Could a SN model work for an online class? \ stacker news ~meta

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Could a SN model work for an online class?

2861 sats \ 8 comments \ @ablunderfilledlife 25 Jan meta

Whether you have been a teacher in an online class or a student, you know how perfunctory, boring, and ineffective forum posts are. YET there are not too many alternatives to peer interaction and engagement built into LMSes like Moodle, Blackboard, or Canvas.

We have here at SN beauteous examples of interactions that are maybe not fueled by sats but certainly stoked by them. Could the same work for an online class and be directed toward the purpose of learning and community-building?

I wonder how this model would work, particularly with the grades.

Students could earn socs (short for Socrates) and distribute them as they please to their peers. Assignment grades could assist in stacking socs. I see two models:

One that giveth only

A = 4000 socs
B = 3000 socs
C = 2000 socs
D = 1000 socs
F = 0 socs

And another that taketh away sometimes

A = 4000 socs
B = 3000 socs
C = 2000 socs
D = -2000 socs
F = -3000 socs

Do you think this would work for a college-level course? How would you modify it, especially to suit participants who are reluctant, uninterested, or timid students?

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666 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 25 Jan

Hmm, I like this idea. I'd love to spin up a private SN server for my class. But I wouldn't use a fake unit of account like socs... I'd use real sats!

My only hesitancy is that with a small class of 20-30 people, engagement might not be very high. And it's a burden for the instructor to have to monitor the conversations on the channel. Moreover, in terms of peers learning from each other, in-person is still probably a better format than online, so you don't want to be rewarding an online-only format while not at the same time rewarding in-person meetups.

526 sats \ 0 replies \ @ablunderfilledlife OP 25 Jan

In-person will always trump online learning (self-directed learning aside), but sometimes you get assigned an online class or a pandemic hits, and you have to make due.

As far as monitoring goes, maybe off-topic posts could cost someone sats (or socs), and peers could moderate that.

I would also want to get away from the word count requirements that add to the perfunctory experience.

505 sats \ 1 reply \ @OriginalSize 25 Jan

I've come to the conclusion that it's better to learn to enjoy work than to seek some reward that's external to it. So I think it's best to help students learn to see the value in work and learning.

It goes back to what problem are you trying to solve? If the goal of a class is learning, peer interaction and engagement may or may not support learning as well as some other solutions.

As for socs, I suspect this would confuse the purpose of the class. Is it to learn or to shitcoin?

48 sats \ 0 replies \ @ablunderfilledlife OP 25 Jan

I think the problem I would want to solve is the periodic hook for those students who are not intrinsically motivated by learning and for whom the grades provided through assignments are too infrequent to feel pressing or valuable.

42 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury 25 Jan

You can imagine all kinds of cool stuff -- everyone starts w/ 100 sats, students zap content they like, and in the end, sats are worth some portion of your grade.

I can think of a zillion edge cases where this wouldn't work, but you can think about experiments to do that would be interesting. Each class you'd learn a ton about how to make use of it.

Plus I think it's stupid to not try things bc you can things of ways it would fail. It can and will fail for all those reasons. And it will also succeed in a bunch of reasons you can't envision! And that's not nothing.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ablunderfilledlife OP 25 Jan

Thanks for the support! I can't imagine the administration would be too happy with this experiment if it were directly tied to grades and it would be easy enough for students to complain. Other than the logistics of integrating this into existing platforms, that is the most fundamental obstacle I see. It would have to be very clear from the outset of enrollment that the class was an experimental format. C/NC may be the answer too.

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