Social/Business Networking, Ecademy and Where I have been hiding..
In my ongoing effort to stress my calendar to the limit, I proposed a semester of independent study involving individuals who participate in online business social networks. The community that I selected is Ecademy. Two months into this project, I have still not narrowed the focus of the study sufficiently to make a respectable presentation for Belmont's Institutional Research Board. That will have to be this coming week's academic focus...I am running out of semester! What I have discovered is an amazing global community of business people who demonstrate a willingness to share experiences and knowledge without an expectation of immediate financial benefit.
There are patterns of use and individual profiles that will be worth more extensive study...beyond this semester. My instincts tell me that there are patterns that will appear in online business networks that will also appear within the adopters of online educational communities. My general perception is that Ecademy's success will out pace acceptance within the K-12 users and to some degree the higher ed users. 'just a dissertation thought to squirrel away.
Involvement in Ecademy consumes an average of 3 to 4 hours of my day, nearly every day...that's the bad news. The good news is that my normal 4:00am start matches mid-morning connections with individuals in the UK and EU. I had not considered that my research would take on an ethnographic feel, but immersion in the community will be reflected in the study one way or another. The really bad news is that blogging here on Chasing the Dragon's Tale has suffered...I'll try to keep a pulse going here, but I have been seeing another community. Is that like blog infidelity?