Working Wikily: The fine lines between content and curriculum and self-directed learning and instruction ....
One of the personal learning threads that I'm following is working wikily - and relating this to current work, including NTEN's WeAreMedia Project. The way I do that is not just do the work, but reflect along the way in a socially-networked way.
Dave Briggs pinged me to let me know that he just wrote a primer on wiki collaboration and since I've been obsessing about this lately, he thought I'd be interested. And, yes I am! I love step-by-step guides like this, especially if you're just starting out. The type of collaboration described is using a wiki to capture notes from a meeting and for follow up. One could do this for workshops as I've done
Yesterday, I shared some thoughts on the collaboration process. Michele Martin responds with great insights and some provocative questions.
She accurately sums up the curriculum research and writing process as a a form of crowd-sourcing. I've called them "swarms" where calls are put out each day for people to respond with resources, tips, links, etc. that relate to a particular topic or question in the curriculum. Michele goes on to observe:
It's my observation that the swarms have been a sort of combined subject matter expert analysis and brainstorming session-- really. This has been a great way to get a lot of content quickly and Beth's individual wiki pages set up for each module have helped us organize that content.
She also provides a valuable peer reflection on my online facilitation process - I was afraid of being too heavy-handed:
In facilitating this brainstorming portion, Beth has been using a light touch. She puts out the questions and calls for resources and has provided an organizational framework for responding. She also summarizes what's being discussed. There have been few if any "directive" behaviors from Beth in keeping with Dave Cormier's "Community as Curriculum" idea of letting knowledge evolve through the interactions of a learning community. As a result, the community truly is creating the curriculum.
So, looking at the visual above from Jason Rhodes - we are working wikily and covering the purple triangle on the top - content. Michele's questions are green and blue sections - learner and instructor and of course the network and collective in the middle.
Last
night was I looking over Module 1 and Module 2, I definitely saw these as "rough drafts" and more editing/shaping or curating is needed - but I think more of the modules need to built out. Michele also points out the fine line between process and product:
I see a lot of great resources, ideas and questions, but I'm not sure that I see an actual learning module that a nonprofit could pick up and implement on their own
The NTEN project includes both the wiki and some face-to-face workshops. The wiki was originally envisioned as a self-service resource or content for nonprofits. The development of this content is being done collaboratively. The face-to-face workshops will draw from the content in the wiki and part of my work will be to put together a trainer's guide and workshop instructional materials based on the wiki. The workshop is 2-day boot camp -- so obviously couldn't do everything that's in the wiki.
And, since the wiki is available under cc - anyone is welcomed to use these materials in their own training, curriculum development work. And one would hope, that if people were drawing from the source materials, they might add a link to how they were remixing the content in the wiki to suit their trainings.
In the comments, Betsy Hansel notes:
I think the dilemma is that you will not see exactly what happens to the module as it goes out there ... it's a bit like sending your children out in the world, isn't it? You don't know what will happen or how they will process what you tried to teach them.
But what if we were to provide some guidance on how to reshape the wiki "content" for "instructors" or "learners"? Michele offers two options for process:
a) Go through another iteration of Module 1 where a smaller group of instructional designer types take the content and re-organize and re-configure so that it's a "stand-alone" kind of workshop in the format that people seem to want
b) Create some kind of companion piece that explains to people how they can take the module content and reconfigure for their own use, teaching them a new skill in the process?
The first option feels a bit beyond the project scope of work, but the second looks very doable. With that said, I am very curious what the steps would be for option B? Do you have a
check list or list of steps? I think that would be helpful to have as
part of this?
