which point we may then rejoin the group. I think this has some merit in the long term for our own learning process and for Wikiversity.


 * Personally, I would love to start a group on Yochai Benkler's, The Wealth of Networks. There is already a Reading group for this text apparently over on Beta but it's in Finnish (I think.) It is a great book that has a lot to say about massive peer collaborative projects including Wikipedia. Countrymike 06:57, 21 February 2008 (UTC)


 * That's a great response - thanks. I think you're 'bang on' (not sure if that's just an Irish phrase - it's identical to 'dead right') about the PLE potential of Wikiversity. I sense that it's this 'use' that is implied in the 'just go ahead and edit - we'll learn through doing' attitude that is often mooted as the Wikiversity learning model (most notably by JWS). My main problem so far is that we aren't really making it so explicit for people as to how they can "learn through doing", or construct useful (for them) resources that scaffold their own learning. Maybe this might be a key reading group in itself - how to provide for (ie scaffold) people to create their own personal learning environments, which in turn scaffold their own learning needs. How about working out something on Personal learning environments - linking to specific or general reading groups? Regarding simultaneity versus asynchronousness (pardon my verbosity) - I agree with you fully, though I think my point about motivation still stands (ie being motivated by others doing something at the same time). I think this is just an inherent tension of asynchronous work - it can be productive in the way that you describe, and/or it can be demotivating or even offputting. Perhaps something to keep in mind as we continue to reflect on what we're doing... And on Yochai Benkler - ridiculously, I didn't even know that there was a freely available text - let's do it! :-) Cormaggio talk 12:43, 21 February 2008 (UTC)