4.3 Design Brief Action Plan – Edinburgh Model Group 15
A task to explore collaborative development of a course plan to present to a board of studies to show how the team would involve students…
You are part of a new course team developing a course to be delivered online at the start of the next academic year. Due to student feedback and high online attrition at other universities, your Programme Board are particularly keen to support online courses that students becoming active participants of the University of Edinburgh community. You have to prepare an action plan for your Programme Board. The action plan will outline how teaching staff will ensure that students on the new online course feel part of the University of Edinburgh community and a part of their course and programme cohort.
Trying Microsoft Teams for coordination between the 4 team members and a course leader. Observation AT: Microsoft Teams is not a great tool for making team members aware of activity or fostering a sense of community or team spirit. I never turn on notifications from any tool as I am involved in so many online communities, so tools that are poor at summarising the status and progress of discussions or work items when you return possibly after some time away don’t work very well for me.
Some Inputs and thoughts… Our Community Orientated Online Course
1. a (brief) summary of the cohort demographics and geographical locations of the cohort as you understand them to be. This needn’t be precise, just a sketch.
Idea AT: Shall we assume international, multi-time zone, multi-cultural, multi-age?
2. a (brief) overview of community specific activity that you will design into this new course, and the virtual spaces where this activity will take place. You can focus on the community (University of Edinburgh), the cohort (the fellow students within this specific course or more broadly on your programme) or both.
Idea AT: How about getting them all to create their own digital artifact related to how the subject matter of the course relates to their own personal interests. Any format, any media. To briefly explain their personal interest and then how the subject matter or readings in the area might apply to or be used in their area of interest. When (or if) ready they can invite classmates to look at their artifact and give constructive inputs and ideas. A weekly virtual get together that runs over a 48 hour period across all time zones in a persistent meeting space with poster boards round the walls will allow anyone willing and ready to put up a poster with a URL to their artifact and this will indicate they are open to inputs from classmates. Classmates can make asynchronous inputs about posters to help their classmates. Some encouragement inputs and gentle persuasion from class leaders will be made as appropriate to keep up some momentum. Occasional video made to allow those without easy access to platform chosen to see what is happening. Ask for community volunteers to act as a bridge into the platform and posters for those without suitable access or skill.
3. a (brief) overview of how you might know the activity was working in was fostering a sense of community. Again, no need to be elaborate here but rather just a few metrics you might be looking for.
Idea AT: Look at how many people get to the stage of making their artifact accessible via a URL. Then how many take it to the stage or making a poster in the persistent meeting space for weekly sessions. And how many people actually comment and give feedback.
4. an indication of how your plan caters for inclusivity and accessibility.
Multiple time zones support, dip in access, any level of involvement, no need to go public with the artifact.
4.4 The 3 C’s – community, campus, cohort
Support for Communities of Practice. Notes…
We supported a community of several hundred people (a volunteer sub-group of a world wide community of some 1,300 experts in academic, government and industry) involved in supporting government agencies and multi-national efforts in emergency response situations. We explored and conducted usability and effectiveness evaluations of a set of tools for distributed collaboration suitable for supporting their inputs and activity in both training and live emergency contexts…
Whole of Society Crisis Response Community exercises e.g. with USJFCOM, Army Research Labs, Virginia State, Hampton City and others…
- https://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/2009/09/23/viws-1-event-for-woscr-community-in-preparation-openvce-woscr/
- https://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/2010/01/15/i-room-for-federal-virtual-world-challenge-2009/
- http://web.archive.org/web/20160401071848/http://openvce.net/federal-virtual-worlds-challenge
- https://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/2009/09/18/federal-virtual-worlds-challenge-2009/
EADS Astrium (Airbus) Homeland Security and Non-combatant Evacuation Scenarios