The 4th week of PBL8

We are in the 4th week of PBL8.* The online group has started to do some inquiry on the first topic. The synchronous online sessions are not very crowded. This morning just two persons joined the session. We talked about it.

• We used Doodle for setting dates and times, but everyone is so busy that we can hardly find moments to collaborate online.
• We have our own Google+ community for the PBL8 group and we use it for posting notes and not for having discussions. Could a-synchronous discussions helps the group to the next level of discussion?
• Do we have to repeat discussions all the time in the online synchronous group, when different group members appear, or can we start were the the others brought us so far.
• How can we save valuable items of our discussions from online synchronous and a-synchronous discussions? Will we use the posts in the Google+ community or do we put them on the Fish** document which is related to the task of the Topic?
• How will the way we work influence the group process? Is it needed that we are regularly online with the total group? How important is the group process?
• What are we going to present at the end of the week, when we have just 2 participants online in the synchronous session, we have three focus-points for discussion, we have four days left. Only one of us did some personal inquiry and we don’t know what tools we can use to present.
• What are we going to present? What is valuable content for ourselves and what is valuable content for the rest of the group? Are our own thoughts valuable or do we have to do scientific research? But how if we have only four days? Can we identify the scope of the topic and the most important questions as an outcome?
• How to collaborate? Should we ask all members to give input and be very democratic, but that takes so much time. Can we just give some options, ask group-members for their input and focus on what we think is the right thing to do? Is it possible to delegate certain tasks to other group-members?
• What is expected from us? What do we have to do? What do we have to deliver? Who is responsible for the outcome? Are we?

How great that the transformation of the dependent learner started to change in a learner who takes responsibility for their own learning today.

I thought it was appropriate to ask questions and share experiences as a co-facilitator.

This session was very satisfying because I remarked explicit change of concepts about learning in the thoughts of group members and I enjoyed the discussion.

*PBL8 is an online group of seven participants, one facilitator and one co-facilitator – thats me- who are joining the Open Networked Learning project ONL181 during three months. The course is huge experiment about learning with technology in a fast changing world. This year it is the 8th iteration of the project and I joined five times in different roles. Important is collaboration while searching for valuable learning, peer-learning, new ways of teaching, facilitating, using all kinds of technology. The course is 100% online and participants come from different continents.

** Fish: Focus, Investigate, Share; a method for doing Inquiry

Image:

• Title: “DONT STARE AT IT TOO LONG WITH THOSE THOUGHTS OF YOURS”
• Creator: aka Tman