It's great there is such administrative support for teaching experiments
there Mike.
Just a few quick comments generally to anyone interested about the course
structuring, to which David referred with small special interest groups --
the work on classroom discourse indicates that smaller groups tend to be less
dominated by those that are outspoken (than full class discussions) -- and
there are no obvious reasons to me why that pattern doesn't carry to online
interactions -- rather, Eva's results on xmca showing zipf law patterns
support the assertion that most interactions online are carried by a few
people. I applied a similar analysis to two online courses - one that i
taught and also found zipf patterns in both. So the question is whether it
is possible to level the field of contributive interactions without smaller
groups. Or is that a secondary consideration?
Regarding Knowledge Forum and social construction vs. knowledge "transfer"
there are some interesting tensions there -- so, for example, will the
on-line course as a short-lived system be configured with an object to
"produce" something (besides people who have changed because of the
interaction) ? Or will the actions made possible by KF be ill fitting?
There is also the consideration of haves/havenots and whether everyone
interested will have access... It's not to say that i myself have no
interest in newer widgets... been there, after all. I have not followed
how Kf has evolved -- Is KF accessible with a browser?
bb
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