This week I have mainly been working on producing my ethnographic artefact, and commenting on others. This, combined with a spike in work and family commitments, had meant that I have been online a little less this week, compared with previous weeks.
I started this week by thinking about how best to present my ethnographic data. As the MOOC I was looking at was an introduction to programming using the Python language, I decided to produce my artefact as a computer program. Furthermore, drawing on some of the aspects of digital culture (as covered in the film festival) I decided to present the artefact as a ‘conversation’ between a person and a computer. I tried to make the computer responses ‘human’ (e.g. the computer sees herself as female, gets offended by some of the responses of the person learning about the research). I also lay Radiohead’s ‘paranoid android’ over the top to appeal to the notion of the mash-up (fusion and mixing of media in order to create new artefacts).
Having completed my artefact, I spent a bit of time looking at the artefacts of other students. It was noticeable to see similarities in findings across the MOOCs e.g. Emlyn’s findings that the more interactive elements of the MOOC were less effective compared with the more didactic (tutor led) modes of delivery. Claire’s work on peer-assessment similarly shows how infrastructure (in her case the ‘imposition’ of the English language) serves to shape community interactions and outcomes (e.g. grades).
In short, a very interesting and useful exercise into how communities are formed, and more importantly ‘led’ by the architects of digital spaces.