Where do I start?

I'm struggling with decision anxiety these days.

It's as if I've never done this before, but I have. It's as if I've never had these issues before, but I have. I'm opening up a Domain of One's Own through Reclaim Hosting - it's a gift of ownership and agency from eCampus Ontario. It's an opportunity to start over, begin anew, build my persona with care and intention. Be at the helm of it all - push and pull, flip the switch, start the engines. It's a surprisingly scary place to be for someone who's been blogging, tweeting and building course sites for many years.

BUT WHERE DO I START?

This is probably what every newbie shouts when they first start blogging, or join twitter, or connect through Facebook, or any of those other social media spaces. I thought it would be easier than it is - each decision hinges on the one before. Each layer builds on the level already created. I'm reluctant to start or shift things around, but I know I will. I just need to figure out where to start. Which dial or lever needs my attention first.

In reflection on this in relation to my own teaching practice and my learning in the open, I'm wondering how to re-build courses under my new domain, or even if I should. I'm wondering how my previous domain can be disconnected or even if it should. Once you've got a digital footprint, or tattoo, how do you go about shifting it when you want to reclaim and revise the image or impression. In this digital world that doesn't forget, how do you reshape the space you call your own? I'm about to find out.

I've started with the 'splash page' where it's very basic info about me. From there, I created a new blog and connected it to a subdomain. Now I'm looking at the design and structure of my MAIN blog site as a representation of me. From there, I'll see how my previous WordPress blog site - Five Flames 4 Learning - can be integrated into the domain architecture and nestled into the cPanel space. Little steps, exploring the dials for now. More tinkering and playing to come.

Opening Up

I've just re-read an article by Catherine Cronin - Openness and Praxis: Exploring the Use of Open Educational Practices in Higher Education. I've reflected on Cronin's work on open educational practice before [Cronin Comes into Focus]. This is a piece that I will come back to from time to time since it feeds my research and SoTL directions - "critical approaches to openness are required".

I returned to this piece after a 'trigger' conversation from a hangout held recently. In this general discussion about educational technology in our teaching practice, there appears to be pushback from students who find it challenging to engage in multiple digital spaces within a course of study. The issue brought forward, that created a feeling of discomfort for me, was that of multiple sites for locating information about course content. Since this is exactly what I require and model in each of my courses, I paid particular attention to these comments. The issue appears to be the navigation from closed LMS spaces to open web spaces where similar but not identical information is presented. Conflicting information from one location (LMS) to another (web site) was challenging the students to make sense of what, where, when, and how to complete the course requirements. Mirroring the LMS into open web spaces with consistency and attention to detail is challenging at best, and a web designer or course creator's major concern. Ensuring that the due dates, assignment descriptions, and the specific requirements for each element of the course need to be consistently communicated in each location. With responsive and agile course design, this can be particularly challenging.

As I struggle with this issue - since I firmly believe that course content should live outside the LMS space. I struggle with the LMS requirements from the organizational standpoint. How can I continue to support student success with open course design when the students themselves are pushing back on the open nature of course design? Where can the shift for simplification be reversed to one where complexity and messiness, and an attitude of 'not-yetness' are accepted (Ross & Collier). I'm struggling with this negotiation of open learning while balancing student needs, learning success, and well being. My messy learning opportunities with open and emerging web technologies may not be what students want, need or welcome. How do I find out what students 'really' need? How do I balance that with what I really 'want' to see happen in my teaching practice? Tough questions for self reflection.... more opening up to come.

References:

Cronin, C. (2017, October 17). Open education, open questions. Educause Review. Retrieved from https://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/10/open-education-open-questions 

Cronin, C. (2017, August). Openness and praxis: Exploring the use of open educational practices in higher education. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning (IRRODL), 18(5). Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3096/4301

Ross, J. & Collier, A. (2016). Complexity, mess, and not-yetness. In G. Veletsianos (2012) Emergence and innovation in digital learning. AU Press. DOI: doi:10.15215/aupress/9781771991490.01 Retrieved from http://www.veletsianos.com/2016/06/14/complexity-mess-not-yetness/

Tensions

Since the previous article I've read made reference to tensions in the spaces between complexity and simplexity in online learning spaces, it's time I took some time to watch Caroline Kuhn's webinar
Tensions concerning personal open designs and institutional closed artefacts in a HE Institution. 

There will be some continuity in thinking between Ross & Collier's article and this work, I think.

I'll capture my notes from this video on a 'vialogue' for further collaborations and discussion. [with the inherent issues of accounts, access, privileges, permissions, etc - the price of annotations in the open]. The Vialogue notes can be found HERE. 

Bridging a divide

Today I participated in a Ministry of Education "Building Futures" day where the professional development topics are presented to teacher candidates by members of the Ministry of Education education officers and regional managers. The opportunity to bridge the divide from K-12 to higher ed is one that doesn't often come up often. One session was titled Innovation Design Process: Design Thinking in Classrooms and Schools. This was interesting because of the connection to my work in course design and Ideo course work that I've done in the past, not to mention the number of students in the room whom I've taught in some course or another.

At the end of this session, I thought it would be really interesting to have students design a course for media and or digital literacies WITH me rather than me designing it solely alone. It would also be interesting to see if this could be done in a 'sprint' style session similar to the sprint done by Claire Coulter and Ali Versluis with others from eCampus Ontario.