update

It’s been a while.

My report for assessment has been submitted and I expected to put this to one side for a while. Because of the questionaire data, I posted the link to ultrastudents and this had two effects. One student wanted to be anonymised, so I converted from opt-out to opt-in, and Nancy White wrote to me wanting to blog my report saying “Andy, this report is a GREAT read! Is it ok to share this URL publically? I’d like to blog it.”

So my plan to write a seperate findings report and post it to onfac and comprac as part of my ILM2 got kind of pre-empted except that it didn’t happen yet. I decided that didn’t matter but now it’s a bit of a mess.

Anyway, I posted the link to the Ultraversity Firstclass community as well, for what its worth, and nobody is interested there, so it’s back to plan A, I suppose.

When I get back from holiday I’ll write an “Independent Learning Module” plan for writing up the findings and taking it further. The expected Learning Outcomes will have to be unspecified in oreder to allow for the unexpected.

See more progress on: SMART10 - publish

gherkin entrance 

pelican

pelican, originally uploaded by Andyrob.

SMART10 - problems of success?

Problems of success?

The introduction of the wiki has gone much better than I’d dared to hope. There’s been no resistance whatsoever, no complaints, misunderstandings or anything negative at all really. The revised introduction method ran smoothly, there’s a steady flow of useful edits being made and now the COP members are talking amongst themselves about how to make best use of it, what to do with innaccurate information, how to identify themselves there. In other words they have comfortably adopted the space as their own, which is exactly the intention. So I can now take on the role less as facilitator and more as an ordinary contributer whilst also making observations about the relationship between wiki and COP.

So that’s a very nice situation to be in, for once. What do I do with it?

Help! I don’t have any problems to reflect on!

Going back to Bob Dick’s hotseat, he said of my early proposal – “I hope you find some way of publishing the eventual outcomes. I think many people will be interested in your experience.” So now I am starting to think about how I can publish my little success story so that I can pass on the positive lessons learned and perhaps help others to adapt some of the findings to their own situation if it has any parallels.

I’m not sure that the assessment product is going to be the best vehicle to do this with, although the intention of the AE tool is probably that it should enable publication of findings. It occurs to me that meeting the assessment criteria and publishing clear findings are two very different writing tasks, although there should be some overlap. Is there any previous experience of undergraduate research publication?

See more progress on: SMART10 - publish

almost silent

When I switch over from the PC to the Mac mini I really notice the quiet. One of my goals is to make decent quality home recordings of my music and I think I’ll be able to use the MAC and garageband software to do it without going to all the trouble of having a laptop connected to a file server in another rooom or anything so expensive as that.

See more progress on: get a Mac mini

delay

I think I’ll delay the ukcider questionnaire for a few days.

I noticed that there’d been a pause in new edits to the wiki, with nothing for 4 days so I posted a message to the community to give it a little gentle nudge and explain a bit more. This gentle edging in of the new wiki seems to be working fine. Contrary to expectations, there hasn’t been a single objection, criticism or even “but what if..” type question. That’s not to say there won’t be some yet to come…

The nudge produced a flurry of new edits, some just fiddling about but that’s fine. There are now 70 pubs listed in the cider pub guide, which means it’s getting towards the point of becoming a demonstrablly useful resource already and not just a research project.

So I’ll leave things to run along for a few days and get the questionnaire ready for next weekend instead now.

See more progress on: SMART08 - questionnaire

SMART Tasks

I've been using 43things to track SMART tasks in relation to one Ultraversity Module, and it seems to have worked very well for me. It helped me to organise my own plans much better than if I'd simply maintained them offline in a document somewhere, and it allowed comments from collaborators in a way that doesn't happen so easily with other peer review processes.

So that's just one way in which 43things seems to be working well so far.

I wonder what else might be achieved by spelling out goals in here?

See more progress on: use 43things to develop collaborative Ultraversity work

SMART08 - questionnaire

Thinking about getting more data, the idea of a quuestionnaire seems apt. I tried this in year1 report2 with some success, and it doesn't take too much time to effect. Rather than ask for volunteers and then send them individual questionnaires this time I think I would just post it to the mailling list and gather up any public or private responses.

Plan

1) design some questions, draft the email.

eg Had you ever heard of a wiki before?
what do you think of the idea
Have you looked at it - if so how many pages?
have you made an edit yet?
if not yet - do you think you would ever edit it to make a correction or add some useful information perhaps?
Any suggestions
etc

2) Peer review, or prototype to make sure it makes sense.
3) choose a date - around March 1st.

The timing needs to allow for a fair number of people to have already looked at the wiki, but allow enough time to wait for responses and consider them in time for module due date.

4) Collect data and consider what it means


The Questionnaire will not be merely collecting data, but actively publicising and explaining the wiki, thus adding to the "Action" not just the enquiry.

See more progress on: SMART08 - questionnaire

SMART07 plan

Update the old site so that it shows a nice looking prominent link to the wiki from the main page, ( duplicated on other pages - so library item ) using the 4 pens graphic I think.

Listing pages can be left as they are with an explanation that content is now being developed on the wiki. The old pages remain as a historical document to show what the wiki grew from, and as search engine fodder. By doing this there's no need to revise the old Flash navigation bar for now, so saving time to concentrate on Action Enquiry.

SMART? Yes by Tuesday, I can do it when avoiding SMART06 :-)

The website gets a lot of hits from people with relevant search strings so there will be some peoeple who arrive by this route o the wiki. Eventually some might stay, set up usernames and interact without ever bothering to join the mailing list. So then we will have two slightly different centres of gravity, or possibly even two communities - which might be investigated in a future project.

See more progress on: SMART07 - update old site

SMART05.2 - revised plan

5.2.1) Review the wiki after considering Evan's views, consolidating pages, working on content and form. Make sure there are 3 good quality pages to show.

5.2.2) Offer to make one "user" page.

5.2.3) Start referring to the wiki and asking for opinions in the cop.

By Wednesday.

See more progress on: SMART05 - plan the next phase

SMART06 - write the Literature Review

I have three types of literature:

* ACTION ENQUIRY theory - types of AE - I'm using 1st person and collaborative action research.
* COPs Theory - blog entry pending
* Wiki theory - from Ward Cunningham to Wikipedia and onwards

try to find more linking 2 and 3.

using Furl to catalogue references

Specific:
write 300 words on each subtype, 1000 total.
Timed:
must be done by half way through half term.
Relevant
see discussion on Gina's blog
achievable
yes but....
Realistic
Depends if other things take priority. It may be more important to push on with writing encouragment and explanations for the wiki community at that time.
Measurable
Yes, when it's done there'll be a link to the lit review from my coursework site.

Hey! that's not SMART it's STRARM !?!

See more progress on: SMART06 Write a literature review for the action enquiry

SMART06

I have three types of literature:

* ACTION ENQUIRY theory - types of AE - I'm using 1st person and collaborative action research.
* COPs Theory - blog entry pending
* Wiki theory - from Ward Cunningham to Wikipedia and onwards

try to find more linking 2 and 3.

using Furl to catalogue references

See more progress on: Write my literature review for my action enquiry

ultraversity teams collaboration

This goal was created so that we can learn better how the concept of "teams" and shared goals works withing 43things and to produce an RSS feed of 43things activity by Ultraversity people. So let's see how far we can push it :-)

Feel free to invite more individuals to the same goal, I think there may well be some people who will appreciate being introduced to this useful.

See more progress on: use 43things to develop collaborative Ultraversity work

Change of plan

One of the features of Action Research is flexibility, because we are dealing with real living situations and people which cannot be frozen, re-run or predicted. So plans are not set in stone, they can be amended as events unfold, and that's what happened just now.

The plan was to draft an initial explanatory message, deliberate upon it for a while, and then post it to the community. Instead what has happened is that the topic has arisen naturally in others' conversations which suggested to me that the time to begin explaining what i am doing is straight away. It just means doing some of the plan in a different order, that's all.

So here's a copy of my messages which effectively initiate the enquiry into the effect of bringing a wiki to an existing COP.

1)

I've been thinking about the possibilities for collating this kind of information (and more) together as a group quite a lot recently, and I think I've worked out how best to do it. I'll explain more about it when I'm ready in a few days time but if anybody feels they'd like to get involved in helping to steer a project for getting the ukcider world-editable reference website underway, then do please contact me.

Andy


2)

Hi John,

You asked what help am I looking for?
As I said I shall explain better in a couple of days time but the kind of help I am probably looking for is a small team of UK based cider enthusiasts who are interested in discussing the formatting of ukcider related lists and other information, the detailed development of an open group copyright policy, spending a little time watching over areas for which they have personal knowledge/expertise, and most importantly helping to build a growing participation from other members and website vistors. The lucky volunteers will also be co-researchers in a small part of my degree project, for which I have managed to negotiate credit for doing ukcider related work :-)

I don't think I need the specific skills of programmers or traditional website designers, but those of librarians, community facilitators or reference book publishers might be handy. Anybody who has ever joined in on a wiki based community would be most welcome. In fact anybody who has even heard of a wiki and has time for the idea might step forward.

It's all about trying to build the maximum amount of cooperation to build a growing pool of useful and up-to-date information for the good of the cause. I believe that, for real cider and perry, this group is best placed to pull together the biggest range of sources and make this a reality.

All of this could be discussed right here on the list, and maybe it should. On the other hand it might swamp the lowish volume friendly and directly relevant discussions which we tend to have here, if the ukcider list is suddenly inundated with posts about the structure, classification and formatting of lists. So what does the group think about that?

Andy


So now of course I am anxious to see what sort of response (if any) I get.


So in this critical stage I am acting upon my plan, but also interacting intuitively, reaching out for collaborators and collecting data all at the same time.

See more progress on: SMART05 - plan the next phase

Queensland

Wonderful country, I stayed on an uninhabited island, snorkled with reef fish, shot yabbis, saw platypusses, climbed a tropical rainforest mountain and drove thousands of miles on deserted one track roads. Good job it was winter.

See more progress on: Visit Australia

UKC

I worked at University of Kent, Canterbury for a few years, doing administrative systems analysis/programming. It was a nice job, and I quite liked being situated on the University campus with access to the library, college facilities and plenty of nature in the surounding woods and walks.

See more progress on: work at a college or university

Phases

Phase 1 was a "1st person action enquiry" which involved preparing the required technology and investigating SMART tasks with 43things.

Since it was successful, I now know that I should be able to proceed with Phase 2, which attempts to answer questions about ommunity members attitude to the idea of building up common resources and knowledge on the Wiki.

Phase ONE needed to be very flexible and barely planned, since it was an exploration into the unknown for me. Phase TWO I think, needs to be more carefully planned if it is to produce valid results as part of the Action Research process.

So the next task is to tidy up after Phase 1 -

* fully transfer out from the old host
* check permissions on the config diirectory, tidy up /wiki
* minimal wiki skinning

And then

* Plan Phase two

planning phase two will involve

* seeding the Wiki with an illustrative initial structure
* drafting an initial message which broaches the project to the community (show this to peers)
* thinking about data collection
* identify non-members who could also be contacted - DM, OhV
* deciding on a few definite goals, research questions
* identifying more possible SMART tasks for phase two

so , quite a big task altogether. I shall give myself until Saturday 5th Jan to complete this planning cycle, and then launch the main part.

See more progress on: SMART05 - plan the next phase

Albert Hall

I have dozens of the cassettes, bought from asian music shops in East London, but now I listen to the music through last.fm which is the best radio station ever since it plays roughly what I tell it to!

I went to two Nusrat concerts in London, one was at Wembley town hall and the other at the Albert Hall. Both excellent.

He's dead now, of course.

See more progress on: listen to more Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

getting closer

I spent 2 or 3 hours working intensively on Sunday morning, completing SMART03 and then tackling the next steps towards getting the wiki up and running on the new host.

* I saved the account details in gmail and private furl.
* I set up a new ftp connection in Dreamweaver.
* uploaded all the mediaWiki subdirectories and files to the new host.
* logged in to the dc-hosting control panel
* experimented with the file manager therein. This is a tricky tool, when choosing a file from the directory tree-structure on the left it doesn't always seem to tally with the one pointed to by the control panel ( add read/write/exe permissions etc ) on the right. It took many attempts to make the /config directory writable.

*But once I succeeded, the php script which configures the wiki did actually start to run.

That was a breakthrough.

The script then demanded answers to questions about the mySQL database

it took several attempts to even find the place for managing this part of the hosting, but once discovered it is easier to recognise another time. I created a database called "wiki" and a user for it, then put these details into the config script. After a few goes, I got it right and the script ran right through, telling me that my wiki is now installed - and I can click ::here:: to start using it.

Another breakthrough, even if clicking there does only result in an error message from the browser - "ukcider.co.uk not found".

Since then I have wondered whether it's todo with the delay in DNS transference, although that doesn't make total sense it's the next thing to rule out. So tomnorrow will tell. If that's not it, then I have to look at the database creation, config parameters and file permissions again, uninstall and re-install everything and try again looking out for references to the domain which may be absolute instead of relative or something like that.

So I was disappointed that I didn't get it working today, but I suppose I have made quite a lot of progress really.

See more progress on: SMART04 - install MediaWiki at dc-hosting

technical support

I managed to run ahead of myself a little, so the first entry is about what I have already done rather than defining the task.

I had a useful discussion with frankie over some fine belgian beers on saturday night, and learned some important concepts. For instance, I now understand that the wiki pages are not held as generated html files at all, but as data or tables within the MySQL database. The wiki installation script needs to be pointed at that database.

The MySQL database server is a seperate entity from the Apache web server. I can create more than one MySQL database, and also create users of them. This somehow ties in with the wiki users

If you order a big bottle of champagne style brut beer, make them get the glasses ready before they open the bottle.

See more progress on: SMART04 - install MediaWiki at dc-hosting