EDTEC 685 PINOT Microblogging Project
Core Standard 5: Interpersonal
Interact effectively with others as peers, subordinates and leaders to accomplish goals.

For this standard I chose my group PINOT (Performance Improvement Non-Training Solutions) Social Network project from EDTEC 685: “Microblogging,” cowritten with Jeffery Scott, Jess Sanders, Ken Leek and Kalani Bright. Links to the relevant documents are in the sidebar.

Context
This artifact was produced as part of Dr. Allison Rossett’s EDTEC 685 class in Fall 2009. The focus of the course is performance improvement strategies for organizations and this assignment was specifically to investigate “Web 2.0” tools such as Twitter and Ning. Our group created a forum on the PINOTNET Ning site called Microblogging and attempted to create a online community with other educational professionals there. My specific responsibilities were to look into the published literature and post what I found to the site. I also was to go “undercover” on Twitter #lrnchat and report my experiences.

Outcome
This artifact is a perfect example of the interpersonal standard in more ways than one. I experienced first hand the challenges of building community both online and with my “real life” team mates.

Challenges and Opportunities
There were many challenging aspects of this project. My partners were all very distinct individuals, with conflicting work schedules, commitments and viewpoints. I am usually very comfortable working with others, and this is one of the reasons I left the online section to meet and work with other students face to face. I don’t regret this decision one moment, and this project highlighted the different skills necessary to build connections online versus in real life.

Our team met as often as we could as a group, and I left those meetings with a greater sense of progress than when we met online. I had a much better awareness of the social balance of the group when we talking in person, especially when it came to negotiating responsibilities between members who may have had their differences. There are many subtle cues of inflection and body language that are just not available to those attending an online session.

Consequently, I found it very difficult to build an online community using the group board system of Ning. Especially at the beginning I felt that all of our work was in a vacuum, and we were the only ones involved in our own forum. Eventually, enough cross posting drove more members to participate in our section, though never as many as we had hoped and worked so hard for.

But nothing would have prepared me for the mental mosh pit of #lrnchat. This online chat happens every Thursday night 8:30-10pm EST / 5:30-7pm PST using the hashtage #lrnchat. One of the nights I participated there were 69 participants, with 671 tweets in 90 minutes, or one every 8 seconds. The top 14 contributors (20% of the group) accounted for 55% of posts, and I could barely read fast enough to keep up. This was a completely new form of human interaction that I had never before experienced, and one that was as fascinating to me as it was overwhelming.

My Contributions
I contributed to both the real life and online communities. I think I was able to provide a sense of balance for my team mates, and occasionally I was the one “brokering” between the differing perspectives. In the online space, and certainly with #lrnchat, it took quite a while before I was comfortable enough to participate with confidence. But in the end I did learn how, and I found the entire project very rewarding.

Lessons Learned
My approach to some of the tools such as Twitter certainly changed as a result of this experience. I had always been suspicious of a medium that imposed a draconian 140 character limit on ideas, but now I realize that this is also it’s strength. #lrnchat convinced me that these tools can really be used for education, that the limits of each individual tweet should not be confused with the power of it’s ability to contribute to an ongoing conversation. The continuing connection with others that this technology enables will play a large role in the future of education.