Seems like Service Ed may be the first research topic to have gathered
critical mass in uclinks. Notes from Carrol at UCSC and Suzi at UCI
indicate their interest and there may be others. Perhaps you could
send a copy of your report to a rep at each campus when it comes out.
If you three would take the lead in getting a uclinks service learning
project together it would be great.
Recent messages have brought over threshold the issue of coordination among
UClinkers and connections with similar efforts nationally. Sticking for the
moment to the UClinks group, there seems to be some uncertainty about
what is appropriate to send to newlinks and what to the particular person
who sent the message.
My own policy in this work over the past decade has been to treat all
key players as if they were sitting together in a seminar at a round
table, much like we did when we blasted through the proposal last Jan
in Berkeley. Sometimes one speaks to all, some respond and all hear. Some
make comments to neighbors, but not so densely as to make coordination
of the whole possible.
>From message sent to me about service ed from three campuses, I sense
a strong tendency for people to use something like the telephone as
an organizational metaphor: Its mostly 1-1 with a few conference calls
on the assumption that it is improper to send messages to all that all
may not be interested in.
What are other people's preferences? We have already narrowed uclinks to
newlinks-- the group of people actually carrying out the work. My inclination
is to have people "chat" with each other "across the table" on newlinks
until we reach a point where differentiation by specialization seems
appropriate/necessary. The service ed start up discussion is a case in
point: I assume everyone on newlinks would like to know what is developing
even if they do not plan to take an active part because they need to know
what all the parts are and who is playing them.
Ditto for Distance Ed which is a research topic I plan to get heavily
involved in. In the beginning, until we know who-all the "lead team" is
going to be and what is coming down, seems like it would be good for
everyone to keep up with the flow. Later, we could go to a subgrouping
of those actively engaged that reports back periodically to the whole
group. But we are not there yet by a long shot.
What do others think?
Is there a desire to create a "campus leader" who distributes to everyone
else on their campus? That would be tough to implement here at UCSD where
we are used to open communication, but I suppose it could be arranged. Is
there some other scheme that would be better?
I got my grades turned in yesterday and by this time next week have to have
a progress report in to Mellon for the year from the Distributed Literacy
Consortium -- and our phones and computers get "upgraded" starting tomorrow
so we may be hard to reach. But there are now glimmers of time to start
working on the fall.
To that end:
Could those who have not done so please post their favorite themes as soon
as possible
and
Could everyone teaching the course in the fall suggest one reading of likely
importance that we might all share as a common ground for distance ed via
tv and computer?
Now if only my cold and fever would go away, life would eeeeeeasy!
mike