E-Learning Week 4 - Tasks and Reflection

Tasks:

Find at least one good and one bad example case of course design and reflect your opinions of these courses in your personal Weblog. Visit the blogs of your groupmates, read their reflections of course designs and add your opinions as comments about these courses.

I can easily draw a comparison between four e-courses, which I have participated in or am currently participating in:

1. Ethics and Law in New Media
2. E-Learning
3. Avatud õppematerjalide koostamine ja kasutamine
4. Value Chains and New Media

All of these courses are designed in such a way that there is input from the facilitator as well as from the student. The first three courses would be good examples and the fourth would be the bad example, although the example is still not the worst kind.

The first course is very orderly. First it gives the backbone of the course and in the backbone there is a possibility to move on to the course topics. In each topic you have the hometask as well as extra materials. In addition the lecturer provided us with a forum and a weekly skype discussion opportunity (to gain points and to get feedback on different topics). He also invited guests to our skype sessions. These weekly sessions were good for communication between different people, and also groupwork was pretty good among our participants. Each group member had to contribute to the paper we made and thus noone could miss their part. We created the course work environment in a wiki as well. What was missing from the course was the introduction to the topic (as in "today we are going to learn... etc.), but that was really a minor error. Individually we read papers and filled in our blogs.

The second course are very well designed with tasks given in correct order, topics and extra materials under the introduction, leading to separate pages. As I got used to the backbone of the previous course, the index before the topics seems a good solution, but after the index there is scrollable content (too much scrollable content is not good). This course seems not too "scrollable", satisfactory in that sense. The facilitator introduces the topics and provides with good reading materials which give additional academic knowledge to the initial knowledge base, which is great. Students have to reflect on different tasks (given on Wikiversity page) in their blogs and groupwork has to be done on a separate page. A good thing is that the facilitator gives feedback on the course in each participant's blog, and also provides us with a web conferencing option. The facilitator also keeps the students updated through her blog.

The third course is divided into two environments, having the backbone with a similar index as the second course has, and the Wikiversity page is more used as the introduction to weekly topics and tasks. Tasks are given in a separate blog, which may be a bit confusing to the first-time users, but this is well-adaptable to a technology-prone person. The facilitator uses an extra pageflakes page to collect all students' blog links into one blogroll visible to all participants at once, which is a good idea to have a look at the others' blogs as well. The blog option is used for weekly materials.
I found this kind of learning more amusing, but also more confusing. The learners in that course were intrinsically motivated and quite communicative, thus making the course more enjoyable. Sadly I had to leave because of lack of time (enormous workload).

The three previous examples were examples of good e-learning course designs, but the last one should be a bit worse example. 
The fourth Wikiversity-based course's layout is quite stretched, so you have to scroll it down, and the table of contents (what I previously called "index") appeared only recently. This is a very inconvenient way to navigate on the page. The facilitator provides with the introduction of each page, but when you start looking closer at the topics, the content seems pretty much copy-paste from the original sources (which does not seem very academic). There is a separate closed environment (iCampus) for participation and you have to upload your documents there. She provides the students with sources and topics on iCampus, but she has not defined the marking scale, nor the criteria for passing the course. This course seems a bit disturbing, because I feel more like blogging instead of scribbling documents and uploading them. Also I do not like scrolling and would prefer clicking on the topic and moving on to a separate page.

As a group define what are the criteria for a good online course and reflect it in your group space (whatever you choose this to be), but make this group space visible to other groups by posting a link on E-learning/Participants page under your group.

The page created is tallinnuniversityprojects.pbworks.com, and our group task is here.


Reading and reflection

1. Make a selection of reading material for the fourth week
2. Reflect on your learning experiences in your personal Weblog following the reflection template:

1. Explain, what are the components of course design.

1. Structure - in which order and how to place content. What kind of information to provide, what kind of links, etc.
2. Material - presented in a structured format, so that the learner can understand the topics. Chosen material does not differ from classroom material.
3. Motivation and feedback - Due to effective feedback provided by the facilitator, the learner feels motivated.
4. Interaction - a) programs that enable activity, b)open questions, games, tools and calculators stimulate good activity, c) engage the mind!
5. Involvement - Learner-controlled involvement through several activities.

2. What was the most important thing you learned this week? What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week’s activities raised for you?

The most important thing that I learned this week was that group collaboration needs strong peer support and encouragement, as well as changes in chosen web-based applications. It may turn out that in fact the chosen solution may not be the best for this particular group.

3. What is your evaluation of this week's groupwork? (What went well and what did not? How did groupwork influence fulfilling your personal learning contract?)

 I was very pleased with this week's groupwork in terms of collaboration and input. After reminding ourselves that PbWorks does not allow multiple changes for one page, we agreed on using a Google Document in order to collaborate on a draft version of our task 1, and this also went quite well, everybody started participating right away. Alice had to make an account in Google and she managed to fix her thoughts in the document as well.

I expected our wiki-collaboration to make more progress. I certainly expect the group members to add or change my posts in our wiki as well. 

I think I had good feedback on my questions and I hope I could support my team members as well as I could as well. I hope to get feedback on our groupwork from the facilitator as well, since this was the first task ever done by our group in such way. I felt we could have done more there, but maybe I am just overthinking.
Overall, my management skills proved to be excellent in getting the group together as well as allowing them all to collaborate in their own pace. I am satisfied with myself, thus I should make a green tick somewhere in order to mark my coping with the task in the contract.

4. Describe what has changed in your personal learning environment and in group environment?

What changed in our group learning environment was that a separate document for online and simultaneous collaboration was needed. Creating a Google Document was  not a difficult job. I think our group is going to use this kind of collaboration more, and maybe new means of collaboration will arise as well. Final results that our group got, were still put in PbWiki space.

The future of the Long Tail Model in the field of New Media

The Long Tail Forecast

Due to a massive update of services in the new media field, there is a possibility to sell or distribute almost everything with the means of the Internet. What I predict for the future, when we look around the Web space, is that social media like Twitter, Facebook, and other hybrids are going to make a crucial role in passing information to necessary sources. I think that information will be the source of the future long tail model. All possible multimedia solutions may be mixed in order to provide necessary information to a whole lot of people and in this way sell products from books to airplanes (this was a figurative comparison). Right now there are several business strategies that let people see only a part of information and they have to pay for the other part, but the information gets outdated and no one may need it anymore. Lots of companies and individuals nowadays use blogging as spreading information around, as well as vlogging and podcasting. You can spread the word around through witter feeds, facebook updates, myspace updates, you name it.

Traindom

Today I saw a twitter feed for a site named “Traindom”, which is a solution for starting an online information business. This is exactly what I am thinking about in terms of Long Tail model in the future. Companies start selling their information instead of answering questions of every single person, easier, cheaper, less time consuming. Traindom offers an interactive solution for e-courses instead of e-books, which according to them are obsolete. By that they enable customers to create courses for free and ask for money until the customers start making money. I think this is a clever solution of online Long Tail information model.

Conclusion

In conclusion I think that we cannot predict the far future, because social media is in constant change. I think there will be something totally new and unforeseen. But until now the social media applications are making a huge progress in helping the information flow to the right channels, thus help those channels buy the necessary information or goods they want or need. This will be satisfying for everyone – for those who benefit from it and for those who gain something from it.

Blue Team's Game Review

I tested Blue team's game, and now I would like to reflect on my thoughts on the game:

First of all, the initial problem seemed to be the wrong version of Wesnoth, 1.6.5, which gave me an error statement, that scenario 1 was erroneous. This led to downloading the other version, which I was not happy about at all. But everything for the good cause. Unfortunately the campaign did not start playing on the first Beta version as well, as far as I tried. Still, I did not manage to open the game, because an error popped onto my screen every time I wanted to play it. I tried to download it with SVN and also manually, but no use.
My final try was downloading the other Beta version of Wesnoth:

It seemed that there is the same problem: Unknown scenario: '1_stseen'.

 Concerning the review, I must say that I can write our game review, which I found very fresh and new in this game landscape, because we had cool characters and nice concept. Due to my lack of playing skills the game did not last for long, because I was not able to kill all the enemies. Nevertheless I saw what happened there during creation process, thus it was an interesting experience.

I could add that the other group had made an effort as well, as they had nice characters and a wild storyline. All in all the course was a great experience that one could learn very well from all the mistakes that happen.

My Reflection on Open Source Management Groupwork Contribution

Introduction

Group formation was the quickest task we completed, as well as taking over the name "Red team". As red generally is a provocative colour, our group's tasks also did not  come out as well as they were supposed to. The first task was to group people under certain tasks, and I got a chronicle keeper's task. I created the Red Team's tasks and "tickets" (not in the way they were supposed to be), also marked our progress, and finally reflected on the groupwork. For documentation I used the wiki part of trac environment.

The most critical part of the course was to make everything flow. As all tasks depended on different other tasks, and since the group had difficulties with programming the campaigns, there often was nothing to document, and thus it was necessary to wait for the process to go on.
From time to time I made some changes in Trac, for example uploaded storylines or documented overall progress together with Taavi.

My task was also to support the group in other tasks, like exploring Wesnoth scenarios, and suggesting the ideas from these campaigns, which would be useful in our game. On the other hand, I helped proofread the scenarios as well as posted them in Trac. I think my task in this game was achieved all in all.
I tried to help the team leader as much as I could and was able to, as well, mostly in documentation. As well as the other team leaders, I also tested the game, which worked well for me, but was difficult to progress during low Wesnoth gaming skills.

Lessons learned:

Individually I cannot say that I could have changed anything within the group, because the development did not depend directly on certain people, it depended more or less on the workflow, and on the fact how the game was managed to be put together. It probably was stuck behind the lack of knowledge in the beginning and how to "bite" through the latter afterwards.

It was quite difficult to document any progress or what went wrong until the previous steps were completed.  As it turned out, trac was the main component in the development process. Nevertheless, most of the work was transferred to Skype or done orally, because we tried to develop the game together as a group. Next time we should collaborate more with the lecturer as well, in order to get faster feedback on our errors and perhaps some help in fixing them. Forum help turned out to be more difficult than in the first glance, because it was quite difficult to grasp the necessary help topics during the process.

Wesnoth Documentation - Red Team

The groupwork process was the following:

First our group tried out playing the games in order to understand the process which takes place in Wesnoth campaigns. All scenarios were distributed among group members so that everyone could dig into the games and suggest their ideas for good game development, and understand how the game was created.

Secondly the group members looked at the code in order to find associations connected with our group's possible campaign scenarios and understand how it worked. A lot of effort was used to get a decent understanding of the code meaning and trying to find the ways of implementing the code into our game-to-be.

The third step was to create a storyline, which was a different story from our initial concept. Since we did not get any feedback to our initial story, we decided to change it. The storyline was written using imagination and proofread by other team members.

Code was created in parallel with story development. The initial concept where noone would have been killed, was changed, because the outcome was not as successful as necessary. Thus finally a new concept was created where units were killed in the end. During code development forums and other resources were used for help, also teamwork was really strong.

Maps and images were also created during story development, to keep everything in concordance. Maps were created using Map Editor of the Wesnoth game, and images were created in Photoshop as well as in Fireworks.

Meanwhile the whole process was documented as it progressed.

Our group members used skype as well as meetings in order to keep the workflow running.

Main difficulties:

1. Keeping all units alive was tricky, because it was difficult to create. This was changed so that all units get killed in the end.

2. There was a problem with image paths when the team tried to insert images of the characters in the game.

3. The forum was not useful in terms of code change, because the code had not been translated properly or it was difficult to find. This part would have been easier if it would have been done in the lecture, together with the explanations.

4. All team members depended on the other team members, and when there were difficulties, the work did not take place as planned.

Wesnoth Game Documentation - Storyline [explicit lyrics, not for kids] - Red Team

The story was created by story managers, and is the following:

Introduction

Rocco lives in a muddy village which is a very cool place for spending time, chatting and drinking coffee, but one can never become wealthy enough, that is at least what Rocco thinks. A nearby city has everything necessary to have fun with, and to do nice business. Rocco loves coffee and has proper knowldedge about running a cafeteria, but in the village called Pärnartu, people rather need bread and butter and have no means for spending time in cafeterias. As Rocco has no money for opening even a kiosk where he could sell coffee, and as he is a man of big business, it is 100% clear that he has to move over to a more urbanized area.
The closest urbanized area is a city of Bruzzano, where a spoiled son of Bernhard, Eduard, runs the chain of Cafeterias "Wobernard". Rocco applies for the position of the Chief Paristant of the "Wobernard" chain, but he is forced to sing and dance on the table. As he refuses to do it, he does not get the desired job. Being offended by arrogant urban bitch-asses, he decides to take some of "Wobernard" cafes by force. It is simple - you have to beat the shit out of the managers of the cafes, and then you can run the cafes as you wish. Having a terrible day full of blood and screaming is better than whole life without work in this god forsaken place.

E-Learning Week 3 - Tasks and Reflection

The first task was to create a group environment for our study group. 
First, I managed to gather the group in Skype for a conversation, and I also created a group environment in PBWorks.

For the first task we created a group conversation in Skype, after which we moved to Google Docs for some collaborative effort. This collaborative effort was fixed into a nice task 1. This task would need some feedback in order to see if it is done correctly or is there something more that needs to be added. [This point was already written on week 4]

The second task was to read and reflect on the following:

1. Which principles of groupwork, communities of practice and collaborative learning should a distributed group consider, when planning the design of an e-learning course?

Concerning groupwork, one should consider the following points (according to the reading material):

1. Distribute roles, and shift them if necessary.
2. Meet the deadlines and make sure everyone has done their jobs in the group.
3. Make sure everyone has the information that is necessary for the next tasks.
4. Encourage peer collaboration and ask others to remind of the work to be done.
5. Encourage and give peer feedback in order to feel good about the job that has been done and give courage for the next steps.
6. Use a collaborative environment in order to participate fully in groupwork.
7. Use an agregator in order to follow others' posts and try to make the most out of the information you get from there.

2. What was the most important thing you learned this week? What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week’s activities raised for you?

Concerning groupwork, the experience was great. I was able to gather a group and make them participate as well. Everyone was very willing to join and had their spirits up, which was a good sign. To be honest, I considered that the group would be more passive, but I was positively surprised that I worked with such a great team. Even Alice, who joined the group later, was very positive and got her hands on the project.


3. What is your evaluation of this week's groupwork? (What went well and what did not? How did groupwork influence fulfilling your personal learning contract?)

I would evaluate our groupwork the following way:
First I managed to add every member to my Skype account and start an individual conversation with them, then we managed to fix (using Doodle) a common time when we should meet all together. I was very positive with the

4. Describe what has changed in your personal learning environment and in group environment?

My personal learning environment consists of the usual means, because this is a kind of system I have used during the whole IMKE learning period. On week 3 nothing changed in our group learning environment yet. A PbWiki environment was created in order to collaborate with the groupwork tasks. I created an introduction of all members as well as put some vital information to the environment.

Long Tail Model in New Media

The Long Tail marketing model enables to sell different goods which are covering a niche for a small number of people, in other words these are not mainstream products. As the lecture talked about selling books and audio, the other multimedia formats can be sold the same way. For example online movie renting is a great solution to engage lots of films which would be hidden or not present at all in the movie shops, can hold a perfect choice of older and newer, and perhaps even the worst films ever created. Usually there is interest in all kinds of films, and through online renting service a person would be able to get his or her favourite genres and enjoy them whenever he or she wants.

The long tail model is applied through selling content via Internet, thus not taking any physical space. People have to download content in order to watch it, and are asked to pay for watching the content. Now it does not really matter if the film itself is a niche product or a big hit, every person can find the film he or she likes, and watch it for a small fee. This model also keeps the maintenance costs low.

Another possibility to engage long tail model would be in selling information. News, blogs, podcasts, e-books, etc. can be a valuable source for anyone, but as there is not enough room for information in the libraries, it is a great opportunity to keep things on the “shelves” of online repositories for people to enjoy. Here the long tail model would be applied in form of an online repository and delivered to people through registered usage and/or payment. People now would be able to find even old and outdated information in any media format to
listen to, read or watch. I think such models make information available for all kinds of crowds. Digital information is a better source for all kinds of materials than analogue information. It is stored better, accessed more easily, and longer preserved than the original sources. This covers the need for every single person’s information need as well, and that is why this kind of model is valuable for present and future consumers.

Thoughts on Generating Revenue in New and Interactive Media.

Introduction

Interactive media is developing very fast, so that there are quite a number of changes happening every now and then. It is necessary to use creativity and some background research in order to define peoples’ interests in getting them addicted in something, and therefore getting a grip of a large amount of people to cleverly ask for revenue for the services they are willing to pay for. Although nowadays it is difficult to distinguish between
new and improved versions of making money through Internet, people are still making innovations in revenue making models.

Online communities

Since online communities are developing very fast, my guess is that a lot of the future models for generating revenue could come from these sites, including Twitter, Orkut or Facebook, where it is possible to get people hooked in many different actions. I think it is easily possible to gather a group of people through these websites, and through some kind of addictive action develop a further plan for gathering revenue for that. One can agitate a fund raising event or an auction widget. There is another possibility to make money, that is
playing online games in Facebook. These attract people easily, because they are simple and logical games. Through playing people buy virtual goods and in order to get more exclusive items, and pay for virtual money exchanged for real money. I believe that many kinds of events are possible revenue collectors as long as these actions keep people hooked up. For the latter people need to think of new ways to keep money coming in, because people tend to get bored with one thing.

Revenue Sharing Model in New Media

Participatory new media makes it possible to make profit through various channels where participation can be fun and engaging, making it even more valuable for the users. We have all become used that there is advertising flashing everywhere over the internet, either spam or something of interest, but earning revenue makes an ad more tempting for the user of the service. A service provider gets a higher sum of money and a lot of profit through such revenue system, but it is equally valuable for the service user, clients and the main company.
Not only ads are being sold this way, there is a possibility to sell different goods and get paid
by clicks from your site. In the following paragraphs I would like to describe three examples of participatory media revenue sharing models of Google AdSense, Qinteractive, and Amazon.com.

E-Learning Week 2 - Tasks and Reflection

Personal Learning Contract

My objectives: From this course I wish to learn the processes and theories concerning creation of an e-learning course and everything that is connected with it. I would like to use my knowledge with creating online courses for secondary school learners, and do it properly. Also I would like to test my management skills how well I can do with groupwork organizing and maintaining group spirits high during the course. I think I will take the responsibility of maintaining groupwork in order, and in other group-related management things. One more thing that I would like to add is that as a learner I would like to gain more experience in self-directed learning or time planning.

E-Learning Week 1 - Reflection

1. What are the trends in e-learning and how do they influence online course design?

Main trends in e-learning are:

• Un-structured learning environment (no strict learning environment system).
• Web 2.0 usage in all aspects of e-learning (meaning weaving a social network of learners not keeping the content inside the iron walls of learning systems).
• Online participation either alone or groupwise, worldwide collaboration and teaching/learning.
• Virtual learning (Second Life), game-centered learning. 
• Mobile learning (M-learning).
• The possibility to filter and disseminate information, not only to find it.
• The possibility to give and get feedback from peers as well as facilitators.

New trends have made course design open and easily accessible. Courses are provided requirements, as well as pre-requirements if necessary; also grading system and materials are visible to all participants as well as outsiders.
Open courses let the students choose their own environments where they broadcast their procession of thoughts as well as get feedback from the facilitator and coursemates or strangers following their blogs. I also think that this is even better than just getting feedback from the closed group (which means smaller number of) students and lecturers. Groupwork is also provided in most of the courses in order to let the students collaborate and interact in order not to feel lonely or without peer feedback. Different means of collaboration are given by Web 2.0 devices which are mainly open source and freely available.
The learner is given a choice of technical means he or she decides to use for individual and group communication. And if those means are not provided, I believe that the student is wise enough to choose among his/her own means. Also lots of materials are accessible from the web, this means that a student has the choice of e-books versus paperback books.
In Estonia there are still some facilitators who do not approve of open learning systems, thus they keep their materials hidden, and accessible through one environment. I think that this kind of courses are aversive in essence, because all kinds of passwords and "locks" drive people away from the content.

I think current course and different Wikiversity courses follow almost the same trend of course design with some courses preferring "locked" environments with log in function. My experience has had both types of e-courses, but I prefer following the "open" ones.

2. What was the most important thing that you learned this week? What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week’s activities raised for you?

I think the most important thing I learned was that there are theories behind this concept of e-learning (people tend to forget about theories when they are so involved in learning the subject). But as I got acquainted with these theories, the topic seemed familiar to me, since I have got the theory part from Tallinn Pedagogical University. I think I got some ideas for my own initiative in e-learning facilitator's role (while studying, I carry out e-lessons for French lessons, because there is no replacement for me at that time) and I plan on using them in my blog.
I also enjoy writing, and what does a person enjoy writing more than about him/herself, thus I was happy that there is another course that enables writing and blogging.

E-Learning Initial Task - Introduction

I will re-introduce myself for the e-learning course. My previous introduction is HERE

About me:
My name is Maibritt Kuuskmäe. I am an outgoing person from Pärnu, Estonia, where I raise my five-year-old son and go to work. I teach children aged 8-19 English and French in Pärnu Coeducational Gymnasium. I studied English and French in Tallinn University of Educational Sciences 8 years ago, and it feels nice to study again (I feel a lot smarter than straight after secondary school). Currently, as my schedule is very packed, I am not able to go singing in the choir, which I have done for a little while. I have "enslaved" myself with studying in Tallinn University. I am undergoing Master studies in Interactive Media and Knowledge Environments. I am very interested in e-learning as I implement online solutions in my lessons whenever possible. I have not used specific e-learning environments in my everyday work, but I have got acquainted with them through different courses, for example Digitiiger for school teachers.

Analysis of Wesnoth Community

Readings, analysis of the Wesnoth community and brainstorming on better campaign building.

The community is built up based on different pages with all the support one needs for game development. Inside the community there are all kinds of possible variants in order to help users to develop the game. Different categories lead to different pages, for example there is a download page and source code page, etc. The best feature besides the forum, is perhaps the online IRC channel possibility to get help.
The main source of information even for those who dare not to read through the information, is the forum. It is divided into sub-categories, which lead to certain topics. The variety of help provided in the community is large, thus the community proves to be very helpful for the beginners and advanced users of the game.

How to build campaigns better? I will add a few thoughts how I see that campaign building could be improved.
- collaboration between people even more intense (using various sources for project development),
- faster feedback during campaign development, better if immediately delivered through a chat client or an IM solution,
- brainstorming about new campaign code solutions together with a group in a real-time discussion,
- suggestions for innovation in the game
Otherwise I cannot see any new solutions to add, because the forum is sufficient enough to find all the necessary information for game development.

The Validity of Cory Doctorow's Business Model as a Writer

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction writer, and a blogger who writes stories, contributes to different magazines and edits a weblog Boing Boing. He also acts as a visiting lecturer at Open University (UK). Besides fictional stories he has published several collections of non-fictional stories which comprise his thoughts about different issues [1]. He also is the supporter of Creative Commons as a distribution method [2].


His business model is simple: besides publishing his books, he also releases them under Creative Commons licence in the internet. First, he encourages the readers to read his books, and also promote them, which is free advertisement. With the help of his readers he gets reviews and may sell more of his printed books, and as he says in his interview, one will get even with the few lost copies and a lot of free publicity.

In his interview he explains that the bigger the publisher is, the less scared it is of publishing Creative Commons content online together with releasing the printed versions. He is satisfied that his books sell in print and are downloaded [2]. When I consider myself, I like printed books or original CD-s when they are from my favourite authors/bands, and I prefer to purchase one if I really like it. I think this is the idea behind his works as well, because not everyone prefers online books. Doctorow also suggested a model of getting a refund for his works not via direct donations, but he suggested that people should buy a copy of his work, and then donate it somewhere where it could be useful. I think this leaves a generous impression of the author, and people are willing to buy books in such purposes.

And to finish up with, Cory Doctorow seems like a cool guy who can easily survive by having a Creative Commons model in his book delivery to the people who love reading his books.


Links:
[1] craphound.com
[2] Interview with Cory Doctorow
[3] Wikipedia: Cory Doctorow