distributed research

Learning by Doing - interview part 5 August 30, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : distributed research, Action Research, Wiki , add a comment

Continuing the interview with Cormac Lawler, in which we begin to address the nature of “learning by doing” as it relates to distributed projects, and wiki in particular.

Cormac Lawler:

About changing of groups’ structure over time, I think my own domain (Wikiversity) is showing an increasingly strong tension along the lines of making Wikiversity a place of ‘blue-sky’ or experimental learning versus an alignment to known pedagogical forms. See Wikiversity_talk:Learning_resources#the_wiki_way.3F and below for some discursive material on this topic. It’s perhaps not an example of a change of guard as such (and the debate within Wikiversity’s development is not new), but I’m starting to see the tension as a pretty fundamental one for Wikiversity.

Andy Roberts asks:

Reading that discussion again on the Wikiversity page, it strikes me that both sides of the tension referred to are in fact agreed upon working within the same framework. The dispute, if I’m not mistaken is over the nature and quality of the learning resources which are to be accumulated in the Wikiversity. Neither side appears to be questioning the basic model of education based on learning from supplied content. The references to ‘experimental’ forms seem to remain within experimental forms of content provision, without questioning that preconception. Despite the claim that

“Wikiversity has adopted a “learn by doing” model for education”

the doing appears to consist entirely of editing pages to create more resources.
Do you think a bias towards conventional content based learning is built in to the wiki way?

It’s a fascinating question - and I think you’re right that it is to a large extent. However - and this is more on the basis of knowing the involved people, rather than on what is on the page I linked to previously - I think that there has always been a strong desire to take a broad look at educational activity, and what role a wiki can play in that process. For example, some of the “content” produced on a wiki can be a record of a discussion where someone asks a question, and people respond with answers, suggestions, and/or questions of their own. Some of the content on Wikiversity has been explicitly initiated and developed as a debate - eg en.wikiversity.org/wiki/War_and_Iran. I don’t know if that conforms to your view of conventional content creation?

However, this “learning by doing” is a tricky concept - and I’ve been
pushing JWSchmidt, the originator of this concept in Wikiversity, to be more
explicit in explaining to me and the community what he thinks it might mean
in practice - and in detail. So far, I’ve found the concept as applied to
Wikiversity to be infuriatingly opaque - and I can see that others do too.
It’s something that I’ve always wanted to clarify on Wikiversity - what do
we mean by learning by doing, how can someone be guided through or motivated
to begin in such a model, and what kinds of educational experiences can we
anticipate, so as to scaffold learners if, whenever, and however
appropriate?

How might other learning processes be facilitated through Wikiversity? I’m thinking of the newer emerging learning models such as connectivism, which would place the emphasis on the network between people and the community above content. This might require additional tools to the document based wiki, but needn’t be entirely separate.

I agree - and we’ve been discussing tools to facilitate just such initiatives on a centralised page: Wikiversity:Technical_needs including the SocialProfile extension www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SocialProfile. We already have a ’sandbox server’ to experiment with different tools - but to actually get extensions and other innovations approved on a relatively small Wikimedia wiki is difficult when in the shadow of Wikipedia. However, with community mobilisation, and more developers’ resources at our disposal (a software developer hiring was just announced yesterday, and there may very well be more) - we should continue to build on the mediawiki platform to see what it can offer in the world of connected, collaborative learning.

I see we’ve forked into a discussion of Wikiversity - and it’s very welcome! - but I also very much wanted this discussion to focus on action research and issues that we’ve both experienced in an online AR context. I think I’ll leave this to my next mail.

Cheers,
Cormac

Earlier posts in this series:

Cormac interview: Wikiversity and Wikipedia August 11, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : distributed research, Wiki , 1 comment so far

After a bit of a gap, the two-way interview between Cormac Lawler and myself continues. This post continues the discussion about distributed action research and wikiversity from previous episodes:

Andy Roberts asked:

I’d be very interested to hear to what extent parts of Wikiversity have managed to break away from the idea of the “course”, the expert, and the content. If you have people transfering across from the Wikipedia culture then it’s going to cause problems, but you could always fork a minority project for the more revolutionary work if it seems to be getting defeated.

Cormac Lawler replies:

There’s a real challenge in allowing for different models of education to take place in the same space. As you point out (and as has JWSchmidt in the page I linked to), Wikipedians will inevitably bring a particular culture with them in the development of what they think Wikiversity to be. (Although I’d be hesitant to make a grand generalisation on that point.) So one of the major challenges Wikiversity faces is to allow different communities develop microcultures of learning that are appropriate for them. However this itself raises a challenge around whether a microcommunity might develop that has questionable practices (like, say, Nazi apologists - to take an extreme example) - and what then could be done in order to subject a community, resource or statement to educational critique - or indeed, whether someone could be banned or their resources deleted. This brings us to the heart of the question you asked of what this institution is and who it is intended to serve.

Some examples of ‘different’ types of learning projects/communities would include things like the reading groups and podcasting and filmmaking initiatives (both long in decline). I would also regard some of the research activities to be exploring different means of using wikis educationally - including my own, and the Bloom clock (a means of logging what plants are in bloom, but also of learning about plants). There is also a recent initiative to question ethical practices within Wikipedia, which is purportedly an action research initiative, but which seems to be running in different directions at once, including a fairly traditional one (which could well be the participants constraining themselves to conform to what *they think* Wikiversity is supposed to be, ie an educational content creation mechanism).

However, having said this, I’m still slightly disappointed in the breadth of initiatives on Wikiversity that seek to challenge, expand or break the mould of more traditional models. I still think that this process needs more time, but I had hoped for more examples of what was possible at this stage, two years into its autonomous development. However, of course, I regard myself as very much culpable in this respect!

Andy again:

Ten years ago you could find out just about anything by tracking down
the right bulletin board or newsgroup, asking a carefully explained
question, and coming back later to view responses or ask a
supplementary. Within a few days you’d have the best the net could
come up with. Now we have Google search, with all its limitations and
gaming, and google scholar for some of the hidden internet, but you
can still usually track down the author of particularly pertinent
idea, find out their online presence with a bit of luck and chance a
speculative email. So the backbone infrastructure of having
connections between devices all over the world will always find a way
to serve people who know a little bit about how to seek and connect,
no matter what infrastructure is built on top of it all, and I’m still
pretty optimistic about that regardless of whether we lose some
battles along the way such as net neutrality or the health of the
regime in charge of Wikipedia.

Yes, and for the health of the “regime”, see the ethical questioning project I linked to above (which generated quite a bit of unease and hostility in its beginning, and which may itself have ethical questions around it). I think you’re right to say that people will be able to find someone else to ask questions of - but it does seem to favour people who, as you say, already “know a little bit” about how to do so. I’d like to also help people who start from a lower base of social confidence or net-savviness - and this might partly be addressed through network, connectivist initiatives you mentioned in your subsequent mail. I think I’ll answer that one now, separately.

Cheers,

Cormac

Questions about Wikiversity July 2, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : distributed research, Wiki , 1 comment so far

This post continues the discussion about distributed action research and wikiversity from DARnet interview part two and DARnet-interview-part 1 with Cormac Lawler

Cormac wrote:

About changing of groups’ structure over time, I think my own domain (Wikiversity) is showing an increasingly strong tension along the lines of making Wikiversity a place of ‘blue-sky’ or experimental learning versus an alignment to known pedagogical forms. See http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity_talk:Learning resources#the_wiki_way.3F and below for some discursive material on this topic. It’s perhaps not an example of a change of guard as such (and the debate within Wikiversity’s development is not new), but I’m starting to see the tension as a pretty fundamental one for Wikiversity.

Reading that discussion again on the Wikiversity page, it strikes me
that both sides of the tension referred to are in fact agreed upon
working within the same framework. The dispute, if I’m not mistaken is
over the nature and quality of the learning resources which are to be
accumulated in the Wikiversity. Neither side appears to be questioning
the basic model of education based on learning from supplied content.
The references to ‘experimental’ forms seem to remain within
experimental forms of content provision, without questioning that
preconception. Despite the claim that

“Wikiversity has adopted a “learn by doing” model for education”

the doing appears to consist entirely of editing pages to create more
resources.

Do you think a bias towards conventional content based learning is
built in to the wiki way?

How might other learning processes be facilitated through Wikiversity?
I’m thinking of the newer emerging learning models such as
connectivism, which would place the emphasis on the network between
people and the community above content. This might require additional
tools to the document based wiki, but needn’t be entirely separate.

I’m not predicting the splitting into groups, as you say, but I think it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Indeed, I see the role of my own action research to explicitly throw into relief the sometimes conflicting viewpoints that people bring to the project - in order to reveal something deeper about what we’re doing, and how we can move forward with a simultaneously more critical and expansive mindset.

Thanks for initiating this

DARnet interview part two. June 15, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : ultraversity, distributed research, edublog, Action Research, Wiki , 3comments

In part one of the DARnet interview, Cormac Lawler asked me, Andy Roberts, about distributed action research, cycles, groups and background.

This second episode continues the interview, again with Cormac’s questions in red, followed by my reply.

* So, which online university did you attend? What were you studying?

The online university was a research project itself at the time,
called “Ultraversity” and run by the now defunct “Ultralab” centre
attached to Anglia Ruskin University in Chelmsford, Essex. I
registered an interest before it started up and was admitted to the
first cohort, who came to think of ourselves as guinea pigs for the
revolutionary new online degree with zero face to face element and no
content. That may sound a bit mad but you have to understand that the
BA Learning, Technology, Research degree is workplace based, so mainly
for adults in employment. The subject for the research and therefore
content for the degree then derives from individual circumstances. So
the Ultraversity research project was launched with high hopes of
becoming an independent force for transforming UK higher education,
but has ended up being absorbed into the Anglia Ruskin education
department, minus some of the ideals and as a shadow of the original
ambition. I hear that some of the original ex-staff are building
something elsewhere.

* Did your research there feed directly into what you do now, or are you referring to a grounding in research methods/practice?

In a way, yes I did manage to make my studies relevant to future work.
I set up the distributedresearch domain and the DAR wiki as a major part of it, for example, and one third of the subject (L,T,R) was a grounding in action research theory, methods and practice.

* Are you still affiliated with any formal study programme?

I really don’t have a taste for undertaking any post graduate studies,
but as one of the alumni, I still have access to the online community and I’m
a member of a small informal group where we try to help and sometimes
mentor individuals from subsequent cohorts.

* I’m still not sure if I understand the domain of your research. Is it fair to say that it’s all based on your own practice, and not that of a group?

At its best, action research is always participatory and I do work
with groups in terms of facilitating online communities, with a
particularl interest in communities of practice. But since I became
a full time work-at-home internet entrepreneur last year, I’ve needed
to concentrate at first on activities such as pro-blogging, hence the
need for a spot of first-person action research to get my own act in
order. My domain and primary interest is still very much the social web.

* What is/are that/those practice(s)? What is the relationship between your community/ies in/to your work?

Sometimes it’s a very indirect relationship. For example, one of my oldest communities of practice is the UK cider makers group “ukcider” which I convened and facilitated since 2001. There is no business model, and it’s sometime difficult to find a way to pay the web hosting fees, but I suppose I’ve learned stuff through the processes and development there which I then manage apply in other domains.

Education is a political battlefield, and it often looks to me as if
the war was lost ages ago. The fundamental question is to ask “who is
this institution meant to serve?” which requires an understanding of
the nature of the state. Often the people who work in education start
out with idealistic notions of what the work is for, and imagine they
are helping to shape people’s minds in an empowering way, but end up
carrying out orders in the interests of the powers that be, who long
ago gave up believing that an educated general workforce is a
desirable thing as far as advanced capitalism is concerned. They need
people educated enough to be able to work the machines of an
information economy, and to be consumers in a digital age, but only a
small number are required to be independent, creative, critical
thinkers and problem solvers. So the prevailing model for education
is always content based, with the students viewed as empty vessels to
be filled. Even the UK Open University, which was born out of the pro
labour reforms in post war Britain, has been based largely on a pushed
content model, now with added forums.

I’d be very interested to hear to what extent parts of Wikiversity have managed to break away from the idea of the “course”, the expert, and the content. If you have people transfering across from the Wikipedia culture then it’s going to cause problems, but you could always fork a minority project for the more revolutionary work if it seems to be getting defeated.

It’s perhaps not an example of a change of guard as such (and the debate within Wikiversity’s development is not new), but I’m starting to see the tension as a pretty fundamental one for Wikiversity. I’m not predicting the splitting into groups, as you say, but I think it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Indeed, I see the role of my own action research to explicitly throw into relief the sometimes conflicting viewpoints that people bring to the project - in order to reveal something deeper about what we’re doing, and how we can move forward with a simultaneously more critical and expansive mindset.

You’ve used a phrase from Wikimedia’s mission - “the sum of human
knowledge”. Do you think such an entity exists? How do you see it? How do
you have access to it? How do you participate in it?

I’ll rephrase that to “The full extent of human knowledge” because of
course knowledge doesn’t really have a sum, does it!

Ten years ago you could find out just about anything by tracking down
the right bulletin board or newsgroup, asking a carefully explained
question, and coming back later to view responses or ask a
supplementary. Within a few days you’d have the best the net could
come up with. Now we have Google search, with all its limitations and
gaming, and google scholar for some of the hidden internet, but you
can still usually track down the author of particularly pertinent
idea, find out their online presence with a bit of luck and chance a
speculative email. So the backbone infrastructure of having
connections between devices all over the world will always find a way
to serve people who know a little bit about how to seek and connect,
no matter what infrastructure is built on top of it all, and I’m still
pretty optimistic about that regardless of whether we lose some
battles along the way such as net neutrality or the health of the
regime in charge of Wikipedia.

End of part two of the DARnet interview. To be continued.

The DARnet interview - Distributed Action Research June 11, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : distributed research , 3comments

This is the first in a series of posts arising from an email exchange interview between myself and and Cormac Lawler. I’ve been interested in Cormac’s work on Wikiversity as a learning community since inception and recently he wrote to me asking

to talk about the experience of doing action research online - what you perceive ‘distributed action research’ to be, how it works, and any challenges/benefits you see in the process - as well as of course sharing my own experiences.

So we agreed to start up an open ended email dialogue to see what we can surface through the process of reflective conversation, using the format of a semi-formal interview. Here’s part one, with Cormac’s questions in red, followed by my reply.

* What is the nature of your action research? What is its scope?

I think the kernel of what I’m trying to uncover is something fundamental about social dynamics. When the possibility of computer mediated communications first arose I found it compelling because it seemed like it might be possible to observe and influence groups in a way that is more visible, transparent than ever before. So rather than view a text-only medium as very limited, I saw it as opening up a whole new dimension of human activity. So I jumped in and got involved with that, and have returned to it regularly ever since really. The formal depiction of what I do as a type of research is then something which was applied on top of it much later, as a result of attending an online university for three years between 2003-6.

* Can you describe for me a cycle of action research in your own domain? (Or, if not a cycle, then a picture of how AR works for you.)

“It usually starts off with a very clear plan but then rapidly becomes more complicated. To use a current example, I planned to introduce something called an action log into my own practice. So the cycle looked like this:

Action: Begin using an action log daily, as per plan.
Data collected: The action log itself, discussions on my blog.
Review: Analyse and reflect on the experience. Decide on what changes to make for the next cycle.

I’m now in cycle 2 of that enquiry.”

* What about its “distribution” - how are people involved; does this vary over time; is there anything like a ‘fixed’ or stable group?

“I choose to use the word “distributed’ to describe online communities of people who don’t happen to be geographically proximate because I dislike the word ‘virtual’ which seems demeaning and inaccurate.

Oh yes, stable groups most certainly do exist, and I’m a member of some which have existed for many years with largely the same core and values. The process which really interests me though is when that stability changes. Have you ever seen a group splinter into two or three new ones? Or a new leadership come along and displace the old guard? These events are quite rare, which is possibly a good thing, but they can be very rich in detail from which we can learn something about the nature of how groups operate which then might even be applied back into understanding society as a whole. Maybe.”

* Why did you choose this way of working? (Eg. did it arise out of the literature, your previous experience, contact with others..?)

“My background was in mainframe computer programming which developed from writing with a pencil onto coding pads, through to using a monochrome uppercase video terminal. When the idea of networking computers together came along it meant that all of a sudden there were sometimes real people at the other end of the typing instead of just editors, compilers and test results. Then a bit later the internet came along and this meant that the other people could be anywhere in the world! I could see that this was the beginning of a new age in human development, because now anybody anywhere might have access to the sum of human knowledge. This is more significant than the invention of the printing press, it’s more like the invention of language itself.”

End of interview, part one. In part two, we shall talk more about the online degree and formal learning in general, about groups and individual work, education models used by Ultraversity, the Open University and Wikiversity.

Open thread for lurkers February 9, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : distributed research, blogs and community , 17comments

This is an “open thread” patterned blog post which means that I’m not writing on any particular topic, instead I’m leaving it open to my readers to initiate discussion by bringing up any subject you’d like to talk about, or even just to say hullo.

behind the curtain According to conventional wisdom the ratio of lurkers to posters in any online forum tends to be around the 10:1 level, depending on the nature of the topic and I probably only know about a handful of people who would seem to be regular readers. I know there are more out there though, and this is your opportunity to “delurk” as they say, to come out from hiding in the silent shadows and acquire a voice of your own.

There must be something that’s been on your mind, let’s get it out with.

Come on in, the water’s lovely

CC photo credit “The truth lies behind the blurry curtain” by assbach

Critique of this blog February 4, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : 31daychallenge, distributed research, blogs and community, tools , 2comments

Ning Group

I went to the better blog Ning group which is kind of a community of practice for some bloggers, and asked for a critique of my blog, from the point of view of a new reader. It’s one of the tasks in Darren Rowse’s 31 day challenge. Then I hid under the duvet and waited to see what, if anything, might arise. Christine Martell responded with a screencast which is a great way to review any website.

Screencast

The screencast is hosted at screencast.com which means I can’t at present embed it here, so here’s an ordinary text link to go and listen to Christine as she explores this blog and remarks upon it, followed by my response below:

http://www.screencast.com/t/GrQpa0kXhC

Response

Many thanks for the screencast Christine, you gave me several things to think about and work on there. That was a great way to communicate about a blog’s functionality and hopefully took up a bit less of your time than typing up a critique. You also hit the nail exactly on the head straight away by exposing the central problem that I’m grappling with - the combination of several seemingly unrelated themes or niches into one blog. The only thing that ties them altogether is the common author, myself. So I have diverse target audiences, apart from the very small audience that may be interested in me, friends and family so to speak. So I’m always trying to isolate the categories and pages into slices that can be consumed on their own. What I discovered from Google Analytics is that certain individual posts can gain an audience of their own, coming from the search engines and then moving onwards. This is in fact how I’ve started to derive a small income from the blog, to recoup expenses, through some individual posts in the archive. But a series of individual disconnected posts does not a blog make. Which is why I set myself the goal of increasing RSS subscriptions and joined in the current 31daystoabetterblog group, to see if I can bring it all together a bit more. One thing I’m considering is to see if I can provide a selection of RSS feeds for the main categories. That’s better than having separate blogs, although I do have some of those as well!

Action points from the critique:

Explain Social objects at the beginning of the jump-off page

Tweak the RSS “Full” panel ( built in to theme)

Explore moving the comments link ( also theme)

Keep grappling with the challenge of serving unrelated niches

Is it time to consider changing themes? Probably not in the middle of all this other activity.

Thanks again Christine for giving great feedback.

Oh, and I’ve also wondered about the feeling of being ‘watched’ and spotlighted by mybloglog as we surf around each other’s blogs, not at all anonymously. I suppose we are assumed to have taken that on board when we join that service. I’ve tried three of these type of things and ditched the other two. I also upgraded mybloglog for the better stats, which I find very useful in combination with Google Analytics.

Now over to other readers:

What did you think of Christine’s screencast and my response? Can you help me understand better some of the issues raised, or maybe add your own points please? I promise not to turn it into a blog all about blogging, there are enough of those already.

Community launch from an event September 3, 2007

Posted by Andy Roberts in : distributed research, theory, Community, online facilitation, COP, edublog, web2.0 , 5comments

Thinking about a community birth process which I’ve just witnessed during August, it seems appropriate to try and generalise and seek further applications. A month long training course, open and free to attend, generates a momentum of interest, good will, and community indicators.

“what are we going to do when it’s all over?”
“I’m really going to miss the daily podcasts”
“I’m a few days behind, will the content still be available?”
“this forum is the best I’ve ever been in”

So then one of the convenors makes the announcement that the thirty day challenge goes on forever, and an ongoing community of practice is born. Of course the momentum built up during an occasional time-delimited event cannot be sustained at the same level, which is just as well, but the chances of enough residual activity continuing to get a self-sustaining community off the ground are probably a lot greater through this method, whether pre-planned or not, compared with the precarious method of trying to build up a critical mass through recruiting ones and twos, adding member by member, month after lonely month.

And yet, often the last days of a temporary online gathering are used to acheive closure, to sum up, and say ‘thanks a lot, and goodbye’. I began to wonder what would happen if…..

What if the conference on Web2.0 in January 2006 had been encouraged to continue onwards in situ?

What if a hotseat event, where people gather to ask questions to an invited guest, were to be left open and made public to generate further discussion amongst the participants and others. Maybe each and every hotseat or conference has a potential to spawn a practice community, to provide a growing public space. Many will dwindle and peter out after a while but maybe some will flourish instead of being shut down and put away.

I’m sure there are a few other examples where an online learning event has spawned a persisitent community, but nowhere near as many as have been conveniently wrapped up and dispersed. It’s not as if anybody would be forced to hang around against their will, or that any measurable resources would be consumed to allow event based learning communities to live on.

Or to put it the other way around, if you are hoping to launch a distributed community of practice then consider starting off by organising a month long conference at a specific time and space, build up a sense of occasion and then take it from there.

Collecting tips for online facilitators and moderators July 2, 2007

Posted by Andy Roberts in : Community, distributed research, online facilitation, COP, listservs, Wiki , add a comment

Like a previous post, ( and this one and this one ), this is another blog post inspired by conversation on a listserv (email discussion group).

The discussion was sparked off originally by a request for advice on dealing with repeated disruption in an online community. The e-Mint community responded with some suggestions, including technological measures. Then I invoked an ethical dimension to the topic and the scope continued to broaden. Participants started to append little notes of congratulation to their contributions, in appreciation of the discussion and then we agreed to capture the main points onto a wiki page which is currently hosted on DARnet, here.

I was going to reproduce my own point of view in this post, since I have some quite clearly differentiated attitudes in comparison with other practitioners, but I think I’ll just post a link to the wiki page which is a collaborative effort and contains a pluralistic approach to the collection of tips and the art of summary.

Tips_on_community_behaviour_issues_for_moderators

If you are a facilitator or moderator then I’d appreciate it if you’d have a look and let us know if this kind of thing is of any use beyond the context within which it arose or not. If it seems worthwhile, then do please bookmark the page, share it, edit it and add in your tuppence worth wherever you like.

Social Objects applied to PajamaNation June 19, 2007

Posted by Andy Roberts in : social objects, object centred sociality, Pajamanation, Microjobs, distributed research, London , 4comments

I’ve been thinking about Jyri Engeström’s geek dinner where he outlined the Five Principles of Social Objects. In particular, if this approach is significantly beneficial for designing sucessful social websites then what sort of implications, suggestions and ideas can be generated by applying this to pajamanation, the global microjobs exchange?

You should be able to define the social object your service is built around.

That would be the microjob. So using the theory, pajamanation is not all about connecting people to people, it’s about connecting people to microjobs. And there are at least two ways to be connected. One person places a microjob onto the marketplace and others apply or bid for it. When a contract is awarded to a suitable bidder then this connects two people together in a working relationship, but this exists via or around the microjob which is central. The pajamaworker and her profile or his portfolio are important too, but they are not the objects around which the action takes place.

Each microjob therefore, needs to have its own page, permalink, unique resource location (URL).

That is the case at present. The url could be more friendly, it could be displayed on the page and there could be more options available to do things with microjobs, but the basic stuctural design is in place, for example:

http://www.pajamanation.com/microjobexchange
/projectdetails.php?jobid=380

Fast typist needed to type 200 page book into a word document

Define your verbs that your users perform on the objects. For instance, eBay has buy and sell buttons. It’s clear what the site is for.
- AWARD a microjob
- UPDATE a pajamaworker profile
- CORRECT a microjob listing
- SEARCH or FIND microjobs - not sure how to resolve this one.
- VIEW profiles and portfolios

This is harder for us. “Buy” and “Sell” can get confusing when applied to services. A worker is selling his labour, and the job “provider” is buying a service but when you start “bidding” for microjobs it can sound like the other way round. In reality, the bid is an offer to receive a payment hence the description “reverse auction”. It can even get confusing to talk about providers since both ends of the transaction could be regarded as providing something - skills or microjobs.

Additionally we have two major verbs on the website “find” and “search” and it’s not immediately obvious what the difference is. So this needs looking at.

One recommendation would be to have a prominent “Place a microjob ad” button on the main page. Is “place” clear enough?

so the main two verbs should probably be PLACE and BID with these others featuring less prominently

How can people share the objects?

Good point. I guess we need an “email this microjob to a friend” button as well as options to add comments and tags right there on the microjob page.

Turn invitations into gifts.

As above. If you’re browsing for work and you come across something which isn’t quite suitable for you, but puts you in mind of an appropriate friend thne what better gift than to point them towards an opportunity? So change the wording to reflect that - “Give this microjob opportunity to a friend”

Charge the publishers, not the spectators.

Here’s a rub. The original business model for pajamanation is to charge a moderate annual subscription for access to the local market, a bit more to go global. That’s already different to ebay and many straight job sites which charge commission or make entry level free with a premium service for those who require additional privileges. The idea of charging publishers would imply that the microjobs can be viewed and bidded upon by anybody for free, thus building up a large and valuable readership which is then so sought after by the microjobs providers that they would pay to be allowed to publish jobs, or perhaps to place more than one per month. Something like that. We are currently focussed on the problem of not getting a high enough proportion of microjobs for the registered workers, so charging for placement would appear to be the opposite of what’s required. It’s not completely implausible though, and a flexible approach may help to get geared up for the big picture once things start really moving. I also remember hearing that posting jobs to sites which accept free job ads is a waste of time because they get filled up with rubbish that nobody wants to sift through.

Ok, that process certainly helped to surface a lot of ideas and suggestions for development of the pajamanation site. I hope this starts a dialogue leading to fruitful exchange, faster growth and development towards a world changing service. I published my thoughts here on my blog where participation by all will be welcomed, especially my most valued spectators Thanks again to Jyri for inspiration and bringing theory to the social media world.

object centered sociality

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