Understanding Public and Private Space Online

1
Understanding Public and Private Space Online

• Dr. Clare Brett
• cbrett_at_oise.utoronto.ca
• Wendy Freeman
• wfreeman_at_oise.utoronto.ca
• ALT-C, September 2005

2
Overview

• About the GRAIL Project
• Research and design strategies for investigating
  effects of public and private space.

3
GRAIL Graduate Researcher's Academic Identity
onLine

• Graduate students in Education
• Focus on activities related to learning to be
  educational researchers
• Develop tools with the social and psychological
  affordances that support the development of
  identity within a community of research practice
• Crosses course boundaries and throughout their
  degree program

4
Research Questions for GRAIL

• How does studying at a distance impact the
  traditional experience of graduate study?
• How do students negotiate their needs as
  individuals with their relationship with the
  larger academic community within such an online
  environment?

5
The GRAIL Learning Environment

• Emergent design
• Flexible architecture
• Focus on elements that support individual
  academic development and community transparency
• SAKAI open source content management system.
• Weblogs reflection over time
• Macromedia Breeze Real-time and archived
  videoconferencing
• Wikis Collaborative writing environments
• WebKF online discussion, knowledge building

6
Communities of Practice

• CoP framework
• Emphasis on
• Practice as a central activity
• Learning through participation
• Legitimate participation
• How tacit meanings of practice are communicated
  through social interaction
• Identity in relation to practice and community
• Considers diversity in understanding,
  experiences, and goals on community and
  individual learning
• Sustained participation in a community that has a
  shared history and peers at different levels of
  experience.
  
  

7
SAKAI

• Open source content management system
• Eventually all elements will be plugged into
  SAKAI-balancing an interface to support
  individual growth and social interactivity.

8
Weblogs

• Students
• Faculty
• Research
• Coursework
• Ongoing
• Individual reflection and peer commentary on
  emerging identity as researchers

9
Breeze

• Macromedia Breeze
• Videoconferencing
• Archives
• Small/Large Group Meetings

10
Wikis

• Collaborative writing environment
• Tasks
• reviewing paper submissions for conferences
• Annotated bibliography of learning resources
  (course assignment)

11
Why Build GRAIL?

• Diversity among graduate students in education
• Different degrees backgrounds life-stages and
  goals for graduate study.
• Need to support this diversity of experience and
  scaffold ways to comfortably enter realm of
  public academic discourse.
• Diversity within the field
• Many and contrasting disciplinary backgrounds of
  research eg sociology, psychology, english,
  education.
• Considerable epistemological diversity role of
  research, role of theory, role of practice in
  research, methodologiesrequires explicit
  discussion and support for individual
  epistemological development through individual
  and social means.

12
Balance of the individual and the collaborative

• Development of individual academic identity and
  voice--technology should allow creation of
  individually designed views and maintenance of
  connections to different communities.
• Deeper understanding of Educational Research as
  practice and the role of theory --technology
  should support collaborative interaction in a
  variety of forms writing, synchronous and
  asynchronous discussion

13
In Summary

• The environment should support ongoing individual
  learning and development along with meaningful
  participation with others developing experience
  with educational research (in a comprehensive way
  like Toshs Learning Landscape ).
• Engaging in authentic research projects is
  important for all participants and should be
  varied and based on their specific experiences
  and interests.
• The social and technical elements should support
  the negotiation of diverse values and beliefs
  with respect to the practice of educational
  research.

14
For more on GRAIL

• The full paper http//grail.oise.utoronto.ca/cbre
  tt
• Contacts
• Dr. Clare Brett cbrett_at_oise.utoronto.ca
• Wendy Freeman wfreeman_at_oise.utoronto.ca