Colleagues:
My class begins this week. I'm excited about the possibilities for myself and the 18 students enrolled in my class. Below are some comments and questions, for clarification:
1. Thank you to Winnie and Natasha. I like the structure you've provided for group projects. After each of my students have formed a group with students from two other institutions, I'll encourage them to create a HUDDLE WORKSPACE in Ning for the three of them. It allows them to work privately together.
2. From what I'm seeing, we're going to encourage students to create their "blog" entries using the FORUM option in Ning. Within each subheading of the FORUM (i.e. Globalization, Social Justice, Human Rights), each faculty member will create the Discussion in which their students can blog. Am I understanding this correctly? That way students will be able to view students' "blogs" from other institutions and post a response as required.
If this is the case, my only word of caution is to inform our students that "blogging" will take place in the FORUM instead of the option entitled "BLOGS."
3. The syllabus encourages students to interact with students from other institutions, and that this activity will not be graded. I'll encourage my students to do this, then, under the "BLOGS" option, and perhaps the CHAT option. Is this acceptable to everyone?
4. For week 2 on Human Rights, the first link in the readings takes me to a page of background on Indigenous Peoples. I assume this should instead be a link to the UDHR? Please confirm, Rodney.
Best,
Bruce Friesen, Sociology
University of Tampa
________________________________
From: The Partners Project on behalf of Winnie Poster
Sent: Mon 1/17/2011 3:09 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: comments please! draft on setting up project groups
Hi Partners!
Natasha and I have come up with a draft of instructions for students on how to select their topic and their group for the projects. Please look over and tell us your improved ideas, or how to make it work better with your course. Please note:
1. we're proposing smaller groups to make them more flexible and workable for the distance work relationships. Hope that's ok!
2. we set a deadline for choosing groups that we hope is workable for all the different schedules out there. Let us know if it is not convenient.
Comments are appreciated ASAP! We'll try to post this on the website by the end of this week. Also welcome are suggestions of exactly *how* or *what* students should do in their groups once they are formed.....
Thanks, Winnie and Natasha
Instructions for Choosing a Project Topic and Group:
1. Decide on a topic concerning Globalization and Human Rights. We recommend that you start by looking at the topics on your course syllabus and discussing it with your instructor.
a. Choose a general topic of human rights, e.g. ("environmental rights", "children's rights," "labor rights", etc.). This needs to be focused enough to have a common theme, but broad enough that students from different locations can join in with specific examples from their communities. Rights listed on the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights are good examples.
b. Within the general topic, select your specific topic that will reflect your particular research methodology and geographic context. For instance, if you are doing volunteer work at a homeless shelter, your general topic may be "poverty" and your specific topic will be "service learning and observation of homelessness in XX city of XX country." Remember think about both the "local" and "global" about the causes and manifestations of human rights in your community. The overall theme of the course will be global, and you may be directly comparing your topic to that of another country in your group. However, depending upon the group formation, you may have members from the same country, and therefore, the city or state based comparisons will be more important.
c. Get formal approval of your topic from your instructor.
2. Join a group on the website. Go to the Forum Discussion link and look for "Case Study Topics," or "Service Learning Topics".
a. Look to see if you like any of the existing posted general topics. If so, join the group by "replying" to an existing post. Enter your specific / sub topic, and the university and country you are from. In the subject line, mention if you are the "second" or "third" member of the group.
b. If your topic is not listed, create a new group by "replying" with the subject line: "Proposed General Topic: [insert here]". Enter your specific / sub topic, and the university and country you are from.
c. In your post, try to be as specific as you can about what you intend to study, and how you plan to do it.
d. If you want to change groups, send another post with the subject "withdrawing from group"
3. Rules for joining groups!
a. Maximum 3 students per group. Once two others have replied to a given topic, it is closed. You can start a new topic with the exact same heading, however.
b. Maximum 1 representative per university. If sometime has already joined the group from your school, you may not join. However, you are welcome to start a new group post with the same topic.
c. Recommendation (but not requirement): try to pick a group that has some international diversity. It may not be possible for every group to have members from different countries, but let's try. When choosing your group, see if your country is already represented, and if so, pick a different one.
d. Deadline is February 11. If you are having trouble finding or joining a group by February 11, send a reply post to the "Please Assign Me a Group" thread. If your group is not filled by that date, we will try to fill it for you. If we cannot, we may be assigning you a new group.
Faculty: If you have special instructions or criteria for your students about what kind of topic or project group they join, please give them in class. You can also monitor what groups they are joining on your own, and if you would prefer they join a different group, instruct them to "withdraw" and rejoin another.
_______________________________________
Dr. Winifred R. Poster
Brown School of Social Work
Washington University
Campus Box 1196
One Brookings Drive
St. Louis, MO 63130
www.winifredposter.com
[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
On Jan 17, 2011, at 10:24 AM, ??????? ??????? wrote:
Hello, Winnie,
did you get my message? Shall we continue the discussion?
I have couple of concerns - the main is that different universities choose various forms of participation in our joint course. At least one (Mason) will not make a joint project an obligatory part for Moson university' course. I guess we should know in advance who is in and who is not to be able to group people (((
cheers,
Natasha
Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:42:40 +0000 ?????? ?? Winnie Poster <[log in to unmask]>:
Hi Natasha,
(love your name, by the way, I chose this name for my daughter!)
Shall we start working on the projects? Here are my thoughts:
1. I love the idea of starting with topics. Let's do that.
2. I'm thinking we should reduce the group size -- 6 is way too big to coordinate across countries, much less in one room! I say three -- all from different universities.
3. How about we let the students try to organize themselves at first? We could open a discussion forum, and students could post a general topic theme. Then interested students from other universities could "reply" if they want to join. It would be much easier for students to arrange this on their own. Anyone who doesn't have a group can reply to a "please assign me to a group" discussion forum.
4. Then, for the groups that don't find enough partners, we could take over and fill in. We could set an overall deadline, like Friday Feb 11 (which looks like a time when all the course would have started). Then you and I could distribute the unassigned people into existing incomplete groups, or put them into new groups.
What do you think????
cheers,
Winnie
_______________________________________
Dr. Winifred R. Poster
Brown School of Social Work
Washington University
Campus Box 1196
One Brookings Drive
St. Louis, MO 63130
www.winifredposter.com <http://www.winifredposter.com/>
[log in to unmask]
Begin forwarded message:
From: ??????? ??????? <[log in to unmask]>
Date: January 8, 2011 4:48:58 AM CST
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Questions, Process, and Getting Started
Reply-To: The Partners Project <[log in to unmask]>
hello, everyone,
thinking about how we are going to group students:
I would say we should start from students naming the topics of interest. Then when each faculty has a list (with three students supporting each topic) we can make the join list on the website to who is interested in what and how we can group them.
As long as HSE is making a joint course with the Mason University I presume some our goroups will be joint, but I would not want to limit the students and would let them choose the topic first
What do you think about this?
Natasha
Fri, 7 Jan 2011 17:33:42 +0000 ?????? ?? Rodney Coates <[log in to unmask]>:
Thanks Winifred and Bridget: The questions you raise are important. Below I
offer some suggestions, but also ask that others chime in. The questions:
More questions for the group: 1. About the discussions / blogs:
Thanks Bridget, I'm totally with you! My class will also be discussing:
environment; food and water; sexual / GLBT rights; racial apartheid; human
rights activism. Rodney: should we just add new "Discussion" groups for each
of these topics? And how about adding discussions for the wonderful topics
that are in the syllabus (under "blog posts"): defining globalization, social
justice, and human rights. (Maybe you've already started to do this?) Yes, I
am setting up Discussions (under Forums) for each of these as categories.
Please go to the Forums tab on our NING page, then look to the right of the
window that opens up, you will see a pull down tab for Discussions, and
Categories. Pull down tab for Categories. There you will see each of the
topics as identified as Blogs on our Syllabus. I have only made Categories
for the first set of topics for our syllabus (i.e. Globalization, Social
Justice and Human rights). Under each Category, please create a discussion
link for your institution. I have already created one for Miami Students.
This will allow us to track discussions by content area and by Institution.
Students can then post responses to a specific discussion area and specific
institution. This allows also for accountability. 2. As for the student
accountability issue, it would be great if there was some feature on Ning that
would let faculty see all the posts for a given student. If that's not
possible, I was thinking I might ask my students to print out their posts and
comments each week and turn them in. Yes, you can see the threads, but this
may be a bit tedious. There is no central way to access all students threads,
but you can click on the student members name and get a listing of all their
postings (I am not sure if this requires administrator's privileges, if so,
let me know and I will designate this for each Partner.)
3. Can I belabor the point about organizing the projects some more? (Sorry
to be a pest, but I'm not getting how this will work, and my course starts
soon so I need to be able to explain it to my students!) Rodney, how should
we assign students to teams? Is this something you wanted to do yourself? Or
should we ask for a volunteer? It seems like this is a task that needs to be
centralized somehow. If we are doing this top-down approach, can I suggest
that we start it soon? This is critical. No I did not want to do this
myself. I suggest that we ask for a volunteer to make sure that it gets
done. We can use the levels of Participation spread sheet to first identify
faculty. Then we can set up a group for each set -case studies and service
learning which includes each set of Partners. Then they can choose a
coordinator or a process which will streamline this process. Or, are
faculty already linking up with other schools on their own? I couldn't tell
if this was going on in the comments .... I'm thinking that given the
extreme fluidity of this context (varying start and stop dates for courses,
uncertain final enrollments for courses, etc.), it might make more sense to
set up groups online, and let students join as they become members. For
instance, we could start a thread for "case study projects" and students can
propose a topic -- as soon as two other students join, the group would be on
its way. Better ideas welcome!!!! Yes..see above. 4. What is the
"huddle workspace" on the webpage?
Huddle workspace on the webpage allows you to upload documents that can be
shared with other members as you choose. I think that each partner can set up
such a workspace, but this is something I just discovered, and am not sure how
much total space we can have. Right now it is 100 megs. I think Bridget set
up one for her institution, and it has another 100 mgs. Check it out, it is
really cool. It's like a digital drop box. I imagine students can use this,
or other online sites (like google docs) to help organize their group
projects.
winnie
thanks
Rodney c..
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