#paragogy

[charliesensei-blog]

Penned this blog post on the Peeragogy blog about the progress we have been making over the past 10 months on the Peeragogy Accelerator.

[charliesensei-blog]

Submitted Workshop OER14 Proposal: Help Design the Peeragogy Accelerator

See bottom of post for update details!

UPDATE 1 | 26 Dec 2013

UPDATE 2 | 26 Jan 2014

Joe Corneli and I submitted a workshop proposal to OER14 titled: "Help Design the Peeragogy Accelerator". Check out the abstract below, and let us know if you have any feedback or if you'd like to attend!

Abstract for Twitter (140 chars max)

Peeragogy Handbook editors will help participants collaboratively accelerate their OER work by leveraging peer learning.

Rationale

Editors of the Peeragogy Handbook will lead this workshop, giving participants an opportunity to uncover what they want to learn or achieve within the world of OER.  We aim to help participants improve the efficiency of their learning processes by leveragingthe work of peers. We bring years of experience with projects like the Peeragogy handbook, PlanetMath, Collaborative Lesson Planning, and The Uncertainty Principle and other case studies of "peeragogy in action". We will briefly present a range of examples, but the focus of the workshop will be on garnering insights of participants, to help specify the problems they are working on in their individual OER projects -- both thematic problems like "generating revenue" and "student participation", as well as more context-specific issues.

Content

We will share a set of five principles for effective peer learning that have been explored in practice (see references), as well as a catalog of patterns for peer learning, which serves as a robust method for doing "emergent design".  Participants will use these design techniques to build a real, functioning, accelerator programme that will operate in a distributed  fashion during the next year. Participants will be able to repeat this activity with their own local communities. We want to be open about the risks involved in building a spontaneous and emergent process - we have had good results in the past, but there are always obstacles, and part of the purpose of this exercise is to understand the current set of obstacles that participants face in their own work.

Delivery Methods

The workshop will give participants  the opportunity to reflect clearly on their own educational projects and provide them with an opportunity to figure out how different projects can come together in a way that improves everybody's work. Outline (90 minute time slot):

05 Minutes - for technical setup and quick introductions

10 Minutes - Overview of Peeragogy

05 Minutes - Attendees complete questionnaire on an Etherpad, providing background their own project and goals

20 Minutes - Organize attendees into groups of 3 or more, each discussing their project goals with one another and looking for more information on what could achieved in a collaboration

20 Minutes - Change groups again, repeat the process of looking for connections (first 5 minutes of this section will discuss successes and failures of the previous section)

20 Minutes - Individuals "report back" what they discovered in their small groups and if they have new ideas for collaboration.  (What could they bring to a Peer Learning Accelerator?  What would they want to get?)

10 Minutes - Wind down, determine specific action steps for individual groups to move forward on and how to re-incorporate their findings back into the accelerator (e.g. a Peeragogy Google+ working group, or a co-created Collaborative Exploration to deepen the themes that have been raised in the workshop)

References

Corneli and Danoff, Paragogy: Synergizing individual and institutional learning (Published on Wikiversity 22 January 2011) http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/File:Paragogy-final.pdf

Corneli and Danoff, Paragogy, in CEUR Workshop Proceedings (ISSN 1613-0073), July 2011 Vol-739 http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-739/

Corneli and Mikroyannidis, Personalised Peer-Supported Learning: The Peer-to-Peer Learning Environment (P2PLE), Digital Education Review, Volume 20. http://greav.ub.edu/der/index.php/der/article/view/188/330

Corneli, Paragogical Praxis, Published in E-Learning and Digital Media (ISSN 2042-7530), Volume 9, Number 3, 2012 http://www.wwwords.co.uk/elea/content/pdfs/9/issue9_3.asp

Rheingold et al., The Peeragogy Handbook, available through http://peeragogy.org and Lulu.com

Corneli, Danoff, Terzi, Pierce, Graves, Barondeau, Roadmaps in Peer Learning, MeTis, III, 2013 http://metis.progedit.com/anno-iii-numero-1-062013-formare-tra-scienza-tecnica-tecnologia/99-saggi/490-roadmaps-in-peer-learning.html

Corneli, Danoff, Keune, Lyons, Peeragogy in Action, in The Open Book, The Finnish Institute, London, 2013, ISBN: 978-0-9570776-3-8 http://theopenbook.org.uk/ | https://archive.org/details/TheOpenBook | http://peeragogy.org/peeragogy-in-action/

UPDATE 1 (26 Dec. 2013) OUTCOME

In late December, Joe and I learned our workshop abstract had been accepted. Below are our 3 reviews.

Reviewer 1. OER practitioners rarely have this kind of opportunity to interact in a hands-on, face-to-face environment with their peers. Although it is not clear from the proposal what format the "Accelerator" itself will ultimately take, the workshop itself will provide a valuable opportunity for individuals from different projects to learn about each other's work and build much-needed, potentially lasting synergies. Moreover should the Accelerator work as proposed, it will be a valuable contribution to the OER community. The opportunity for community contribution to this work-in-progress could ensure its success. Reviewer 2. A very clearly outlined and engaging workshop that will have wide appeal to the conference community for whom the majority are involved in OER projects. I like how there will be useful workshop outputs in the form of survey data and accelerator captures for participants to collaborate on and for the wider OER community to access. There were one or two minor words missing in the descriptors so a further proofing would be advised. Reviewer 3. Potentially useful workshop. Might be useful if attendees prepared a little beforehand to focus on goals and understand the principle bette[r].

UPDATE 2 (26 Jan. 2014) ABSTRACT SUBMISSION UPDATED

In light of the reviews above, the conference oranizing team kindly gave us the chance to edit our abstract, which we did on this Google Doc and which is re-pasted below:

Abstract for Twitter (140 chars max)

http://peeragogy.org editors will help participants accelerate their OER work by leveraging peer learning.

Rationale

Editors of the Peeragogy Handbook will lead this workshop, giving participants an opportunity to uncover what they want to learn or achieve within the world of OER.  We aim to help participants improve the efficacy of their learning processes by leveraging the work of peers. We bring years of experience with projects like the Peeragogy Handbook, PlanetMath, Collaborative Lesson Planning, and The Uncertainty Principle and other case studies featuring “peeragogy in action”. We will briefly present a range of examples, but the focus of the workshop will be on garnering insights of participants, to help specify the problems they are working on in their individual OER projects — both thematic problems like “generating revenue” and “student participation”, as well as more context-specific issues.

Content

We will share a set of five principles for effective peer learning that have been explored in practice (developed in our early papers, available on paragogy.net), as well as a catalog of design patterns for peer produced peer learning (developed with the many co-authors of the Peeragogy Handbook, available on peeragogy.org). Participants will use these design techniques to help build a real, functioning, globally distributed Peeragogy Accelerator. In the accelerator, projects with a focus on peer learning and collaborative working will join forces to help each other achieve their goals. Participants will be able to repeat this activity and build local accelerators in their own communities.

Delivery Methods

The workshop will give participants  the opportunity to reflect clearly on their own educational projects and provide them with an opportunity to figure out how different projects can come together in a way that improves everybody’s work. Outline (90 minute time slot):

Before Conference - Recommended reading: http://is.gd/PeeragogyAccelerator

05 Minutes - For technical setup and quick introductions

10 Minutes - Overview of Peeragogy

05 Minutes - Attendees complete questionnaire on an Etherpad, providing background their own project and goals

20 Minutes - Organize attendees into groups of 3 or more, each discussing their project goals with one another and looking for more information on what could be achieved in a collaboration

20 Minutes - Change groups again, repeat the process of looking for connections (first 5 minutes of this section will discuss successes and failures of the previous section)

20 Minutes - Individuals “report back” what they discovered in their small groups.  Questions to address:  (a) What could they bring to a Peer Learning Accelerator?  (b) What would they want to get?

10 Minutes - Wind down, determine specific action steps for individual groups to move forward with (e.g. a Peeragogy Google+ working group, or a co-created Collaborative Exploration to deepen the themes that have been raised in the workshop)

References

Corneli and Danoff, Paragogy, in CEUR Workshop Proceedings (ISSN 1613-0073), July 2011 Vol-739 http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-739/

Corneli and Mikroyannidis, Personalised Peer-Supported Learning: The Peer-to-Peer Learning Environment (P2PLE), Digital Education Review, Volume 20. http://greav.ub.edu/der/index.php/der/article/view/188/330

Corneli, Paragogical Praxis, Published in E-Learning and Digital Media (ISSN 2042-7530), Volume 9, Number 3, 2012 http://www.wwwords.co.uk/elea/content/pdfs/9/issue9_3.asp

Rheingold et al., The Peeragogy Handbook, available through http://peeragogy.org

Corneli, Danoff, Keune, Lyons, Peeragogy in Action, in The Open Book, The Finnish Institute, London, 2013, ISBN: 978-0-9570776-3-8 http://theopenbook.org.uk

[paragogy-blog]

Principle 2 in Different Words

Here we are concerned both with efforts to “learn how to learn”, and  efforts to learn how to support others in their learning efforts[1].  Further, while it is a good idea for any organization to learn its business well[2], learning about learning is especially vital for those in the learning business. In peer learning, that is all of us.

Photo is "2nd Chance" by Matthew Skirving. Dedicated by the photographer to the Public Domain.

Notes

[1] Cheren, M. E (1987). Learning management: emerging directions for learning how to learn in the workplace.

[2] Lei, D.; M. A Hitt, R. Bettis (1996). "Dynamic core competences through meta-learning and strategic context". Journal of management 22 (4): 549.

[paragogy-blog]

Learning as Adaptation

Again, if learning is the desired outcome -- not just for the individual, but socially (e.g. learning how we're going to deal with climate change), then "learning" becomes an important economic good, almost a new "currency" for society. A lot of people use the market as a measure: successful businesses make money, others fail. In this context, the "fictional" currency of money for the "real" currency of learning and adaptation.

[paragogy-blog]

Sylvanshine

Early on in "The Pale King", Sylvanshine, a high-level assistant within the IRS, is sitting on a plane we are treated to his stream-of-consciousness as he goes from fact-to-unrelated-fact (we later discover he is a fact psychic) spending a lot of time saying how much difficulty he has passing the CPA and the amusement that gives his colleagues. Succinctly, the narrator confides “What you pay attention to is the whole ball game in the CPA and in life.”

That said, in my summer course on Managerial Accounting I got a D and am headed on the same track this term with Financial Accounting. Why is it that I am loathe to do the work?  Part of it is a lack of consequence for doing badly.

[paragogy-blog]

Ethnomethodology

"...members of society must have some shared methods that they use to mutually construct the meaningful orderliness of social situations" (Rawls/Garfinkel: 2002:6).

[paragogy-blog]

Academic Peer Review

For academic writing it tends to be good form to say up front "This is the significant and novel contribution of my paper (...) and here is why it is significant and novel (...)." This makes it easier for the reviewers to function as good "alpha testers" since they can focus on the novel aspects and decide for themselves how significant they really are, or focus on the significant aspects and decide how novel they really are.

[paragogy-blog]

Trial by fire

The way I learned how to teach was trial by fire. I regularly took notes while teaching in Japan, but it wasn't till the next year in China that I made a post-class ritual of answering 3 questions: What did I do well? What could I have done better? and What did I learn?

That method was lifted from a article my father found about "Trading Journals" suggesting financial traders should keep a daily journal including those questions above. And that if they didn't have time to review that journal at the end of the week, they didn't have time to be a good trader.