Project Assignment

Working in a team of 3-4 participants to define, assign, moderate and summarize results for a collaborative learning experience for the other class participants.

The experience should not take participants more than roughly one hour of time, for example you might design it so that participants in your experience would go through the following activities in that amount of time.

• Research and read – 20 minutes
• Comment – 20 minutes
• Respond – 10 minutes
• Plus/delta – 10 minutes

This is very little time, thus the topic and activity will need to be fairly small.

Your experience must include a brief opportunity for a plus/delta and you must summarize the results of the experience.

Your experience can be either more individual learning (like our first few weeks) or more group learning like the project itself.

If you make it more group-oriented where there is a common group task at the start, you will need to save time by helping the group be ready for a running start. Remember that the participants will be a new group(s).

It should be clear what the expectations are, timeframes, etc. You will also need to give me a heads up on the composition you want in terms of people in the experience (e.g., 4 individuals, or 2 teams of 3).

You should attempt to find ways to use several of the tools we have discussed in the class.

Ideally, the result of your learning experience will be something that has “lasting value.”

You can choose any topic, but given how little time for interaction there is in this setting, I would recommend that you find ways to quickly limit the topic choices and get into selection mode.

You must include "reflection" - an opportunity for the participant and yourself to reflect and learn from the experience.

Participating

During Week 4, you will be participating in the other teams' experiences, but because of the total number of students (hence teams), there will be a somewhat random distribution of people to experiences. Everyone will be involved in two other experiences at a minimum.

If you have interest in a particular topic, please let me know. If you are interested in being involved in more than two, please let me know.

Topics Ideas

• Give a sample scenario, then ask the participants to address an interesting question, for example:
  • Is collaborative learning appropriate? If so how, if not, why not?
  • What other elements of a blended learning experience would make sense?
  • Would a community of practice be a better solution than collaborative learning in this case?
• Design an experience with another tool and how it relates to cooperative learning.
• Define and interesting question around personal learning for learning professionals, for example:
  • What should a Personal Learning Environment be for learning professionals?
  • What kinds of training, conferences, etc. should a learning professional be involved in and how can they get more from these experiences?
  • How should a learning professional prepare for and follow-up on a learning event (course like ours, training conference)?
• Have participants answer interesting questions around topics related to the course, e.g., teams, collaborative learning design, other tools, informal learning, etc.

Timeframe

• Week Two - Identify teams & choose topic (hopefully have high-level design)
• Week Three - Design and write your experience
• Week Four - Participate in at least two experiences; Facilitate your experience; Summarize
• Week Five Discussion - Discuss the results