Hi Terry, 

Great newsletter.  It would be even greater if it was in PDF format rather than word.

- Kathie Ross

Some thoughts on this.

A phrase I heard recently "Present events make future trends" comes to mind. The case they make for what they are doing is so compellilng it's hard to imagine that things wouldn't continue to evolve in this direction, and this for an institution with only a small online offering (summer school, basically). If let's say most universities have social networking embedded into their pedagogy say in 5 years, where will those that don't have it be, especially online universities?Won't it seem odd?

We are depending primarily on the student-content interaction in your theory Terry. But you may have to update the theory, since for example "curated content" is an interaction with content but mediated by another (either faculty or student). (Probably you already have...)

One of the rationales I heard clearly this time is that students really want different platforms for different purposes - and who doesn't? And then of course the pedagogy of engagement. Personally I don't go to static sites (i.e. without comments) much more to learn what I want to learn about in my personal space any more.  Comments from other readers really have become a handy (not to say reliable) barometer about the worth of the content, adequate for the speed of surfing. That's just  how it is.

So it seems the Landing is really on the right track. But that is preaching to the choir....

HI All,

My name is Jon Corshen and I am the CEO and Founder of GoingOn.  First, I want to appluad you the work you have done in developing your platform.  I am sure that when you started you heard many of the skepticisms that we encountered such as, "We are going to do it in Facebook" or "We are going to wait for our LMS to add social features".  Like you, we pushed on in the face of this uncertainty.   I think the market continues to validate the strategy that Elgg, Epsilon (now NYTimes) and GoingOn have taken is an essential one.  After spending 15+ years putting courses online, we think it is time to move beyond the course to find new ways to connect students and faculty with the most intelligent people and resources, including each other.

My name is Jon Corshen and I am the CEO and Founder of GoingOn.  First, I want to applaud you the work you have done in developing your Landing platform.  I am sure that when you started you were confronted with many of the same skepticisms that we encountered such as, "We are going to do it in Facebook" or "We are going to wait for our LMS to add social features".  Today, I believe the market has validated the strategy that Elgg, Epsilon (now NYTimes) and GoingOn have taken.  After 15+ years putting courses online, we need provides students and faculty with more effective tools for connecting, sharing information, and collaborating.  AS we all know, students (and faculty are more successful when they are fully engaged in all aspects of their academic life.  Clearly, legacy portals and course-centric LMSs are not going to get us there. 

On behalf of the GoingOn team, please permit me to make a few small corrections regarding the capabilities of the GoingOn platform.  Please excuse the bullet point format, but I wanted to spare you my voluminous marketing prose:

• The GO platform has a full drag and drop Community Builder that allows anyone to design and deploy communities in real-time.  Communities can inherent central themes or be overridden at the individual community instance
  
  
• We have just completed a brand new stream-based architecture that significantly advances our architecture beyond prior generations. Our stream-based architecture allows any type of content to be transformed into ‘Facebook-like’ live streams. 
• Beyond providing advanced notification capabilities, modern data cluster (stream-based) architecture provide exciting opportunities for building knowledge networks where people and content are recommended based on a user’s prior interactions in the network
• Finally, we do provide 2-way integration in and out of the GoingOn platform.
   
  

Let’s all keep working to move beyond the course and to embrace all aspects of academic life in the age fo the social web.

- Jon Corshen

If you can swing it, check out Robert Indiana's iconic pop-art sculpture LOVE; it's right downtown. In its own way it speaks to the #Occupy ethos -- and the new movement's link to the earlier counterculture.

Parallel drawn between OWS and open-source movement:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/10/on-occupywallstreet-and-the-power-of-open-source-and-consensual-processes.html

I like The Landing for the same reason Mark references above. In addition to using it to keep organized through three undergraduate classes at AU (and two grad classes elsewhere---but I did decide I'd much rather apply to transfer here than continue elsewhere, so it's not for nothing that AU's resources supported elsewhere's student), it provides a sense of community that just isn't available on a course-by-course platform, and it offsets the gradingbot-studentbot feeling that sometimes seems to accompany online learning. I like being able to encounter students and faculty I'll never see in classes, being able to see this ongoing record of intersection and interdependence between programs. I'm not sure that addresses AU's financial concerns, but having common spaces at universities probably pays off in other ways to everyone's benefit. I'd be really sad to see The Landing go (and really happy to see it get much bigger!!!). 

I like the Landing and when I reach the Alumni state (hopefully soon :-)) I would continue to use it and would donate to it if that infrastructure was in place. I think the Landing team and community has done an excellent job considering the constraints. 

I believe those constraints have affected adoption, so in a nutshell change the constraints I expect you will also change the adoption rate. As to competing functionality, the Landing offers functionality that is otherwise not supported by Moodle or Drupal. I have not used Mahara, but https://landing.athabascau.ca/pg/pages/view/83984/example-of-an-eportfolio-in-the-landing was very interesting.

Who should we write to if we want to provide support for the continuation of the Landing? It's helped me to develop the sense of community that was utterly lacking in the MAIS moodle discussion room. This, in turn, has had a significant impact on my perception of AU and my engagement with other students and faculty members. 

Moodle is dead space. Courses are silent, unless group discussion is mandated. Social interaction is nil. Landing is alive and vibrant, and should be supported.

Is there a future for the Landing? Wow, as I read Terry’s blog and the various questions, the pro and con points, along with the various responses to date I began to wonder if the Landing is as much an idea as it is a place. The Landing, as an idea is greatly enhanced when you consider the time and effort of those who have spent countless hours bringing it to life, nurturing it, and daily talking to us about its value and benefit let alone all of the many participants who have invested much of themselves to help enrich this place/space. I think that the Landing as an entity will change, evolve, and may, in time become something else but to understand  the Landing as an idea is very important and key to its life and its future.

I was introduced to the Landing’s predecessor four years ago and like many I struggled to see value in it and to make it work for me as well as find ways to engage others. Thanks to my very persuasive supervisor I persisted and began to see beyond the frustrations and challenges and with the new version and many focused changes and upgrades I began to understand its real value to faculty, students, and the institution.

The Landing is a safe, bounded, yet flexible and supportive environment that offers all of the affordances of a shared, networked learning space. I think learning space is the correct term because it draws me to a continual challenge of post-secondary institutions. I believe that a university should be learning centered and therefore everything about them should be about learning. To my way of thinking this is what the Landing is; a learning space or learning commons, a space where we all can gather and share and support each other in and out of the classroom, the office-space, or the virtual coffee house.

I was fortunate to have been able to participate in several iterations of an MDE course and use this bounded space as my research gathering home for my dissertation. It was amazing because, at times we wandered in and out of the “classroom” depending upon the needs and wants of the learners and by doing so we were able to extend the community of the course to the benefit of  the students, the researcher, and the community as a whole. I believe that the students in this course benefited greatly from the opportunity to step out into the virtual hallway and bring their conversations to different places as they worked through the challenges of the course. At times we were able to talk to the greater Landing community and allow them to assist or reach in and be a part of the class conversation. This is an idea about learning environments and one that is very unique.

I teach a Master’s level course at another virtual Canadian university and I am continually challenged by the narrow confines of the controlled Moodle environment. I have created a learning blog as a resource outside of the course but this is generally confined to the course participants and getting others to participate is nearly impossible. I have been spoiled.

Terry talks about critical mass; it will come if we accept that the Landing is more than a virtual place and see that it represents an idea that changes the learning paradigm. Athabasca has an unprecedented opportunity to carve out its niche within the world of open and distance universities by continuing to support and foster the growth and evolution of the Landing. This is the ultimate learning space for everyone at the university and an idea that needs to be kept alive and allowed to mature and evolve into one of the virtual hearts of the university. We just need to plant a few olive and plane trees and invite all to enjoy their shade.

The argument is down to money.   The instutional leadership, internally and externally, hopefully will recognize the Landing as a truly Canadian Open On-Line Learning institution in academic social networking.

The opportunities and technical achievements that the Landing provides for students and staff is something I wish I had when I was a student at Athabasca University.

Sincerely,

Steve Swettenham, M.D.E.

The Landing must continue to be supported, since it is to our distributed university what the campus is to a traditional university. Actually, it's better than a traditional campus. Imagine a campus where people's first introductions to each other are made through their ideas and arguments; where you can drop in on classes and group discussions that you're interested but not enrolled in (without interrupting the proceedings).

The Landing helps AU to realize and extend its mandate. It facilitates the use and the development of Open Educational Resources. The Landing also facilitates student recruitment and good alumni relations: the Landing puts an accessible and innovative public face on this university (whose future depends on putting forward such a best face).

It would be disastrous publicity, demoralizing for many users (including staff, students, and alumni), and counter to its mandate for this institution to discontinue supporting its social network, at a time when social networks have become a fixture and expectation in everyday life, business, and culture.

But since money's the main question, we need to explore ideas for funding on a continuing basis. In the interests of building AU's research culture, a grad student has suggested a modest student fee to expand library resources. What about considering something similar for the Landing? It also represents an emerging hub of AU's research activity (and not just for CDE, I might add). What about reducing students' learning materials fee by one dollar (or more, if we can persuade more faculty to adopt OER texts and materials), and redirect that dollar to Landing support. It might not cover the full cost as outlined, but it would be a start.

Lastly, to reiterate Heather's question: who needs to hear these arguments and ideas? Or is the Landing dev team compiling a dossier of endorsements and recommendations to submit to the administration?

Succinctly put and a chronic issue even outside the landing at AU.

Hi, Terry. I'm a little slow on the uptake here as I only saw this today (Sept. 13th), but have you passed this information on to the AU REB?  I am wondering how this relates to the new Tricouncil policies? The latter essentially govern our REB's actions, right, i.e., not legislation as in the US? Rick

Thanks Rick

- good idea re Athabasca REB, I will do that. Problem is that this is just proposed US regulations and as you state, we are 'governed' by the Tri -Council guidelines, but it does show that the 'tide is turning' allowing us to get out from the over resrictive medical model research when doing low risk social sceince research which is the normal at Athabasca.

Terry

The MAC Magnifier must be a test to see what is different about this photo. 

This also fixed my old bookmarklet. Thank you!
van cleef black clover necklace knock off http://www.perfect-jewelry.nl/vintage-van-cleef-pink-gold-necklace-tiger39s-eye-replica-p245/
- van cleef black clover necklace knock off

This image appears to be the thumbnail respresentation.  Is the actual size available?

Thansk Steve- replaced it with a better one- this will go on the welcoming, landing home page soon.

Terry