Assignments

Key Assessment Dates

It is essential that you submit your work in a timely fashion in this unit of study, so that you are able to maximise the advantages provided to you of feedback and advice, especially for Assignment One, and so that you can proceed successfully through the preparation for, participation in, and reflection on the online conference that is the single central feature of your learning experience. Submission deadlines are strictly enforced unless you apply in time to receive an extension and have appropriate reasons for that request. Remember: you are participating in a real Internet event which has a specific time-frame. This event determines the timing of, and strict requirement for, assignment completion.

Monday 2 April: Online Conference Paper (Assignment 1) is due
Monday 16 April: Online Conference Paper (Assignment 1) returned with feedback for improvement
Monday 23 April: Online Conference Paper (Assignment 1) finalised and uploaded for conference commencement

Friday 18 May: Conference Participation Assessment (Assignment 2) is due
Friday 25 May: Conference Participation Assessment (Assignment 2) returned

Monday 28 May: Review of learning (Assignment 3) is due
Monday 11 June: Review of learning (Assignment 3) is returned

Week 14

--

--

--

Review of learning (A.3) Monday

Week 13

Stage 6: Review what you have learned. Look at the readings and think about how they explain what you are studying. Revisit the Wikipedia entry for virtual communities and use that as a focus to see how much you have learned


Discussion of getting the final review completed: how to; what; and does Wikipedia get it right?


Does Wikipedia get it right? Focusing on your learning review and reflections on the unit.


Participation returned Friday

Week 12

Conclusion and review of learning (weeks 12/13)
In this final stage, you start to turn away from collective work, collaborating, sharing and discussing, and think about what you, individually, have learned. Using some selected reading material on broader themes and ideas relating to communities and networks, you will work specifically on your own Review of learning which is due on Monday of Week 14. (20 hours)


Stage 6: Review what you have learned. Look at the readings and think about how they explain what you are studying. Revisit the Wikipedia entry for virtual communities and use that as a focus to see how much you have learned (also week 13)


Move to looking at the readings for the final stage - read and comment as they relate to your learning review.


Questions to assist your learning review, based on the readings.


Participation Assessment (A.2) Friday

Week 11

Stage 5: Select papers from other students to read that interest you; learn from them Comment constructively on others' papers and add what you can to everyone's knowledge. Reply to comments about your own papers. Complete a self assessment of participation

Make contributions to the conference, not in online discussion forums

No Class - do it online!

Preparation for the final assignment due on Monday Week 14


Reading:

Wellman, Barry (2001).Physical Place & Cyberplace: The Rise of Personalized Networking

I have read a lot over the past two months, but nothing attracted me more than this reading. What fascinates me most about it is that it leaves me with a feeling of loneliness and isolation.

Wellman wrote this essay in 2001. Now, 11 years later things have dramatically changed. But Wellman has predicted a lot of developments rightly.

It never dawned on me that the biggest transition between the landline phone and the mobile phone was not so much that you din't have to connect it to a socket in the wall. Even more important, the mobile phone was geographically disconnected. A landline phone connected communities (households), being located in a geographically identifiable spot. Calling a landline phone you could never be sure who picked it up. A mobile phone is personalised. If someone calls, it is not to connect with a community, it is always about the individual - me. Basically the same thing happens online. Rather than having someone call us, we connect with our online-ID and its many personifications, spread across many Social Networking Services to find out who connected with us. Obviously our hunger for attention is insaturable. We can't get enough of it and the Web is a perfect place to celebrate ourselves.

But until today this never troubled me, until I read the following in the first paragraph of the chapter, "The Rise of Networked Individualism":

Moving around with a mobile phone made me almost completely independent of place. It was I-alone that was reachable where I was: at a house, hotel, office, freeway or mall. Place did not matter, the person did. The person has become the portal.

The situation resembles the experience that can be made online. It doesn't matter where I am or what time it is, I can connect when I want to by means of my online IDs with my tight relations.

But both mobile phone and the Web cannot make up for the physical attention we need as much as intellectual attention.

More and more people spend more time of their life online or with their mobile phone than with real people. Will we sacrifice bodily sensations for the sake of audio-visual personal attention? Is it of higher value to experience a large virtual audience than experiencing taste, smell and tactile sensations in a world we can emerge ourselves in?

Will real life matter anymore when we replace emotional human interaction with artificial replacements? I fear that becoming the portal will result in becoming a device.
---

Week 10

Stage 5: Select papers from other students to read that interest you; learn from them Comment constructively on others' papers and add what you can to everyone's knowledge.  Reply to comments about your own papers. Complete a self assessment of participation (also week 11)


Make contributions to the conference, not in online discussion forums


No Class - do it online!


---

Week 9

 Participating in the conference (weeks 9-11)

These three weeks are the highlight of the study period where you and all your colleagues will participate in the online conference. You will select papers to read which interest you; you will think about how they differ from your own, or make similar points; you will comment on others' papers constructively and add what you can to everyone's knowledge. You will, towards the end, also reply to comments about your own papers. In the last couple of days, you will complete an assessment of your own participation and submit it by Friday of Week 12. (30 hours)

Stage 5: Select papers from other students to read that interest you; learn from them Comment constructively on others' papers and add what you can to everyone's knowledge.  Reply to comments about your own papers. Complete a self assessment of participation (also week 10/11)


Make contributions to the conference, not in online discussion forums


No Class - do it online!


Conference Paper (A.1) Monday