What are the netnographic outcomes of this short investigation? (Note, this should be taken to support the Slides found here.)

In regards to the community it’s a mixed bag. Reportedly there are 33,000+ participating in the course, yet I am only involved with smaller groups. Whenever I search the hashtag on Twitter, rarely do I find links to other meaningful content. I am usually confronted with someone inadvertently advertising the course or saying how much difference this is having on them.

I decided to focus on the experiential and look at smaller communities. At the start of the Total Leadership course I signed up to a Spanish speaking group and we initially began to write to communicate via a Skype chat. Later on we decided to meet up online once a week, in a F2F chat. The group was very much full of business professionals, interested in the content, but also focused on making links with other business people. One thing that defined the group as a community of practice was their definition of certain terms and what they understood by them. As they went along defining their ideas, the began to expand and explore on certain themes they developed their own meaning among the group.  Based on clarifying things that they didn’t understand due to the mode of delivery in L2 they pushed the course into the realm of cMOOC. Some interesting aspects arose from their misunderstandings and the discussion of ideas.

I found the course to be a mix between cMOOC and xMOOC as it pushes the student to interact with peers and self reflect, instead of simply consuming knowledge, whilst my experience in the Spanish speaking group further affirmed these beliefs.  It was an aspect of the course which I am greatly enjoying.

Facebook: to be honest I haven’t had the chance to really dig deep into the Facebook group. I found the Skype and group forum interaction interesting and rewarding. The people I have met on the course so far have been positive and friendly, heaping praise on the content and impact it is having on their lives. There is still a buzz around the course.

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.