MOOC Participation Plan

This is the first time that I'm preparing a Participation Plan for a MOOC.
(related to Activity 0.3 Explore and experiment)

ocTEL Participation plan:

1. What tools to use
Often: G+ community, twitter, share blog in ocTEL reader, ocTEL groups
Once-off or infrequent: twitter participation map, twitter conversations visualised, storify
2. Level of participation: blog after reading and reflection, read and respond to others in groups
3. New communication channels tried:
+ Twitter contributions mapping in ocTEL: finding one person near my location and connecting via the twitter tag.
+ Setup my blog in ocTEL profile and looking at groups and reader features.
+ Interested to try the RSS feeds for linking parts of the reader into my blog
+ May setup Blackboard Social Space or join existing space.

Reason for choices of tools

I'm familiar with G+ and twitter and use them regularly, no extra learning curve there. ocTEL reader is a new beast but seems to be similar to other curation tools that I have used. I'm steering clear of the ocTEL forums at this stage because I'm a bit "discussion board" burnt out. I also want an easy notification mechanisms where I don't have to have extra emails or extra places to click to get regular information.

Relationship forming in open social spaces

Ease of increasing my existing personal learning network (PLN): I already have an established personal learning network in G+ so it is easy for me to add and expand my PLN in that way. I think that a new community will build for this course and that is why I will dip into the ocTEL groups and twitter contributors. I like the self-enrol ocTEL groups. I think this will be important and that we can swap and change groups as the course goes along. One feature of G+ communities is that people join because of a common interests and in my experience this means less spam or useless postings. The other community that I will try and form or join is other colleagues completing this course. This will most likely be completed via Blackboard Social Spaces. Community building and relationship forming is very important for my learning because it suits my learning style and I get a buzz out of collaborating and working with people with the same interests. This level of interest will keep my motivation (or not) during the course.