Mohammad Rajiullah

PLN or Personal Learning Network is based on learning theories such as connectivism that can leverage internet technologies to connect us to our colleagues, mentors, and professionals to enhance our learning and help us to take charge of our own professional development. PLN theories are extensively addressed here by Kay Oddone. In all areas, developments are happening at an astonishing rate, to keep up with the latest development one must rely on his or her own network. It’s not feasible to keep a vast amount of information within us. Instead what is feasible is to keep track of how to acquire the needed information from the network. Moreover, in this time of fast paced development, any formal institutional training can be hardly adequate to provide the knowledge and skills needed to be updated and successful at the workplace. Due to associated cost, time constraints and disruption in daily responsibilities, formal training is only provided occasionally and cannot therefore keep up with the constant development. In this case PLN is the most feasible alternative. People carry their PLN alongside, all the time. One can ask their PLN at any time and place. People can also form new PLN if a new interest emerges. 

PLN is very personalized in practice; you can build your PLN with the most available means you have. PLN is most often actualized using social software/media.  If you have an account on any leading social media platform such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or ResearchGate, you are likely to find a number of groups where you can sign in to support your personalized needs. When you are in a PLN you are within the scope of a subset of people. So, in practice the group (or community) is much smaller than your whole network with some essential features such as shared common goals, regular interaction, strong ties, mutual accountability. For instance, when you create or join a Facebook community, it is generally much smaller than your overall Facebook reach. But you are more likely to be active in the community because you share a common goal with other people in the community. You have your own interest to be active in the community. The relationship is however two ways. You not only seek to learn from others but you also help others in the community to learn. You are expected to provide as much you are getting from the network which creates a strong sense of tie and mutual accountability in the community. However, there is an adverse side of such group-oriented learning, it works like an echo chamber, outside knowledge is less likely to be appreciated in such a homogenous setting.

So, what does my PLN look like at the moment? Each of my PLN is based on needs. I teach and I am also an active researcher. I need to keep my research-oriented PLN on a constant basis. I use mainly Facebook, LinkedIn and ResearchGate as social media to maintain my PLNs. I follow others updates, interact with them and vice versa.  Subscription to different mailing lists is also an essential part in my PLN. For instance, I am subscribed to a number of mailing lists in IETF that helps me to get the recent updates in my field of interest and be active from time to time. I also follow a number of blogs, podcasts and YouTube channels that are routinely visible in my social media feed when there are some updates. I also use other platforms such as Mendely – it is not only my reference manager but it also sends me an email when a new publication in my research area is found. Besides,  in my opinion, any connection built around any collaboration tools such as google doc, skype, overleaf or even email can be regarded as a part of a PLN that supports the learning  need. I use skype quite extensively for my professional collaboration. I am a member of different skype groups serving different purposes. As an educator I also need to get updates from other educators around the world, I am connected to them through MOOCs, course websites, YouTube updates, their blogs or directly through their social media accounts. Other than my professional needs, I also keep a number of PLNs that support my personal needs. For example, I do outdoor activities such as running in my leisure, so I have a PLN (e.g. a Facebook group) consisting of only runners and we update each other with different training tips. So, My PLN(s) consists of people and information sources that help me meet my learning goals. This  is my PLN  in a nutshell at least that’s the way I see it. 

Frankly speaking, not so long ago my idea of online learning was barely an extension of regular learning with the change of medium.  COVID-19 showed me why I was wrong. I had my first online teaching before summer and I felt for the first time something is missing. Keeping student engaged appeared to be a huge challenge for me. Just putting a regular  course online might not work as one can expect. Before ONL, I had the opportunity to attend the ACM Sigcomm Education workshop. Educators from all over the world shared their experiences, especially in relation to bringing teaching online to reduce the spread of COVID-19. There are still a lot of challenges in accessing the Internet in many parts of the world. People agreed that even when students are online and on the learning platform, keeping the student engaged is a huge problem. Facilitating group work using slack, facebook group etc. was one of the ideas. I was very interested in the idea of forming groups as an essential part of online learning, but still the idea was not fully understood.  So, when I was given the opportunity to attend ONL and after knowing the course is based on PBL group I was very excited to experience the process as a potential learner.

When the course was actually started, I was not quite sure I had enough background to approach the topics, but as the course progressed I felt a topic or a scenario works as a starter to spark interaction among the participants for collaboration (information exchange, discussion etc.).  I was also a bit confused about how to incorporate the PBL style learning in my course. I am not sure if I am all set  but after learning the Gilly Salmon’s five stage model and Community of Inquiry (COI), I can at least imagine how my courses could be adjusted to get the benefit of collaboration based learning. I have a course coming up right after the New year break, I might not be able to redesign the course but I will probably try to experiment some of the collaboration based possibilities in an ad hoc manner. For example, in addition to our regular learning management platform, canvas, I will set up a separate group discussion channel either in slack or piazza, so that students can socialize themselves and share their experience/questions/answers related to the course where I can facilitate the group work asynchronously outside lecture time. 

I have been a long time member of different online communities in my field. I was passively following the communities and never actually thought much of how to have fruitful experiences from such communities. I didn’t have much of a basis of how to form our own personal learning network. Our PBL work on topic 3 has benefited me in different ways to explore the area of personal learning network.  A personal learning network is very important in today’s context as new information and ideas are changing the world at a much faster pace than ever before. Keeping collaboration is a key tool to tap into the ever growing broad wealth of knowledge in any given field. 

My blogging experiences have started from ONL. I have also started to see the benefit of it from my ONL experience. It takes some time to write blogs, but once one is set it not only showcases one’s expertise and knowledge in the field, it also provides a collaboration environment through commenting. I will certainly try to put it in my habit and also encourage my students in blogging. We have learned a number of new online tools (e.g. padlet, miro). I will perhap incorporate some of these tools into my future courses. Some of us were also reluctant before for trying out new tools. The course took us out of that reluctance and showed the benefits.

ONL shows me the difference what a fruitful collaboration can make. In the final topic, We conclude from our group discussion that the power of collaboration is one of the main take way from ONL – great learning experience happens when we work together. Finally I have just one suggestion for the future ONL participants that it is quite a high paced course, one should be motivated and committed enough to make the ONL experience a fruitful one. 

Thank you everyone involved in ONL202. It was a pleasure!

Stay safe!

In ONL we learned the Gilly salmon’s Five stage model. The model provides a framework for online learning and facilitation. There are many similarities between the model and how ONL is organized. The following figure briefly describes the model.  In the following I will try to fit ONL in the five stage model.

Stage one (Access and motivation)

The getting started week falls in stage one. This week we had our first meeting with the local organizer and participants, in my case it was from Karlstad university. We got a preliminary overview of what ONL is all about. We got to know about the main learning spaces and community spaces used in ONL. The course is largely based on Google drive for collaborative PBL work. We got access information so that we can reach the platform quickly and easily.

 In the community space we got our first chance to meet other participants. This was the place to introduce ourselves. Here we first came to know about the huge diversity in terms of backgrounds and geography among the participants. The platform also allowed us to interact with ourselves that was very motivating. Connecting and sharing beyond our geographical and temporal boundaries are a huge opportunity. This course is all about learning that we are all associated and motivated with so it’s quite natural that we see values in the course and we therefore all are motivated and  expected to succeed. But I can express one thing after finishing the course, the motivation keep growing over time. At the end of this stage, we were all online (in the platform) and starting to express ourselves.

Stage two (Socialization)

Connecting week mirrors the stage two. This week started with a webinar where we got the chance to see (meet) all participants, facilitators and co-facilitators. We got to know our PBL group, the micro community that would last for a couple of months. Since, none of the participants meet physically, it was quite important to build a form of trust in each other for the success of useful collaboration.

Then we had our first PBL meeting (with the facilitators) where we introduced ourselves briefly. The facilitators provided us access information of various platforms and tools to be used over the course. In our first group meeting we fixed our weekly meeting schedule, we wrote our collaborative working document and determined topic leaders. Different topics would be led by different sets of participants.  The facilitators introduced us with a model named FISh (Focus, Investigate, Share) that would be used for individual and group inquiry. We had a group task this week – creating a presentation video where each of us introduced ourselves. The task served one critical purpose – socialization within the group. We got to know ourselves through our online persona, also through the task, we got our first demonstration of the value of working together. The video was also shared with the wider ONL community. To sum up, at the end of this stage we settled our community identity and the basis for future information exchange and knowledge construction.

ONL is based on a number of topics or scenarios. Each PBL group works with the topic in a constructive, collaborative and self-directed way with the guidance from facilitators. For exploring different topics we cycle through the following three stages. The following stages are more productive and constructive for learning purposes.

Stage 3 (Information Exchange)

At this stage, information exchange happened and collaborative tasks were achieved. Each topic came with a scenario description that was short but was enough to initiate action and interaction. We had both synchronous and asynchronous work in this stage. There are a number of suggested readings for each topic that we tried to use to understand the topic asynchronously. The advantage of asynchronous tasks was that everyone could explore the topic at their own pace before hearing the views from others. Each topic also came with webinars and tweet chats that were also a good input in the information exchange.  Topic leader presented the topic in the group and then everybody discussed to determine the main question(s) to investigate further – the synchronous part.  The focus was documented in the Fish document.   At the end of this stage, we came to know how to find and exchange information productively and successfully.

Stage 4 (Knowledge construction)

In stage three we determined the leading question(s) from the topic based on agreement among the participants. In stage four there were more group discussions and debates around the focus question that were useful to promote our critical, creative and practical skills. We used to interact with each other more heavily to do further investigation (judging, evaluating, comparing, assessing) towards our focus. We wrote down our understanding in a collaboration environment using google drive, miro etc.  We thrived for more clarification through understanding, opposing, criticizing (debating) each other’s views. Facilitators gave us space for working on the topic scenario but became active when needed. At this stage they allowed us to go ourselves but from time to time they used to summarise where we were, mention something as a stimulus for continuing the discussion, suggest alternatives if we were totally struck.

In this stage we used to build our own knowledge based on previous knowledge (constructivism) and by linking it to personal experience. The topics in ONL were very related to what we do in our professional lives – teaching. The topic enabled us to draw from our own experiences. The new knowledge was always actively built on previous knowledge (constructed from the relevant topic tasks). This step was completed with a join output produced and an individual outcome (like the blog you are currently reading). The joint output was shared to the wider ONL community.

Stage 5 (Development)

In this stage, we used to reflect on our learning process. Based on our collaborative knowledge construction in stage four we created a reflection document describing how we collaborated, our working method, the ICT tools we used and the metacognition (our understanding and control of our own thinking). The document was quite critical for the individual and group level knowledge development. The goal of this stage was to enhance our reflection about online learning. I would like to finish by giving an useful definition of reflection –

Reflection is a form of mental processing – like a form of thinking – that we use to fulfil a purpose or to achieve some anticipated outcome. It is applied to relatively complicated or unstructured ideas for which there is not an obvious solution and is largely based on the further processing of knowledge and understanding and possibly emotions that we already possess.

Moon. 1999

He who receives ideas from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me.

Thomas Jefferson

Education is all about enlightenment – enlightening each other through sharing, collaboration and feedback. Openness is central in education. Today, we have Internet, it gives us a great opportunity to be much more generous in sharing our educational contents be it courseware, textbooks or source codes. So how do we share our resources so that people can not only legally access but also reuse, redistribute, revise or remix the resources. Creative common license can help us here. 

Creative common (CC) license is a set of copyright licenses that provide us a standardized legal way to give other permission to share and use our work on conditions of our choices. These licenses are completely free of charge. Using CC licenses, millions of people around the world have made their creative work of photos, videos, music publicly available for use. So, for instance if anyone wants to use any of my open access course content, they can use the content before asking me because permissions are already given using the CC license. The license is legally robust and easy to understand- it says anybody can use the content as long as the owner is acknowledged. I could add more features to the license. CC is made up of different licensing features – BY, SA, NC, ND. The features are expressed using different symbols. 

BY means attribution, it means everyone must acknowledge me when they publish my work. NC means noncommercial; anybody can use my content and redistribute freely but only I can make money out of it (if I plan so). ND means non derivative; nobody can modify my content without asking me first. The last element, SA means share alike; everybody must share the modified content like the original (if they do). Using these features, there are six different CC license: CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC-SA, CC BY-NC-ND. Each of these license gives permission to share and include the attribution role. So, everybody is automatically allowed to share my content but they need to acknowledge me if they share. So other three features are optional. 

Beside CC BY, other CC licenses differ on the added features. CC BY license is the most open, gives anyone the maximum freedom. CC BY-NC-ND gives the least freedom. All three licenses CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA and CC BY-NC-ND restrict commercial uses. CC BY-ND and CC BY-NC-ND do not give permission for adopting and remixing. BY NC-SA and BY SA require new modified content be licensed under the same terms as the original one.   The figure shows a good overview of each different license. 

The title might confuse you but not for long if I say I am going to write about the Digital Visitor & Resident (VR) model introduced in a webinar by David White. In contrast to Marc Pensky’s model that is based on generational distinction or digital technology skill distinction, this model captures users motivation in online engagements. So, basically this model doesn’t permanently label one as a digital native or a digital immigrant, instead it qualifies ones digital engagement.

VR model presents a continuum between two modes of online engagement. Sliding between the modes the model can capture an individual’s motivation to use the web in different contexts. One side of the continuum is ‘visitor’ mode, here the web is assumed as a toolbox. One looks for a tool to perform a task and once the task is done the box is closed, no social traces are left. In visitor mode one might be doing googling, reading wikipedia or  doing online shopping. These engagements are not visible to other users.

Other side of the continuum is ‘resident’ mode, here the web is assumed as a place where people can coexist (with digital identity). In this mode, the main motivation to go online is to engage with others. Being active in social media, joining online discussions, commenting on youtube videos, these are all example scenarios depicting individuals in the resident mode. These types of online behaviors leave social traces. The figure below shows one example of VR model that captures an individual’s online behavior. In the extreme end of the resident mode, visibility is quite high – individual’s online engagement could appear in google searches. The vertical axis adds two common contexts where people engage online – personal and institutional. So, the same person engages online in a mixture of visitor and resident modes depending on what he or she is trying to achieve – our Dr. Visitor and Mr. Resident as the central character in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide.

While addressing the challenge of educating millennial children Marc Prensky (2001) emphasized on the technological environment that they are brought up in.  Prensky coined Digital natives and digital immigrants to label today’s digital users  but failed to notice much larger problems such as digital divide. Instead of labelling users, the Digital Visitor and Resident (V&R) model provides us a framework to map one’s online usage. This is a simple model to capture a wide range (continuum) of online engagement. Visitor and resident mode are two ends of the horizontal axis. When one uses an online resource to perform a certain task and leaves it once the task is completed depicts a visitor mode of engagement, one example could be using google translate. When the translation is done, the user is no longer needed to be online or moved to another tasks. One the other hand, in residence mode one enters online with a digital persona and looks for other digital residents to connect to. Our prime example is all kinds of social media such as Facebook and Instagram. When one is logged in Facebook (it’s possible to log in without any login or persona but this is not so common otherwise we wouldn’t have billions of users), the engagement comes from either posting an update to the community or liking, commenting on other updates. In resident mode, the duration of engagement is indefinite because of many reasons for instance  no particular task is there to complete to begin with.  Lately a Netflix show called ‘The social dilemma’ caught my eye. It talked at length on how we have moved from a  tool based technology environment to an addiction and manipulation based technology environment.  The reason why I am talking about this show now is that I see a connection, the visitor mode is all about tool based technology, tool is innate here we use the tool to do our job. But in current reality certain tools are equipped with all AI based manipulative and additive ammunition that are designed to do only one thing that is to increase users retention in their platform – resident mode.  So, I am quite intrigued to learn about the V&R model, I see it can be used to do a longitudinal study on a group of people to capture the shift in their online engagement.