Welcome to Week #2

Hello Everyone and Happy Monday!

Welcome to Week #2 of our LRNT 521 course! This week begins our formal work together after the Virtual Symposium, so I wanted to provide some information to help us build a shared understanding of the course and the activities we will engage in over the next few weeks.

No doubt you have already been exploring our course WordPress site during Week #1 while attending the Virtual Symposium, but I wanted to post here to get us started and make sure that you could find where the Instructor Posts appear on our course site. You will also find a copy of this message (and all weekly messages) in the LRNT 521 Moodle Companion Shell News Bulletin forum and they will be emailed to your RRU email.

Course Blogs: Throughout the course I will be posting news as well as provocations for us to discuss framed around our readings on our course blog. You can add a comment to reply to the course blog by scrolling down to the bottom of the page for each of the course units and engaging in the conversation. You may also choose to share a link to your own blog site where you may have a post that speaks to an aspect of what we are discussing as well.

I have been enjoying reading through some of the initial personal blog posts and reflections that have been posted and will comment on all over the next few days as you have a chance to get your personal Wordpress blogs set up. Throughout the remainder of our time together, I will monitor the blogs and occasionally post comments where I see an opportunity to add to the conversation. I encourage everyone to likewise read and comment on each others' posts as appropriate to develop our learning community and especially to complete the requirements of the learning activities.

Getting Oriented

1. Your first stop as you get oriented to the course should be the Schedule. As mentioned in the Link Closing session, you will want to review the schedule and map the due dates and activities against your work and personal calendars and commitments, ensuring that you have created time to do the work prior to the deadline. Past students have commented on the need to build in time for doing the work as well as completing an edit and revision cycle on your writing prior to submitting.

2. If you have not yet had the opportunity, check out the Course Overview video, where Dr. Elizabeth Childs explains how the course is set up and shows you what is in each area. The navigation and structure of the course sites are consistent throughout the program so learning how to navigate the course site will be helpful.

First Synchronous Session

Tomorrow, Tue, Apr 16, at 5:30 pm PT is our initial synchronous session. All of our sessions are at the same link, found in the Zoom Section of the Moodle site - just click the large START MEETING button. We will spend the first 30-40 minutes reviewing the course schedule, assignments, etc. to ensure a shared understanding of expectations. At about 6 pm, our team coach, Julia Szucs, will join us to provide additional information of the team coaching function and the team agreement activity. Please have a look in Moodle to find your team/group designation.

Course Unit #2

Over the next two weeks we will be spending time exploring and examining the concept of digital identity and presence. The Unit 2 readings (see note below) attempt to provide you with a sense of considerations and thought provocations as you continue to plot and plan your own digital presence for the duration of your MA program and beyond. One of the important skills we seek to develop in LRNT 521 and throughout the MALAT program is critical reading and evaluation of the literature in our field. One method that I have found effective in achieving this goal is to read actively, taking notes as I go, and especially writing down any questions I might have about the material and my initial reactions/answers/disagreements.

While you will certainly have many questions based on your own analysis and experience, here are three general question types that might be usefully applied to any of the readings:

• What is your initial reaction to the author's ideas or positions regarding digital identity and presence? Do you find them appealing, reasonable, difficult to support, counter-intuitive, etc.? What are the reasons for your initial reaction? How will these ideas shape your own views and approach to the topic?
• Why are we reading this article? Why is it important for us to consider these ideas? How might these ideas impact you as both a MALAT student and as a learning professional?
• Some of the readings are now a few years old. What has changed since each paper was written? Are the issues and positions described more or less relevant or useful than when they were originally published? What might we learn from how things have changed and how results have differed from earlier expectations?

After you have worked your way through the Unit 2 readings, Activity 2 invites you to map your use of digital technologies as it pertains to the resident-visitor typology and share this map on your blog.

Unit 2 Activity 3 is the beginning of Assignment 1 in our course, which runs over the length of the course and has the final deliverable due at the end of the course. However, embedded in Activity 3 are some tasks (Item 2 – the plan and Item 3 – peer feedback on the plan) that are to be done over the course of the next two weeks as part of Unit 2. If you navigate off the Schedule tab you can see all the deadlines and tasks associated with the course.

I also wanted to remind you about the Feedly aggregator. It will help you consolidate everyone’s blogs so that you can scan them and see where the conversations are happening. In addition, you can always see the top posts from student blogs on our course site under Blogs, Student posts but Feedly does a nice job of putting it all in one scrolling space, so it is something to consider. Ken Jeffery’s session from the MALAT virtual symposium can help you get started with both setting up your Wordpress blog and Feedly aggregator, so be sure to watch as you get everything set up this week. Let me know if you run into any challenges and I will make sure to get any needed support resources in place.

Please let me know if there are any questions you would like to address at tomorrow's synchronous session. I will record and post this session for any who are unable to attend.

Have a great week!

Russ

PS – One last note regarding the Unit 2 readings. Chris noticed (thx!) that the Wordpress and Moodle sites are out of synch. The Moodle site lists three additional readings, so be sure to use that as the official list for now. I will get the Wordpress site updated ASAP.