research and scholarship | Frances Bell

Frances Bell

home at last – for all the mes

Homophily, Intersectionality and Institutional Cultures as played out on Social Media

This has been a bad week for trust and humanity on the Interwebz. First Kathy Sierra left Twitter for reasons she gives in this article (having already been driven off social media and public engagements in 2007), then Julie Pagano who describes how she became a tech feminist killjoy from working in the tech industry….

Bobbing along – water as a medium of participation in learning

I spent yesterday finding and reading papers about community learning and MOOCs, and working on our lovely data from #rhizo14. Eventually, I felt that I was going around in circles and decided to search for images to help me make some sense of what I was reading and thinking. I found lots of great ‘water’…

Getting another perspective

This post is a progress report on the research that we (Frances Bell and Jenny Mackness) have been conducting following our participation in the open course Rhizomatic Learning: The community is the curriculum in January 2014. This research to date has included an online survey, email interviews and a conversation with the convenor of the…

Reflections on community in #rhizo14 – more questions than answers

These are some reflections on community in #rhizo14 inspired by the research that Jenny Mackness and I are doing, and my engagement with Maha Bali’s post and the rich comment stream that followed. I just wanted to capture my thoughts as they are currently but would be really pleased to engage through comments. One of the issues that…

Response to Simon Ensor’s comments

Answers by Cavale https://www.flickr.com/photos/cavale/5439074678 CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Jenny Mackness and I are giving a presentation at the MOOCs – which way now event on Friday 27 June. To accompany our presentation (aware that we have too much to cover) we have published a series of blog posts. The first post was – The Rhizome as a Metaphor for…

Ravelry: a knitting community as a site of joy and learning

“That lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne “ The Parliament of Fowls by Geoffrey Chaucer Evidence that learning starts in the womb is revealed when babies hear lullabies that they will respond to after birth; and learning continues throughout life, as Chaucer says of love. We can all remember from an early…

The Best Laid Plans …

“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy! Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me! The present only toucheth thee: But Och! I backward cast my e’e, On prospects drear! An’ forward, tho’ I canna see, I guess an’ fear!” Robert…

Ethics and soft boundaries between Facebook groups and other web services

As part of a MOOC on rhizomatic learning that performs itself in many different spaces (Facebook, P2PU, G+, Twitter and others), I am a member of an ‘open’ Facebook group. It is endlessly fascinating, and has given me a lot of scope for reflection about back channels and the exchange of information between open and…

Rhizo14 Research

As promised two weeks ago, Jenny, Mariana and I invite your participation in our Rhizo14 research.

Reflecting, recollecting, research – Auf wiedersehen #rhizo14

I have been enjoying seeing traces of rhizo14ers reflections and recollections over the last few days. Thanks Dave for hosting the longest party I have ever attended and thanks to all the rhizo14 folks from whom I have learned and will learn so much. All participants will see changes in themselves and their networks as…