Given this course’s boundary-busting characteristics, I’m going to carry on in a similar mode and discuss my assessment 2 ideas in public. Sian – hope that’s ok?
I think I’m only really going to finish the course if I produce something that connected to my current professional practice. For IDEL a couple of years back I did something completely unconnected (We have never been digital) and suffered for it in spite of finding the experience intellectually stimulating.
So, I think I’d like to write something on a small Twitter project I’m leading. It’s got a some funding from LearnHigher and I’m going to need to produce an evaluation in March or April 2010. It would be nice to do some work on it now.
How would it fit the themes of the module?
Well, I think discourse on Twitter exemplifies the utopian and dystopian narratives that characterise the reception of new technologies. It is, alternatively, ‘perfect for the always on/always on you tech-savvy digital native’ as well as ‘another sign of HE going to hell in a hand cart as yet another faddish tool is used to further degrade students’ writing skills, attention spans and cognitive abilities’.
My project is also interested in the ways Twitter might support the development of learning communities through:
- the public posting of questions, comments and reflections (quasi-lifestream)
- resource sharing
- dialogue (student-to-student, student-to-lecturer)
One of my projects is working well and there could be some interesting analysis of the interactions taking place. However, another is a complete failure and I want to interview a sample of the 90 + students to explore why Twitter doesn’t work for them. Privately the module leader and I are actually quite cross with them (why don’t they get it – they’re doing media audience studies for chrissakes!) but publicly we’re interested in understanding the dissonance between staff and student conceptualisations of Twitter.
Finally, part of me is interested in exploring the use of Twitter on this course as well; there were some interesting comments on Twitter’s lack of suitability to dialogue (140 character limit but also disrupted turn adjacency issues).
All comments gratefully received.
Putting your assignment thoughts up seems totally appropriate to me, and I also like your idea for the piece. I think a few people are going to be in the position where they need to turn the work of the course toward more of an applied context, and I think that is absolutely fine.
The distinction between twitter narratives of promise and threat seems like a rich strand to me, in terms of providing some analytical focus for your evaluation. I thought your notion of ‘ambient collegiality’ was terrific : )
My only (and relatively minor) concern is that it might be a bit of a struggle doing something within the 4000 word limit which does justice both to the theory and to the interview data. I think you’ll be able to make this work, but it might be a challenge keeping the focus and scope manageable, particularly if you try to cover data from both projects.
Any thoughts on medium?
Hi Sian,
Thanks – as ever – for the helpful comments. Yes, I think I may have to focus on just the KU pilots and even then it’s going to be tricky. I may need to think again about integrating interview data – perhaps this is more dissertation territory?
‘Twitter in education: narratives of promise and threat’ is kinda interesting. Do you know Victoria Carrington’s article on txtspk? It’s called ‘Texting: The end of civilisation (again)’. I love the wearied ‘again’ in parenthesis. Something similar with Twitter – not texting -as its focus?
Format/media.? I’ve got one eye on the final report for LearnHigher or some kind of deliverable (paper or article) so this may be … gulp … mainly textual.
Tony – please let me apologise – in giving you the 4000 figure for word count I was getting myself mixed up with ‘digital environments’. For this course, we are working with a notional word count of 2000 for the final assignment. I’m afraid this is going to constrain you even more, but I hope it is workable?
I don’t know the Carrington article – I’ll look it up as it sounds spot on. As you suggest here, it is always going to be an option to return to this for something bigger for the dissertation…