Exercise 6.1: Design rules and your CSU forum experience

Purpose, people and community size in online communities.

Because we are united in the same learning context (ie this subject) the purpose of the group interaction is reasonably clear. However, some people's motivation seems to be purely to 'pass the subject' whereas others have a more genuine interest in finding out more about it. Of course there are also the people who fall between these two groups. I have enjoyed that through this group, my conservatism has been challenged and I have been required to engage with a huge variety of online learning tools. The joy of it is that I have met many new and stimulating new friends both inside and outside the course.

Each new tool has had its own challenges and thrills. Besides the challenge of learning to engage with the tools, the biggest one has been to feel 'connected' to the process and people. Two experiences that I have enjoyed were using Skype to connect with a fellow POD member and using RSS to stay in touch with what other classmates were writing on their blogs (and to ensure I was not falling too far behind).

At the centre of the class is the subject forum and this has been the most useful because it is the most used and is the main meeting point. The threads make archiving the information easy and even though the messages are very short they often provide much useful information.

The POD group effectiveness has suffered greatly because of the diminishing numbers. Ideally a POD should be sustained at 6-8 members in order to provide a diversity of view and to 'share' the workload. My POD (Blue) is down to 2 members so its more like a conversation (mainly via skype) than a forum of any kind. The second assignment (which requires a full strength POD) will be impossible to do without greater numbers. There does not seem to be enough time to not only build facility with the tools but also develop relationships within the online learning environments.

Its all been a bit rushed but, I guess it needs to be if we are able to cover a vast amount of territory in a short period of time. If we had the time to develop the relationships and to master the complete functionality of those tools that all agreed were to be more effective, then the forum experience would be more enjoyable.