# Interview with a CSCL Intro follower/lurker


**[![](http://reganmian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/people.png)](http://reganmian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/IMG0130A1.jpg)**

**What is a follower?**

[P2PU](http://p2pu.org) courses have always been entirely transparent,
even without logging in, a visitor would be able to see not only the
course outline and the links to all the freely accessible course
resources (often linked from other websites), but also all the
interactions and discussions between the course members.

On the new P2PU platform, we decided to formally enable people to
"**follow**" courses. This would function similar to Twitter, where you
can follow anyone without needing their permission (different from
Facebook, where friending is reciprocal), and receive their updates.

Thus, when we launched our course called "[Introduction to
Computer-Supported Collaborative
Learning](http://p2pu.org/en/groups/introduction-to-the-field-of-computer-supported-co/content/full-description/)"
on P2PU this spring, we explicitly offered [two different modes of
participation](http://p2pu.org/en/groups/introduction-to-the-field-of-computer-supported-co/content/how-to-participate-in-this-class-2/).
You could
[apply](http://p2pu.org/en/groups/introduction-to-the-field-of-computer-supported-co/sign-up/)
to be a core member, and be expected to do the readings every week, post
on your own blog and participate in the weekly meetings. I have blogged
about the [participation
statistics](http://reganmian.net/blog/2011/06/20/participation-statistics-of-cscl-intro/) of
the core members earlier.

**How did following work in our course?**

However, many people might be interested in the course topic, yet not
have enough time (or inclination) to commit to being an active member.
These people could "follow" the course. People added themselves as
followers throughout the course, and currently we have about 50 people
signed up. We were very curious about their experience of the course.
Our course launched at the same time as the new platform, so it is
natural to assume that some of the followers were just trying out new
functionality. Others might have used it as an internal bookmark,
reminding themselves to go back in the future. Did anyone actually
actively follow along and get something meaningful out of the course?

(Part of the problem with evaluating this, is that the website was under
rapid development, and a lot of new functionality was added as the
course was running. Initially, followers did not receive any e-mail
updates. About mid-ways, they began receiving updates that course
organizers marked as "important" (typically the bi-weekly updates). In
the future, followers will probably have the same choices of e-mail
notifications as course participants, which might significantly change
how they interact with courses they follow).

**Survey of followers**

We had hoped to see our course "amplified" through our followers, with
retweets and blogs about topics they found interesting. There was,
however, very little evidence of this. There was some retweeting and
mentioning in blogs, but this was mainly along existing individual
social networks. Thus, hearing nothing from the followers, it was hard
to guess whether they were getting anything out of the course. So we
decided to design a simple survey (see [[analysis of
cscl-intro\#followers|the questions we asked]]).

We got about 10 answers, which was more than I had hoped for, given that
the followers were by definition not very active (some of them might
even have left the P2PU platform altogether). Some said they had signed
up, but never had time to look, some were planning to go back and review
the material later, and some said they had popped in once in a while,
and gotten a bit out of it. But one person stood out, professing a lot
of enthusiasm, and answering "10", where we asked students to rate how
much they'd learnt from 1-10. I was very intrigued and e-mailed him, to
see if I could ask him some more questions. He gracefully agreed to let
me do a short e-mail interview, and post it here.

This is interesting not only to get a novel perspective on "following",
which is a rather new feature on the P2PU website, but also because the
subject of "lurking" has caused quite a bit of debate in the MOOCosphere
([1](http://connect.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=44245),
[2](http://www.danpontefract.com/?p=659),
[3](http://www.danpontefract.com/?p=671), 4,
[5](http://ilenef.blogspot.com/2010/12/lurkers-as-consumers-vs-producers.html),
[6](http://connect.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=44309),
[7](http://myfirstmooc.blogspot.com/2011/07/am-i-lurker.html) for a
random selection).

One of the things that especially struck me by his answers was how the
concept of "eight weeks" for the course has little meaning to a
follower. I do believe that having a cohort (like [Mike Caulfield talks
about](http://mikecaulfield.com/2009/01/09/rise-of-the-cohort-educational-and-otherwise/))
moving through a set learning trajectory together can be very powerful,
but that doesn't mean that the course materials (the initial ones, and
the generated discussion) is worthless once the course is "over"... And
one of the things I am thinking about right now, is to how to better
present all the great resources that were generated during the course to
new visitors - currently you need to dig around a bit to find the gems.

 

* * * * *

**![](http://reganmian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/IMG0130A2.jpg "IMG0130A")Who
are you? Where do you live, what do you do?**

****My name is [Daniel Marcell Góngora
Flores](http://p2pu.org/en/D.Marcell), I live in [La
Paz](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Paz), Bolivia, I am an Electronics
Engineering student at [Universidad Mayor de San
Andrés](http://www.umsa.bo/).

Currently, I am working on my undergraduate thesis project, a Virtual
Control Systems Laboratory based on the [Furuta
pendulum](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furuta_pendulum) for
experimentation under the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning
approach.

**How did you first hear about P2PU, how long have you been involved,
what has your experience been, have you taken any other courses, etc.**

Since I found MIT’s OpenCourseWare, I started looking for open
educational resources in order to be a competitive student today and a
competitive professional tomorrow.

I remember reading a blog post about a “[School of
Webcraft](https://drumbeat.org/en-US/projects/school-of-webcraft/description/)”
that somehow was related to Mozilla. That was enough for me to look for
more information, and that is how I arrived at the P2PU web site.

I first took a course called “[Algoritmos y estructuras de
datos](http://archive.p2pu.org/general/algority-estructuras-de-datos)”(Algorithms
and Data Structures). I quited after 4 or 5 weeks. Then, I took a course
called “[Getting started with
Scilab](http://p2pu.org/en/groups/getting-started-with-scilab/)”, I did
not quit this time just because I couldn’t find a way to do it. Why I
quit? Despite the course organizers effort, I was not really comfortable
with the teacher-student method and I didn’t have much time to do the
tasks due to work in the first course (there was not a “follower” type
of student at that time), in the second one I felt that I was reading
another Scilab tutorial, nothing new, no activities to encourage
discussion nor active participation.

I was not happy with the courses, but how to organize a course so that
the participants become real participants and not only receivers?

**How did you hear about the CSCL course**

With the arrival of the new P2PU web site, I started browsing the
courses almost every week. One day I found a course called “Introduction
to the field of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning”. At that
time, I didn’t knew anything about CSCL. Nevertheless, it being such an
active course, I decided to follow it.

**What made you interested?**

Once I started reading the course material, I realized that CSCL was
about learning through social interaction. Reading about that simple
idea was such an eye opening experience to me, because I was used to
learning by myself. Thanks to the Open Educational Resources, I was able
to fill the spaces and connect the dots in my head without needing a
teacher neither a partner. Now, it seems there is another way, a very
interesting one.

**Why did you decide to follow the course instead of participating**

So, participating is the way to go. Being an active participant is how I
will learn more. However, there was a problem: my English level. I am
still building my English skills, the language barrier was stopping me
from participating in this course because I was not able to participate
in the chat rooms nor to write weekly blog posts in English, Spanish
being my mother tongue. That’s why I became a peripheral learner.

**What did you expect when you chose to follow the course - what did you
think it meant?**

I did not expect to find the topic of my undergraduate thesis project by
just following the course, but I did (at least in some sense). Given
that this was the first time I “heard” this term, my very first reaction
was to look for [CSCL in
Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-supported_collaborative_learning)
to try to understand what was this about.

**How was your experience of following the course? During the eight
weeks, what was your involvement - what part of the material or
conversation did you look at, how much time did you spend, what was
useful or interesting to you?**

Being a follower, a peripheral learner, to talk about “the eight weeks”
doesn’t make much sense because I am/was free to read the material
(papers, wiki entries, blog posts, chat logs, etc.) at my own pace,
whenever I wanted to. In fact, I’m still reading the material from week
4.

This is important to me because I am a engineering student, and even if
I had read some papers related to education, I don’t have the background
necessary in some cases to understand the material.

I could not say exactly how many hours I spend reading the course
materials. However, the amount of time I spend reading the material is
increasing significantly every week.

That being said, I always find it interesting reading wiki entries
because of the references. Also, I found the blog posts and the chat
logs very valuable because reading those made me feel part of the group,
a group of people hungry for knowledge. I must admit that I’m a little
bit jealous, because for me it’s hard to find people willing to learn
and share their opinions in my “environment”. I think that this is a
direct consequence of the commercialization of education here in
Bolivia. A large number of friends of mine, students and professionals,
think that what really matters is to have a really big CV filled with
“n’importe quoi” instead of looking for opportunities to grow up.
Filling the wallet is their final goal.

To me, the only way to improve education in Bolivia is applying
collaborative learning and using open educational resources. Specially
when the University teachers in particular and the educational
institutions in general are not committed with this important role.