It's week 2 in FSLT, and the topic of this week is group participation. One of the things mentioned this week by the facilitators are the roles that people take in group work, which was quite interesting, as I could see people in my past group work experience taking on those roles consciously or subconsciously. In the MOOC forums there is quite a lively discussion this week (as there was last week), which got me thinking.

One of the things that I've been pondering is the mode of participation.  In MOOCs like Change11 and CCK11 the main mode of participation seems to have been Blogging, and aggregation of those blog posts through a daily newsletter.  Other modes included tweeting, posting on delicious, and using the basic commenting systems on gRSShopper.  It is true, at least for me, that in these two MOOCs I did not miss the discussion board element and I fully embraced blogging (and commenting on other people's blogs) as a way to participate and follow the learning action.

In MobiMOOC11, EduMOOC11, FSLT12, BonkOpen, and LAK11 we had some sort of management system in place that had discussion boards  FSLT12 and LAK11 used Moodle, BonkOpen used Blackboard, and MobiMOOC and EduMOOC used Google Groups.  In these systems, while I have blogged a bit (mostly a meta-learning and meta-cognitive pondering type of blog post), the main action is happening in the discussion forums. I know that FSLT12 has a blogroll, which I consult a couple of times per week (but not as frequently as the daily CCK11 and Change11 newsletters), and load up my Pocket (aka "read it later") account.

I was actually wondering if I should blog more...or if it's OK to not blog as much, but participate in discussion forums. It seems to me, that my own personal strategy is "biggest bang for the buck" - so wherever there are more people, that's where I participate. Since time is a zero sum game, any time blogging, is time spent away from discussion boards, and vice versa.  What do fellow learners think?