My thanks to Glenda Morgan for allowing the Program for Online Teaching to use “Pedagogy First!” (a phrase she coined) as the title for the POT community blog, now required for those earning our certificate.
I blogged there myself for the first time today.
We also have our new website, and I’m uploading our MiniConference workshop videos to our Vimeo channel as quickly as 500 MB a week will allow.
What I find interesting is how quickly the community formed at the blog after my delightful colleague Jim Sullivan set it up and faculty became more aware of our existence, presumably because of our presentation at MiraCosta’s convocation to-do at the start of the semester. While this was a “command performance”, it seems to have made an impression.
We had half a dozen certificate candidates before, but each had their own blog, and they rarely associated. Now with everyone on one blog, the more experienced folks have joined in. I confess I was skeptical, because we hadn’t created real community among our online instructors in an online environment over the last five years. Faculty would gladly show up for in-person workshops, but only those needing help with Moodle participated online. But Jim has done it. It’s really like working together now!
I’m reminded of Rick Schweir’s work “Pursuing the Elusive Metaphor of Community in eLearning Environments” (here are his slides). In some ways we might have created a formal learning environment, since we now require blogging on certain topics. If Rick’s work is right, our community will experience outstanding engagement and then die a sudden death when the semester is over. The difference, though, is that unlike a closed CMS or system, the blog will be there for everyone to reference and participate as they wish.
Clearly we are growing, and that’s such a good thing.
