Collaborative Learning

In class this week we are discussing collaborative learning and creating learning communities, with a specific focus to on-line learning.

When I was in high school, I hated group projects. It seemed like I always ended up doing most of the work. In hindsight, I realize that part of that was because I'm a bit of an overachiever and (especially in high school) tended to go overboard on projects. However, it often seemed like there was one person in the group who's plan was just to skim off the others and that pissed me off.

I did my undergraduate at the University of Chicago and I don't remember any group work what-so-ever. While part of that may be because I was a math major, the U of C requires nearly 2 years of core classes (i.e. general liberal arts curriculum). Many of those classes created fairly good learning communities. Classes were often discussion based, at least for the humanities, social science, and civilization (a.k.a history) requirements. Yet there was never any group work, just reading and writing papers. For some of the hum courses, we'd have an editing partner but that was the extent of it. I eventually became part of a learning community in mathematics, but that tended to take place outside the classroom. The "study groups" really did add a lot to the experience though.

As far as my doctorate is concerned, there was definitely a learning community formed in grad school. It was a good experience to be part of. There was no official group work, but we often worked collaboratively or help each other in the courses. My year studied together for our qualifying exams. We each took one semester of one of the classes and led a review session on it. I think it helped -- ours was the only year to have everyone completely pass their quals on the first try. I find it interesting how people worked together collaboratively and formed a community, yet none of the courses or teachers made it an objective for that to happen. The department encouraged group work and we all had a large office (holding cell) together, but never was any group work assigned.

Working towards my masters in education has been a very different experience. Teacher explicitly try to create learning communities. Collaborative work is often assigned. Yet at the same time, there's not really (to me) any sense of community. Part of this likely stems from on lin courses and being part-time students. I've worked with some really great groups, some groups that didn't feel like a group, and a group where one person contributed nothing (except excuses) and seem to think that was okay. All the attempts at fostering a learning community make it seem more forced and awkward to me.

Hmm... Until I wrote this, I hadn't realized just how great of a community I had when I did my ph.d....

Copyright

For my class, we've been discussing different issues in online education. On of them is copyright. My partner Lynee and I worked on this wiki about copyright. Lynee contributed a lot of the content having just gone to a conference on copyright and higher education.

Copyright can be an issue when you are developing courses. There is lots of great content out there, but sometimes if can be difficult to know what's okay to use do to copyright issues. This is somewhat frustrating to me as copyright was originally designed to further creative works. But now a lot of people need to "reinvent the wheel" instead of making use of existing works due to copyright. Some useful academic works that have fallen out of print are nearly impossible to get (and can't be copied) due to copyrights. In my opinion, current U.S. copyright law is designed to protect the profits of corporations. I think its current incarnation actual inhibits academic discourse and development. Plus some of the legal court cases regarding web linking to copyrighted material are just absurd.

You hear in academia about fair use -- the idea that if your copying it for educational purposes its okay. That's not quite what fair use is about. Fair use is a legal defense, not copy right permission. Here's a great video, A Fairy Tale, which explains fair use. To the best of my knowledge, this video is a great example of fair use.

The main copyright issue is the news is downloading music and other media off the internet. I'll try and stay off my soapbox on this issue and just summarize my point. Copying legally available media that is sold for money when you do not own it is wrong. However, the way the RIAA and others are trying to apply copyright law is really just bullying. I don't believe they can actually prove copyright violations took place (sharing files is not a copyright violation IMO, downloading them might be). Plus, given the current state of technology, they really need to adapt their distribution scheme instead of harassing their customers.

I'd love to see real copyright reform that is based on both author and public needs and not on the profits of corporations.

In the Beginning...

Greetings! I started this blog for INSDSG 619 Design and Instruction of Online Courses, a class I'm taking at UMass Boston towards my M.Ed. in Instructional Design. One of the reasons I'm taking that course is that my main educational focus is course design. As online courses become more prevalent throughout the educational community, I'd like to have some training before I need to design one myself.

On a personal note, three things everyone knows about me:

• I have my Ph.D. in Mathematics. I got my degree from Caltech. My thesis is in a fairly abstract area of mathematics called algebraic combinatorics.
• My main hobby is playing and designing boardgames. I play (and design) what are called "Eurogames". The Economist recently had an article about Eurogames. While I don't care for their nationalistic stereotyping, the article has a decent description of eurogames. To read (and buy) these kinds of games, Fun Again is a good internet resource. It's not necessarily the cheapest, but it's easy to use and has good reviews and resources. I occasionally do some work for Cambridge Games Factory, who are publishing two of my games, with the first one (tentatively) schedule to come out later this year.
  
• I love to read. As a child, I was a voracious reader, reading hundreds of books a year. While most of my currently reading is online, nothing compares to a good book. I used to read fantasy and sci-fi fairly heavily. Lately, however I've been reading more non-fiction. Recently I've read The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon (fiction) and Masquerade: the amazing decapitations of WWI, by Seymour Reit (non-fiction), both of which I greatly enjoyed.

I hope to flesh out this blog with links to various math and education related resources when I have time.