Dear VLE-group,
I finally managed to develop my list of criteria for the analysis of a Virtual Learning Environment. You can have a look on it here. Please feel free to comment on it.
Jaap, is it right that we now should fulfill the analysis until end of March? Because there seems to be some uncertainty amongst the students…
Cheers,
Christina 
The third international seminar in Hamburg, like the previous ones in Helsinki and Rotterdam, pursued and strenghtened the importance of biannual physical meetings as a major constituent within in our MA program. However, the crucial question remains similar to what we did encounter during the last seminars: how can the spirit and lively atmosphere of the seminars being continued over distant project work? During last semester project “Blogosphere”, it has become evident that cohesion in collaborative project working over distance are dependent on the following key factors (please correct me, if I am wrong):
1. Commitment
2. Motivation
3. Individual and group time management
4. Rational, background and justification of your project
5. Objectives and allocation of tasks
6. Outcomes and dissemination
7. Means and methods
8. Communication, collaboration and project management
9. Evaluation and peer review of project stages.
We’ve already seen excellent examples during last semester, which in a certain way irrefutably demonstrated the interrelatedness between motivation, shared interests in a certain topic, competent usage of communication and collaboration tools, means and methods and pertinent outcomes. So, what did we learn from last semester experiences, what were the main drawbacks and challenges and what kind of means and measures need to be undertaken to improve forthcoming project work?
Please go ahead!
By the way, do you know George Siemens (this year key-note speaker at EDUCA Berlin) latest publication “Knowing Knowledge“?
You can download a free pdf-version here:
http://www.elearnspace.org/KnowingKnowledge_LowRes.pdf
Cheers,
Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss