Theme+Sign+Up+Agreement


 * 186.764 **

__ Student-led Seminar Theme Sign Up (agreement) __ The purpose of this Theme Sign Up agreement is to help ensure that each group has a successful collaborative working experience in undertaking the student-led seminar assignment.

Once your group membership is confirmed early, a private online working space for each group will be set up, and your first key task as a group is to complete and agree this agreement. The contract should then be posted to your group discussion by the end of Sunday the 13th of June for your tutor to review. Your group chairperson should post the final agreement to the group’s discussion area.

After having read and discussed the group assignment specification, please complete all sections of the Learning agreement (section 8 is optional)

Group 3: Nourah, Gabi, Wendy, Suzanne

Group tutor: Maggie


 * 1. Group chairperson: ** Gabrielle Bahler


 * 2 **** . Chosen theme ** .Please describe below the general theme for your seminar. This should include a title, an abstract of no more than 250 words, and a list of readings and/or online resources you will use.


 * We are scheduled to deliver on during week 17, which is Aug 9 to 13.This is Module Four: Global Educational Challenges and E-learning.The readings related to this Module overall are readings 16 to 22.
 * Students will be expected to read prescribed readings 16 and 17. Seminar activities will require and encourage additional reading from their own research.
 * The overall theme of our seminar is culture and marketing, and the influence of these on the global uptake of ICT in education. These are both fantastic meaty topics, with a lot of literature available online. We did not want to choose any topics which potentially related to any of our individual Wiki assessment topics.

The overall theme of our seminar is culture and marketing, and the influence of these factors on the global uptake of ICT in education.
 * ABSTRACT**

Firstly we will look at what drives successful marketisation of education by looking not only through the eyes of the “student as customer”, but by examining factors that impact on the marketing of an educational organization such as massification, expansion and diversification, heterogeneity, customer satisfaction and customer service. We will contrast and compare likeness and difference between marketing in the business world and marketing in education. We will examine the feasibility of applying a “customer” label to what we in education know as the student. Does the application of such a label result in the student becoming faceless to us as educators, us becoming too businesslike therefore resulting in us forgetting about learner specific factors such as pastoral care, learning styles, culture and diversity? To what extent does ICT tools and platforms take pedagogy and student needs into consideration, or not (as the case may be). This topic is very diverse, and can be approached from a number of angles, depending on the chosen context of the forum participant.

We will then take the marketing end point above, culture and diversity, and examine the “cultural capital” that we as local and global individuals, each coming from a background rich in culture and diversity bring to educational organizations. We will focus on the enhancement, development, fostering, recruitment of international students from the perspective of the student, the staff and the organization itself. During our seminar our students will examine through Reading 17 the emergence and application of “International Reflections”, a daily reflection journal designed to assist educators in thinking more deeply about their interactions and practice with international students from many cultures and countries. How does cultural factors affect the uptake of ICT. Are there identifiable global cultural differences in the use of ICT, for example in the use if sms messaging versus LMS platforms such as moodle. What does culture bring to educational understanding. Yet again, this is another very borad topic which we hope will be explored and teased out by forum participants.


 * 3. Chosen format. ** Please indicate below the format of the seminar that you will run online (e.g. online debate, case study etc). Briefly explain how this format will generate interest on the part of the participants.

We have chosen two topics to complement Module Four ' Global Educational Challenges and E-learning'. These are: Seminar framework - Thought Discussion AND/OR Research Activity Seminar framework - Wiki AND/OR Synchronous Discussion with 1/2 hour guest speaker. Students will be expected to participate in any **THREE** activities (two from one topic, and one from the other). This gives a range of activities to choose from, according to interest area and preferred method of learning.
 * TOPIC 1 How has marketing influenced the Global uptake and use of ICT in education?**
 * TOPIC 2 how does culture influence the use of ICT in education**


 * 4. Agreed roles and responsibilities. ** Please use this section to provide an overview of key tasks assigned to each member of the group.

** Gabi: ** Lead and Set up Wiki for actual seminar ** Sue: ** Lead Synchronous Discussion for Seminar and arrange Guest speaker** Nourah: ** Lead Thought Discussion ** Wendy: ** Lead research activity


 * 5.** ** Timeline. ** Please outline below a timeline with key dates including deadlines for completing aspects of the work you have agreed (even if some dates are provisional for now), and who has chief responsibility for meeting them (e.g. selecting the readings, choosing starting and finishing times for your seminar, monitoring the online discussion, replying to participants, summarising etc).
 * 1 3 June: Theme agreement due date (Gabi to submit to Maggie)
 * 14 June to 18 July: Work on your own activity (prefer on this Wiki, so everyone can see what the others are doing/progress)
 * 18 July last date for your individual contribution to your own activity on this wiki.
 * 18 July - 25 July we will edit and provide feedback to each other
 * 25 July Deadline for feedback/editing from other group members
 * 25 July-1 Aug Tweaking as required.
 * 1-8 August: Potentially this is the time we should load our activities to Stream, ready to go 'live'
 * 9 August "D Day" !!!!


 * 6. Group communications. ** Detail below any arrangements you have agreed for how you will communicate and collaborate online, including regular online meetings. Please note though the expected use of the discussion forum as the place where the bulk of communications should take place.
 * after submission of this 'Theme Sign up Agreement' we will communicate through this Wiki, and also the discussion forum set aside for our group on Stream. After 13 June, group members are free to work on their activities as they see fit, agreeing to reconvene on here on or before 18 July, so that other group members can comment/contribute to each others work.
 * Discussions shall take place on this Wiki. Contents of Wiki will be 'cleaned up' periodically to just include critical work. Current discussions will remain on the 'homepage', and other (older discussions) work will reside in the additional pages.
 * Group members should undertake to check in at least twice weekly to the Wiki to contribute.


 * 7. Online submission. ** It is expected that you submit the draft version of your agreement to the your group discussion for your tutor to review

We want to leave the context 'open' to all areas and not limit the discussion to for example secondary education, so that all of our peers can contribute and write their answers in context to their own field.
 * 8. Other considerations. ** Please use this space to record any other points your group has raised or agreed in preparing to undertake the seminar

Date of learning agreement completion (chairperson to record): 14 June 2010

Every group member agreed agreement? (chairperson to type YES or NO): YES

Hi guys...be awesome to have some help with the agreement etc...I've put some draft deadlines and structure ideas in there that I'm not sure if you're happy with. Also, text needs to be expanded, and rationales put in. Nourah: Hey Gab, Sue & Wendy. I did not have internet access yesterday (sorry), tried to sort it and its working today. Gab I will add those bits I talked about to the thought discussion. As far as the timeline goes I am in agreement and everything looks good. Perhaps Sue and Wendy could just confirm that they also agree. Tomorrow I am not able to come online so I will make changes today and am happy that you hand it in tonight/tomorrow. I see Gab that you put the agreement up in stream, is that the submission? If not, I'll make add a few things this aftn and we can perhaps re-upload it to Stream. Hi Nourah...cheers. I was honestly thinking I'd been left to carry the brunt of it. Look forward to seeing what you're adding. I can re-upload to stream tomorrow. Cheers Sue: HI Gabi, Wendy and Nourah. So sorry for my absence, we had the move from hell, now I am left with no phone line or broadband so have finally managed to borrow a datacard from Telecom and get on line. I wont have proper broadband here at the new house until Tuesday, grrrr. Gabi thank you so much for all your hard work, am more than happy to take some load off you to reciprocate - let me know what I can do. Have posted my version of a draft abstract - I couldnt see any other abstract here yet so plonked mine so the group can give their thoughts and we can cut and paste bits and pieces from everyones to give us the final product. I am pretty much in agreement with the timeline below, perhaps would want to see a few more days to think about our activity if this was at all possible - could we go to 7 days for this first part? Gab: whats the bit you're referring to in your last sentence Sue? I have given approx one month for us to work on our own activity...not 7 days....or are you referring to something else? Sorry :-) SUE: Sorry, still got "shift brains". Yup you have indeedy given us a month - please ignore my comment. Cheers.  gab: Love your abstract contribution Sue...we'll definitely go with that! I'll submit tomorrow.  SUE: Great stuff - away we go.

Gab: Hi Guys, I've moved the discussions that were here on the homepage to "Initial Discussions". This homepage now has the theme signup agreement, as this is now our priority to fill out :-) In addition, I have added four new pages for each of the seminar activities. I've put some potential draft deadlines in the theme sign up below. Let me know your thoughts? Nourah: Thanks Gab for keeping the page 'clean' and being so organized. Really appreciate all your hard work. Perhaps in 'chosen theme' or other considerations we can mention something about how we want to keep the context 'open' i.e. not limited to secondary/primary as we talked about so that everyone can think about culture/marketing in relation to their own educational context... Title could simply be 'culture and marketing in ICT'...? I will try to work on the abstract a bit although its looking pretty good! As far as thought discussion goes, I hope to get onto that soon and when I get a grip on the readings and potential questions for thought discussion i'll post them up so that all of you can give me feedback, suggestions or improvements to the questions :) Gab: Hi Nourah...fire away and throw that stuff in the agreement! As far as your thought discussion...you have your question already. you might just want to think about how you might take a 'devils advocate' approach to the discussions.

GAB: CAN EVERYONE ELSE PLEASE HELP ME WITH THIS. WE NEED AN ABSTRACT ETC. I HAVE PUT DRAFT NOTES IN THE AGREEMENT, BUT THESE MUST BE EXPANDED UPON. I'D APPRECIATE YOUR HELP WITH THIS :-) Nourah: great work with the agreement Gab. Good stuff with the abstract Sue I'm in agreement with that and think you did a great job there. I just added briefly in section 8 that we are leaving the context open and not limiting the discussion to a specific 'level' of education (e.g. tertiary, secondary). I thought it was worth noting.. ? It will be hard for me to come online tomorrow so as far as the agreement goes I think it looks good and I'm in agreement... :) I will try to check my email tomorrow morning if anything else is needed..Apart from that I look forward to working with you all and have a few questions regarding the thought discussion that you guys can maybe help out with -- that can wait until later however. Thanks for all the hard work!