Newbie Wonderings

[Dan Mitchell]

Hi Nathaniel:

I did this with an online Introduction to Music course that I taught up=20=

until about a year age and it worked quite well.

I had a larger class (50-60 students) who were to work in groups of=20
5-6. I set up a central class Manila site that all students joined. We=20=

used this for all materials and activities that involved the whole=20
group.

Then I cloned 10 copies of this site and manually adapted them for use=20=

by small groups of students. Rather than setting up the memberships=20
myself I just told them which groups they were assigned to and then had=20=

them sign themselves up using the join now links on their sites.

Without going into all of the gory details, the course was based on a=20
collaborative learning model. A major assignment was something I called=20=

the "review cycle." I'll describe it so that you can see how the class=20=

and group sites worked together to facilitate this:

1.	Students began by producing individual work on a cycle.
2.	They posted their individual work into the discussion area of =
their
	assigned group, using its group Manila site.
3.	The group members compared, compiled, prioritized, and edited =
the
	individual inputs to come up with a group version of the initial
	work.
4.	The groups then posted this material into the discussion area of =
the
	CLASS manila site. At the same time all of the other groups did =
the
	same thing with their own work.
5.	Individual students did an assignment based on the posted =
materials.
6.	The group members read the class-posted material in the sections =
of
	the site where they had posted, and then developed a group =
response
	to the postings.
7.	Finally, I read all of the final posts and added commentary =
where
	necessary.

There are all kinds of things I could tell you about how the groups=20
made use of the Manila sites and other resources (AIM, email lists,=20
telephone) to do their work.

I did not encounter any significant technical problems, aside from some=20=

initial confusion about how to use the Manila environment.

Dan

On Saturday, January 4, 2003, at 12:18  PM, Nathaniel I. Cordova wrote:

> I will be obtaining Frontier and Manila very soon. The purchase order=20=

> is
> off! : ) But a quick question before the package arrives. I am=20
> interested in
> having my students (about 15 students) work in teams to develop course=20=

> units
> to put on the web. This would be a semester long project that includes
> annotated bibliography of resources, links, etc., commentary, original
> essays by the students, images, etc. Each group would be responsible=20=

> for
> completion of an excellent project on a subject matter covered in=20
> class. I
> envision five groups of three students each.
>
> My question is whether I can do this easily enough with Manila. That=20=

> is, can
> I grant students permission so that each particular team can work on
> developing their site, ultimately having all team sites linked as part=20=

> of a
> comprehensive course site?  Would there be any major difficulties in
> allowing them access to developing their own site? Anybody out there=20=

> already
> doing something similar?

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