Envisioning an Online Community for CMLTD Students & Alumni

I Don’t Want to Belong to Any Club That Will Accept Me as a Member -Groucho Marx

Perhaps it’s me getting sentimental already as I approach the end of the semester and am just a few days away from registering for my last class, but the OC I wish to create is a CMLTD gathering spot for current students, alumni and faculty. As such, there is a ready audience for this, I believe … 

Why create this platform? And why would anyone want to any join???? What would one actually DO there?

There are lots of reasons! Something for everyone here...

1. Helps facilitate a stronger community--beyond the classroom. 

There is a palpable energy in the CMLTD program, lots of curiosity, design thinking, original research happening. There are lots of ideas shared, group projects within classes one chooses to attend, but what about the others? As one example, this platform could have a “What I Am Working On?” section for students ... or a “Here is my IP topic!” section. As it happens, I am up to my ears in the topic of MOOCs… maybe someone else is at TC as well, how would I know?? The CMLTD platform would be a perfect way to share those ideas.

2. Collaborative knowledge and problem-solving. 

In the program and as we shift into career roles, or face new challenges, this platform could be a great place to exchange ideas about best practices in instructional design, gamification, social media, podcasting, or any other CMLTD topic. It might not all be theoretical, but practical, such using Miro to visually brainstorm, or a thousand helpfuk apps besides.

3. Networking, networking, networking. 

Finding one’s career path and learning about opportunities in the field would be an important benefit for everyone. Why not give others in our program a leg up when starting out in the job hunt?

4. On the flip side of that is ... Mentoring. 

As an alum or alumna, joining this platform is a perfect way to give back to this academic community. There is a lot of wisdom in the working world that I would even bet $100 that would be super useful to current students.

5. Engage with lifelong learners. 

Inspire and be inspired. Do good things and make change for the better. It’s a powerful, beautiful thing.

Any software and cloud spaces needed?

Hey this could be easy … this could just be a LinkedIn community page! Members only, so someone on the TC staff would need to help with a verification process for joining. Alternatively, I have heard that some people around here are pretty good with programming. Just saying. One benefit to designing from scratch would be allowing for individual participants to have a running blog (separate from LinkedIn), as an optional feature. I think it would be worth researching what actually would matter most to other students in this program.

Types of interactions and literacies engaged?

I envision a lot of creative and research-based exchanges, from programming, maker spaces, design, prototyping, media literacy, social activism, ethics and more … this OC pushes all the buttons and runs fully on multimodal fuel.

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And as I said, I hope to make this happen and have begun to explore the idea further 😌