General feedback on topic 2

Please check your own googledoc for your individual feedback (it’s the same one as for topic 1!)

Thanks to all of you for the discussions about online identity, which on the whole are greatly improved from topic 1. Yes it is a huge area and impossible for one post to cover everything, but I hope you agree that collectively the group has produced a variety of interesting perspectives and resources on the topic.

Some of your explorations during this topic missed the fine distinction between using different accounts to register for particular online services and portraying yourself as a different person altogether. Once this distinction is made, the argument for having multiple identities is an entirely different ball game from just managing different accounts and passwords. We’ll get into this more in the next topic.

I know we said last time that you should go beyond simply reflecting back to us the arguments in the materials we provided to you..but this time some of you have taken this too far and not acknowledged the core reading base at all. Please (briefly) demonstrate that you have understood the key themes presented about the topic, before building on them via your own research and examples of your own experience.

As we discussed earlier today, you are allowed to be decisive ! You don’t have to agree with everything – you are very welcome to be “constructively critical”. If you’ve said you like the positive view taken in post A, and you also like the negative view taken in post B – which actually resonates most with you and why? Present your thoughts to the authors of both views and see if you can make them consider an alternative perspective.

A few of you are taking a while to moderate and publish comments other students are leaving on your blog. This means opportunities for discussion are missed and also makes it tricky for us to find the comments when giving feedback.If someone has asked you a question in their comment on your blog, please take the trouble to answer it and help the conversations along. You are not assessed on “comments on comments” but it is simple politeness to respond.

Here are some general thoughts on “raising the bar” for topic 3 with regard to your blogs and your overall approach to the module, now that we are half way through the course:

• Include your “recent posts” in a column of your blog, so it is easy for the reader to navigate between them. A “comments feed” is also a good idea, and a completed “About” page.
• Be creative – rely less on text. For example, use pictures/diagrams/videos/embedded tweets to illustrate a point rather than a long verbal description. There is no “one best way” but learn from what you like about how other students have approached the task (and don’t forget to credit them if you do!)
• Make links where relevant between the various topics we are covering, to demonstrate how your understanding is developing through the module.
• Some of you are making good use of twitter in terms of highlighting your posts and encouraging others to comment on them to further the debates. But you can take this further – make more strategic use of twitter by following key influencers in your field of interest or sharing resources that will be of use of others in the group (and that they might not normally have access to).
• I’d also like to see more engagement with people beyond the module – if you have drawn upon someone’s work in your post – tweet them a link to it and thank them. You can’t guarantee a response of course but you never know! Often these things work indirectly – you might not get the immediate benefit you were hoping for, but it all helps to boost your visibility and other connections may develop.