Last year in my OU student group we had a two week sub-group activity to complete collaboratively over two weeks.
There were three of us in the UK: Lewes, Portsmouth and Buckingham with the other three in respectively Germany, Thailand and New Zealand.
During the two week period our Tutor Group Forum was rarely silent for more than a few hours.
By the end of it there were over 100 threads to the discussion which I saved to MyStuff (OU ePortfolio) but also pasted into a blog (set on private) as illustrates and inspires the brilliance of the OU Masters in Open & Distance Education.
It turned my head inside out, demonstrating that the learning experience is far more effective and enjoyable when shared. I became a collaborative learner, Engestrom (activity theory) Cox (vicarious learning) and John Seely Brown (learning on the periphery) all made sense.
REFERENCE
Cox, R. (2006) Vicarious Learning and Case-based Teaching of Clinical Reasoning Skills (2004–2006) [online], http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ esrcinfocentre/ viewawardpage.aspx?awardnumber=RES-139-25-0127 [(last accessed 10 March 2011).
Leave a Reply