Darcey's Blog

        This week I have been thinking about issues of online learning community. Because I have never thought about it, nor participated one that is outside the university range, plus the fact that I am still technologically new to online community, my thoughts were random and rudimentary. Therefore, I selected some articles to read, and got some ideas interesting to me (hopefully interesting to you, too).        One of the articles is Creating and Sustaining Online Learning Communities: Designing for Transformative Learning. This article addresses the environmental factors for designing an online learning community: social presence, authentic learning and interdependancy. The three factors are  intricately linked and take on different levels of importance in different phases of learning and community development.       The following is a link to the article. If you are interested, you can either downloaded at the university library or get access to it in a way you prefer.       

               When it comes to creating and sustaining online learning community, leadership is one important element to consider.   Leadership is a process of mobilizing people to achieve common goals. Within its core, leadership in the digital space is no difference from that in face-to-face environment. However, there is one major difference: in digital space, many social structures and network presented in the physical environment are absent, and therefore digital leadership usually takes the form of opinion leaders ( Endersby, Phelps, & Jenkins , 2017). Of course, this does not mean that digital leaders cannot call on people to act, because of technology and social media, digital leaders are empowered and thus more likely to reach wider. This requires certain quality for digital leaders. Digital leaders should have the knowledge and skills to reach, via social media platforms, and enlist people effectively to act for a shared task or goal. That means, digital leasers should

      For the last few days I have been reflecting on lurking and lurker. I laughed at myself when I realized that I sometimes have a double standard for lurking: when I was new to a community, either online or face-to-face, I felt the need to be a lurker: I could learn what is expected, what the norm was, what proper behaviors were, how I was expected to interact with others...(Read Wikipedia for benefits of Lurker ). Whereas, when I was an active participant or a leader of a community, I often urged the lurkers to play a more active role (Read Wikipedia for  costs of Lurker ). It was not a good practice holding double standards, so I am now looking for ways of motivating both myself and others.        If you know that I am an educational psychology major, you can predict that I will use a theory.  Sure, and I will use my favorite theory for motivation-- Self-Determination Theory .  The theory, also known as SDT, presents a broad framework for the study of human motivation and person

        I have been wondering what Web 2. 0 is since the day I enrolled in the course of EME 6414. Well, on and off.         The most interesting thing for having a new course here in the US is what I do during the first week. Mostly nothing, for any course. I just get the gist, and then let my mind wonder where it wants to go, or where it i s led by the course introduction, the professor's presentation, or any triggers for my reminiscences. It is the most interesting week (not necessarily the most productive, in some sense), because I enjoy the initial reflection triggered just by a name, a term, or a vague idea. I hope I could have written down all my thoughts for the last four years, like I ma doing now.        I am now a mid-aged woman, knowing about  little and  using little Web 2.0 tools, not eager to know a lot, nervous to use the tools, feeling overwhelmed with any new technology.        I had dreams, when I was younger. I had a best friend, who I hung out wit