Welcome to my new blog! I have been avoiding writing for a while now, focusing on using my limited time and problematic wrists to better use. However, if with moving to this new site, l figured that it was high time to start again. I will give a quick recap to bring everyone up to speed.

Over the past year or so, Ire been working on Egg, an open source social software package. We've been using it to support a number of classes offered at CGU. It has proved to be a fairly effective classroom support tool. Now, however, we need to take it several steps beyond the existing well-trodden CMS territory. Improving the effectiveness of our existing tools is valuable, but getting students to voluntarily use a system is the ultimate proof of its effectiveness. How can we generate real community and value to individual students?

Two research avenues are open to my group. The first is intellectual community, and the second is peer learning. The universities' president is quite interested in the first (and a fellow labmate, Peter, is already working on this). There has been plenty of research showing that community is important in education and pedagogy. However, I more interested in the second.

So much of educational software is built with the assumption that learning is a solitary activity. If the option to share work is even built in, it is generally hidden deep in the system's setting, and definitely is not the default. Building a system that supports peer learning, recognizing its primacy to the educational experience, could encourage both students and teachers to learn from each other. Peer learning is not a new concept, and many researchers have been working in this area before. When I think that my contribution will be is in the importance of encouraging ownership in peer-to-peer systems. Furthermore, I believe that encouraging ownership, giving students a sense of control over their online identity and making their work public by default, could be a valuable research contribution.

I've been working on this angle for several years now, but am now finally beginning to make some headway.  I have a JISE paper under review at the moment that shows the importance of ownership and community in satisfaction.  It also shows that students perceive Elgg as more of a social system than Blackboard, which is what I'd expect given their different design.

I am currently working on getting my dissertation proposal approved.  I'll post a short version here soon.