Landing : Athabascau University

Activity

  • Thanks Jon I always keep getting confused if the glass is half empty or half full. You clarify things in this instance.  - we still have half a glass!! Terry
  • Terry Anderson posted to the wire March 17, 2015 - 12:04pm
    At CSCW conf. presentations on nurturing new Wikipedia editors. How can we nuture new Landing users to participate more fully?
  • Terry Anderson posted to the wire February 14, 2015 - 8:50am
    At last, our Open Praxis article about Landing, Elgg system used in unpaced undergrad course. important insights? http://bit.ly/1EbatLA
  • Terry Anderson posted to the wire January 25, 2015 - 5:49pm
    Great review/slides of tools for automatically analyzing texts for sentiment. http://bit.ly/1BqwOUR
  • Terry Anderson posted to the wire January 22, 2015 - 5:38pm
    How do you measure the value, in academic terms, of an active net presence?- my speculations and questions http://bit.ly/186Ris9
  • Terry Anderson posted to the wire January 20, 2015 - 7:10pm
    Just posted a response to @rhogue’s useful blog series Why you Shouldn’t do design based research. see http://bit.ly/1upWi5i
  • Terry Anderson commented on a wiki page titled Your First Visit to the Landing in the group The Landing Help Community January 19, 2015 - 2:58pm
    welcome Marsha! Facilitating this type of communication is exactly why we created the Landing for members of the AU community. Do remember to complete some fields on your profile to help others know and connect with you.  and of course...
  • Jon, I like the distinction between amount of interaction and the perception of transactional distance, but I think taking that abit further, the ideas of "gudied transactional conversation" is not creepy at all, but engagement of interaction with...
  • Terry Anderson posted to the wire January 13, 2015 - 5:14pm
    Bumped into a US company selling a proctoring management system - could be very useful for Athabasca http://bit.ly/1ycxC02
  • Terry Anderson posted to the wire January 4, 2015 - 8:01pm
    Apostolos (EdD student at AU) does great critique of artificial distinctions between Online doctorate, PhD, EdD bit.ly/1BwDDDr
  • Terry Anderson posted to the wire December 27, 2014 - 8:22am
    The Lord’s prayer with edits - shar.es/1HWnLT via @GrowMercy
  • Terry Anderson uploaded the file Solstice Tree Carol December 20, 2014 - 5:24pm
    A Carol I wrote many years ago and keep loosing!  
    Comments
  • I wonder if this negative result from comparing one's performance to others (as indicated from analytics) is culturally dependent. When I did a study with a Japanese Colleague with Japanese students we foudn that motivation to blog (in English)...
  • Terry Anderson posted to the wire November 20, 2014 - 6:54pm
    Encouraging stats from Creative Commons - "State of the Commons" report http://tinyurl.com/me8yyeu
  • Terry Anderson commented on a bookmark Resilence- could the Landing Make a diffference for AU students? November 14, 2014 - 1:13pm
    Thanks for your comments Hongzin, Susan and Jeff. It is very inetresting to observe the type of colonization that takes place in this medium.  Actually at Athabasca, most faculty have "gone digital" to the extend of email, WP, Powerpoint - but...
  • This is a brief (and quite critical) review of resilience, including work by myself and Martin Weller on the concept of "resilience" as relates to higher education. The ideas are of course even more important for distance education, with our...
    Comments
    • Susan Bainbridge November 8, 2014 - 2:13am

      Hi Terry,

      What is missing from The Landing is any realtime forms of communication. When I enter The Landing I 'feel' alone. I can't see who is online, there is no ability to chat with one of my connections (again) in realtime. Jeff mentions it above when he says: Does "the site feels current, intuitive and fun"?

      The Wire has the potential of Twitter, but because it is just one thread, rather than individual pages for each member, it tends to work more like a bulletin board because if I want to reply to a post I know it's going out to the entire Landing membership, rather than to my followers. This takes the 'fun' factor away immediately and makes The Wire feel more austentatious/formal than it should be.

      Jeff knows more about design than I, but one example of ease of use is the fact that when I enter The Landing I see no notices. I have to click on 'You' to see messages etc. Sometimes I forget. I want The Landing to show me immediately when I enter, any messages, or communiques I have (like Facebook does with the red notices top right of page).

      When I go to my own profile on The Landing it 'feels' dead. I followed a large number of people when I first joined, but what is next? When I enter my profile it would be 'fun and interactive' for example if I could scroll through the people I follow and if they had posted, or messaged me, or commented on my post, there would be a blue circle on their avatar.

      Bottom line: Members need to be able to communicate with each other - one-to-one, in groups, in real time not in asynchronous forum style. You and Jon have done an amazing job with The Landing, but now we need to breath air into it to help it come 'alive'.

    • Hongxin Yan November 13, 2014 - 3:40pm

      Hi Terry,

      Another factor of making a social networking tool popular is to mobilize it. Many people don't use desktop computer to connect. Mobile devices provide the opportunities for texting thoughts or sharing ideas on the go.

       

    • Terry Anderson November 14, 2014 - 1:13pm

      Thanks for your comments Hongzin, Susan and Jeff.

      It is very inetresting to observe the type of colonization that takes place in this medium.  Actually at Athabasca, most faculty have "gone digital" to the extend of email, WP, Powerpoint - but all contained within individual digital machines.  The shared spaces built on the Landing COULD act as Third Places (as you suggested) but are not really mirrored in real life by our distributed staff and students.   But the useability issues are legion!.  We just have had no money, energy or high skill levels to put into the Landing Interface yet.  Waiting for more builders!

      Susan, We have tested text and audio chats. Notification issues always arise, and seems a host of other issues related to browsers, etc.  Jon could talk more. We have a text chat installed for our next test version, but support from CS is VERY slow at this time.  But you note useability issues as well.

      Hongzin, we did spend time and energy making the Landing reasonably accessible on mobile devises. Have you checked it out?  But I don't think that is the real issue for the Landing, E-Portfolio and even Moodle.   I think most students use larger displays for a great of thier word processing, graphics and other applications and most access the Landing that way - even if they own smart phones. Hongzin, what type of interaction would you be looking for from a mobile? Everything?

      Jeff perhas you could do something on the Landing for a Thesis or independent study.

  • This is an interesting study from 2006 in the UK, showing differences in adoption of web based resource to aide student learning.  Adoption was not affected by usability, perception of value, reliability etc. but by the degree of integration of...
    Comments
    • Apostolos Koutropoulos November 6, 2014 - 7:33am

      Thanks for sharing! I have two communities which I am sheparding (similar to the landing, but for specific MA programs) and the adoption among students has been rather low (or they create an account initially and rarely come back).  I have often hypothesized that faculty non-participation in the platform (and ambivalent attitude toward the platform) made it a place of little value for students (at least as fr as startup costs go)

    • Barbie Bruce November 7, 2014 - 4:47pm

      The qualitative results from my thesis indicate that staff (administrative, tutors & faculty) lack information on the Landing. Themes include: either limited or no discussion about Landing in dept/faculty, not encouraged to use, not needed for job, and no approval to use. A few other interesting comments from staff: want their contributions accepted & appreciated; faculty/academics using so others “don’t feel they can come in and start their own unimportant discussions”; more people using it they would use it more.

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  • Terry Anderson posted to the wire November 4, 2014 - 7:47am
    Interesting article on academics use of academic social networks (like Research Gate) http://bit.ly/1vE8oBW Differ rank & discipline
  • I also found this artcile interesting and thanks for bringing it to our attention. I'm not sure that the article substantiates your claim at the end.  It is true that theose who entered WestPoint with internal motivation outperfomed and lasted...