As a participant, as well as a Netnographer, I felt that the only way I could really approach this task and gain important, reliable information was to be a full participant on the course and attempt everything a normal student would. I watched the first week’s video lectures, did the assignments, and then followed the community guidelines to introduce myself in the forum.
On the content: I found the videos very engaging, I felt I was being spoken directly to by the course tutor, Stewart Friedman. Both the connection between the lecturer and a strong sense of presence was there for me, I remember in IDEL we looked at this but I can’t quite remember the author who discussed it (any ideas fellow EDCers?). The content was also very interesting as the course touches on self-help/improvement, I felt very much part of it and the delivery of content is appealing. One of the first assignments was to describe what you expect to get from the course and ethically I posted that I was taking the course as part of the EDC as well as hoping to improve my leadership skills.
On Social Media presence: I managed to use the tweet archivist to follow ideas posted about the course, and I’ll be making a Storify board to post photos and information I find relevant to the study. I also joined the Facebook group for the course and this is where I will most likely focus my attention in the study in order to investigate the community. I went into the course forum and joined a Spanish speaking group. Interestingly this group went against geographical location and focused on the unifying aspect that is language. There are Spanish speakers from all over the world in this group, as opposed to localized study groups based on geography which was present on the forum.
On my peers: At the moment, there is a lot of positivity and excitement among my peers, I’m not sure if this is due to start of the course or week 1’s assignments. Lots of hope/aspiration about what can be achieved through the study. I just handed in the first community assignment and it will be evaluated by one of my peers, the course has two options an individual track and a community track. I will be engaging more in the Spanish forum and participating on Facebook throughout the week in order to gather more information.