A New Idea for Online Missionary Work

Everyone needs their own space and their own identity.  When we use our spaces to represent our identities, it can help us to feel like members of a group.  During the first days of school each year, elementary school children like to organize and decorate their desks to reflect what makes them them, merging their old identities with new identities as  students in a new grade.  Desk workers do the same thing when they start a new job to cement their identities as members of the office team.  People of all ages arrange and decorate their bedrooms and rooms in their houses to represent their personalities and interests, symbolically claiming those spaces, saying “I live here.”   We all use our bodies as a space to wear clothes and accessories that reflect who we are and sometimes to reflect our status as members of a group—BYU t-shirts for instance. 

So what does this have to do with online missionary work?  Every person who joins the Church must make an identity transition and begin to see themselves as a Mormon.  But that transition is hard.  People who successfully learn to see themselves as Mormons have to create new symbolic or physical spaces in their lives where they can build their Mormon identity.  In the Digital Age, more and more often we create our own spaces and paint our own identities Online.  What if we could give investigators their own online spaces to explore and forge their new Mormon identities?

What if investigators could create Mormon.org accounts, not to advertise their identities, but as private spaces to let each person organize what they are learning and reflect on what it might mean for them to become Mormon?  Here are some features I would like to see in the accounts:

• A way for the investigator to keep track of pages on Mormon.org and other church websites that she has read.  Basically a feature that would let her curate the information she learning.  It would be great if an investigator could send an article on lds.org or Mormon.org to their account and be able to insert her own personal notes and then save those annotations with the article on the account.
• I’d also like to see a tab where the investigator could save links to videos on Mormon.org and Mormon Messages so he could watch them again at will.  Again, a function allowing him to write notes beneath each video about what he liked or how he felt would be great.
• Another tab could let the investigator organize the “I’m a Mormon” profiles she likes.
• The account should have a journal built in for the investigator to record his thoughts and feelings about what he is learning and any spiritual experiences he has had.
• Of course, the account dashboard should also have a sidebar to chat with the missionaries, if and when the user feels comfortable.  Then the missionaries could even issue challenges to the investigator that would appear on their account profile.  “You’ve been challenged to say a prayer.  Do you accept?”  Once the investigator accepted the challenge, the account could keep track of it.  “3 days left in your challenge.  Do you need help?”
• There could even be a feature to let the investigator send and receive messages or posts with members who have Mormon.org profiles that interest them.  “I was really inspired by your story about the first time you read the Book of Mormon.  Can you tell me more about what it was like to be baptized?”

I propose that if we give investigators an online space to organize their learning and shape their identity, more people will make a successful transition to being able to say, “I’m a Mormon.”  What do you think?

The Story of the Mormon Badge Project

I can has a Mormon badge?

The Inspiration
In recent months, Mitt Romney’s candidacy and other events have thrown Mormonism into the spotlight.  All sorts of things have been said about Mormons and Mormonism, some of them true, some of them not.  As practicing Mormons, we decided that the world needs more information about Mormonism and less misinformation.   At the time we were also doing research on badges, a new Internet phenomenon.  We thought, what if badges could be used to spread information about Mormonism and correct misconceptions?  What if a regular person or even a journalist could earn a badges to learn basic facts about Mormonism and then display it online to show their credibility when they participated in online discussions about Mormonism?  We decided to create a series of “Mormon Badges” to educate curious people who want accurate information about the fastest growing American religion.


The First Badge
Many people still believe that Mormons practice polygamy, even though the Church ended the practice over one hundred years ago.  We wanted to use our first badge to correct this misconception.  Our “Mormons and Polygamy” badge requires users to read two web pages published by the LDS Church and take a short quiz to test their understanding.

Reflecting and Rethinking
After publishing our first badge, we wanted to step back and reflect on our goals for Mormon badges.  We realized that it was more important to us to educate people about what Mormonism is than about what it isn’t.  With this in mind, we chose the founding or “restoration” of the LDS Church as the topic of our next badge, instead of choosing another misconception to correct.
We also began thinking about other ways that badges could be used in the Mormon community.


New Possibilities
As we continue to develop Mormon literacy badges, we are exploring what badges can do for the youth programs of the LDS Church.  Possible future badges include ones to help girls 12-18 complete the Church’s Personal Progress program and badges to help Mormon youth in church-run religious education classes memorize verses of scripture.

A Mission Statement for Mormon Badges

As we prepared content for our first badge, “Mormons and Polygamy,” I started thinking about what we wanted to accomplish with this badge and with our other badges. I knew we wanted to educate non members about Mormonism, but I wasn’t sure what that entailed. So I came up with this statement which encapsulated for me more specifically what I want to do with Mormon Badges:

We can’t get rid of controversy, but we can help correct misconceptions. We do this, not by trying to convince people the Church is not controversial, but by trying to inform them about the facts. Our primary aim is not to win converts (though I would hope that better information would lead some people to investigate the Church) but to create understanding.

For example, in our first badge (after some guidance from Prof. Burton) we decided not to try to convince people that polygamy was commanded by God. For most people, that would have just heightened the controversy. We did choose material from the church newsroom that explained, briefly, Joseph Smith’s revelation and the doctrinal rational, but we left out additional content from the scriptures to back it up. Instead, we made sure our focus was on correcting the misconception that Mormons still practice polygamy.

I think presenting all our badges this way will win more trust from non-member badge earners. We will be more convincing when it is clear we are not trying to convince them. Our badges will be more effective to the degree that we focus on correcting misconceptions, not stamping out controversy.

Semester Reflections

1. My nonfiction book was @ is for Activism by Joss Hands. Reading some of this book was an important jumpstart for me in beginning to see the Internet as more than just a research tool or waste of time. When I started this class, I’d just spent the summer using the Internet very little and I was proud of it. I was wary of having to use social media on a daily basis for this class. Then I read about how protesters in Iran and other places used Twitter to promote their cause. I realized that the Internet could be a powerful social force to create positive change. This opened the door for me to start learning about lots of ways the Internet can benefit society, individuals, and myself. Now, thanks in part to my new belief that the Internet can create change, I’m working on the Mormon Badge Project.

Another way this book influenced me was by explaining how the structure of the Internet works to benefit activism. I’m embarrassed to say that before reading this book, I had no idea about the technical details of how the Internet worked. From reading this book (and asking my ex-computer science major husband for more details) I learned that the Internet is composed of a network of servers and routers that exchange packets of information. The decentralized structure of the Internet makes it difficult to censor, because information is nearly impossible to intercept and shutting down one router can’t keep information from rerouting through another path. And because Internet protocols are publicly available, anyone can set up a router and the network can keep expanding infinitely. So activists can promote their message to more people than ever with a lower risk of being shut down by hostile governments. Now that I understand better how the Internet works and how that structure is so important, I find using the Internet much more interesting and meaningful.

2. My literary work was one of my favorite plays, The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. I compared the fluidity of online identity and the related difficulty of establishing credibility online to Jack and Algernon’s problems with multiple identities in the play. I reread a scene in which Jack is told by his fiancee’s mother that he cannot marry her daughter because she does not know his family, even though she finds him acceptable in other respects. This helped me realized that a lack of credentials can throw acceptable content into question. I applied this problem especially to badges. The content of a badge may appear to be acceptable to show a person has a certain skill set, but if the identity of the issuer is uncertain or lacks credentials, a potential employer or badge earner might doubt the overall validity of the badge.

3. My self-directed learning has focused mainly on credibility, badges, and, more recently, how the Church uses online content to spread information and battle misconceptions. Some interesting things I’ve learned:

a. According to one study I skimmed, people often use social resources to evaluate the credibility of online content. For instance they rely on sources such as customer reviews, comments sections, and recommendations from friends to decide what content is credible.

b. Badges, badges, badges! What gets me most excited about badges (other than their potential for battling misconceptions about Mormons) is that they allow earners to display granular knowledge instead of just general qualifications. If badges catch on, I think they could be especially useful to obtain and display sets of specific skills tailored by the user to attract specific employers.

c. As I’ve begun to look at Church content about misconceptions that we can scoop to use for our badges, I’ve been really impressed with how the Church deals with difficult issues. They seem to find a balance between giving too much and too little information and between explaining and justifying. For instance, a page on the Church newsroom about polygamy shares enough details to help the Church appear open and transparent to some extent, but doesn’t share so much that it just raises more questions and doubts. The newsroom page also explains why early Saints felt it was acceptable to practice polygamy, but doesn’t try too hard to convince the reader that polygamy was ok. I’ve taken this as a model for our Mormon badges. I think our mission isn’t to battle controversy by convincing people, but to battle misconception by informing people. So we can’t convince them that Polygamy was inspired by God, but we can make sure they know that we don’t practice it anymore.

4. One of the things I love about his class is that as students we do influence and help each other’s learning. Because we share all of our class work with each other, I feel more motivated to produce good work. Seeing what other students are doing to move their projects along gives me ideas for my project and motivates me to keep improving my work. And, it’s just fun to be able to see others’ ideas take shape.

Right now, I’m being influenced a lot by Katie Wilkie and Greg Williams, the edbadgers. Not only do they often help my group by sending us links related to our project, but it’s been helpful to see how they are structuring and producing their badges. I’ve been really impressed by how well-designed their badge blog is and by their promotion video to show to the 8th graders. I’d like to imitate that by redesigning the Mormon Badges blog (which needs a serious facelift) and producing a video to post on you-tube that will promote the Mormon Badges.

I’m also really interested in what the litmag group is doing. I worked on litmag staffs in highschool and on Inscape here at BYU for a couple winter semesters. I really like the idea of a literary magazine that’s more interactive. I think art and writing lose some of their vitality when their audience’s are limited just to elite groups of specialists. It will be interesting to see if their magazine can build a wider community of readers than just academics and English majors.

As the semester progresses, I want to focus more on learning how to get publicity and social proof. I also need to understand the technical details of web design and badge baking better.

Communication Breakdown/ Shameless Plug for my Poetry

In the digital age, we have more ways to communicate than we ever have before. Cell phones, email, Skype, social media. We have shared some great stories online and in class about how technology has helped us communicate. But sometimes there is still a communication breakdown. Online comments and texts are misinterpreted, pictures with ex-significant others get posted and tagged after the person has already moved on to someone new, there are trolling wars. No matter how much technology advances, communication is still hard work. 

This poem I’m working on isn’t about digital communication, but it is about the difficulty of communicating what we feel. When I reread it today it made me think of digital culture. With all the new technology, what is the best medium to express what we feel? Will those mediums be adequate?

Recipe for Love
Ellis Beth Clark Dyck

I wanted to woo you with food,
speak to your palate in passionate flavor.
I decided on a cake,
your mother’s recipe,
homemade butter cream frosting,
shaped like a heart. And then I thought,
what if it burned, what if you weren’t hungry,
what if you didn’t understand
this cake was my love for you?
What if my heart
spoke to yours in baking
and your tongue, teeth, esophagus
tasted, chewed, swallowed
without relaying the message?
What if your soft palate and lips
didn’t give a soft answer?
Delicious! I love you!
What if the masticated remnants of my love
passed through undigested,
never nourishing your blood and bones
with the surety that I love you wholly and completely?
What recipe, even from your mother’s cookbook,
Could measure out passion, affection, desire, and loyalty
In proportional quantities so that the sum
Of these ingredients was undying love?

Comments for Group CCC

Sorry I didn’t get these to you last week, I sort of didn’t realize that was when they were due.  I hope these comments are helpful:

What I liked:

·         A twitter account and blog for Angelina!  Nice use of transmedia.  I can see how this could help you guys develop her character and know how to write her in the novella.  Are you planning on using the twitter account and blog to generate publicity too, or is it just to help you guys write?

·         Your collaboration.  I can tell from the notes on your blog and Google doc that your team is already falling into a rhythm of bouncing ideas off of each other and changing those ideas together to make them better.  I noticed you aren’t afraid to voice concerns about possible weaknesses of other’s ideas, which is good.  That way you can keep each other in check.

·         I enjoyed reading your character and plot outlines so far.  I think this will be a fun project to read when it’s completed.

Suggestions

·         Do you have a plan for how to manage contributors outside the class?  What are your plans to recruit collaborators outside of class?  (I saw your Facebook page.  Is that working?)  What tasks will you assign them and how will you decide who to assign to what?  What will you do if someone takes too long or ignores the group plan for the plot?  Will you allow outside collaborators to suggest changes to the plot or characters?  I think it is important to think about these issues early on in the process so there is less confusion and you can find as many outside collaborators as you want.

·         What about compiling a guide for people who might want to write or edit part of the story?  You could use material you already have about plotlines and characters, but also add directions about specific guidelines and ways to contribute.

·         Since you are writing about a team of people with different personalities, I’d suggest looking for inspiration by reading books or watching movies that contain a team of characters.  The Italian Job is the first one that comes to mind.  See what you can learn about how to have characters with different personalities act believably.   Remember this paraphrased tip by Orson Scott Card: every character is a different person depending on who he or she is with.  So if you have one character who interacts with three others, you essentially have to imagine three characters (or three facets ) for that one character, one for Polly with James, one for Polly with Micro, one for Polly with Angelina, etc.  Anyway, don’t know how useful that quote is, but I think Card is right.

·         Have you done any research on how artificial reality can benefit people emotionally?  I think a little bit of research would help a lot in making your plot believable.

Reflections on 3 types of learning: peer to peer, professor to student, and mentored learning.

How do people learn most effectively?  As a student and a future teacher, I'm fascinated by this question.  So taking Professor  Burton's class and learning about badges on my own have been thrilling peeks into new educational models.  Badges often represent a peer learning model (like at Mozilla's Peer 2 Peer University) that seems in sharp contrast to the more top-down, professor to student model we are used to in traditional education environments like the university.  Both learning models have advantages.  Peer learning promotes initiative, independent thought, and collaboration with others. The professor to student model delivers high quality information and transmits knowledge from the valuable experience of an expert.  Professor Burton's class is a good mix of both learning models, combining the advantages of each.

One of the things I love about our Digital Culture class is that a lot of the discussion and homework for the class revolves around our relatively self-directed learning and the resulting connections we make and ideas we create.  We get to learn from each other and be inspired by each other's good ideas.  I'm really excited about our semester group projects which we design ourselves and about the chance to participate in other group projects on an advisory basis.  I've never had a final project that was so participatory and relevant-- people  other than me and my professor, if only my other classmates, are going to see my work, and hopefully some people outside my class will see it as well.  I've always enjoyed school, but I'm extra excited about my work for this class because I determine a lot of it for myself and I get to discuss it with others and get feedback.

But another of the strengths of the class is that we aren't just left alone to learn for ourselves.  Professor Burton's lectures introduce us to new ideas we wouldn't find so quickly on our own.  With his expert knowledge he provides context and direction for our self directed learning, helping to nudge our exploration and creation in productive directions.  One way he helps us learn is by establishing criteria so we know how to judge our work and so we're encouraged at the right time to move from the relatively cushy development stage to some formalization of our ideas.

In a sense, the Digital Culture class gives us the best of both worlds: initiative and creativity-building peer learning, and the context, direction, and expert knowledge offered by professor to student learning.  Today I've been thinking about a third learning model: mentored learning.  On Jessica Lee's recent blog post, "Badges and Adapting Education in a Digital World," which discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the open, often peer-based learning that happens online, "William" left a comment that got me thinking about mentored learning: 

When I look back at all my education, the experiences that most stick with me where the ones that produced something large, tangible and objectively valuable (having intrinsic merit) as a by-product, such as a research paper or thesis paper or production-grade computer program. The point being was that it was the extensive, mentored effort at delivering something significant through an end to end process of design, construct, review iterations that had to meet a real-world bar - this "labor" over time was the realization of the instruction.

This "supervised labor to delivery of significant things" is what seems to be missing from any easy and convenient open-house of content.

I'm not willing to throw out open or peer learning, but I think William makes a good point about the importance of mentored learning on significant projects. I'm currently writing a collection of poetry and working with a faculty member who helps me revise my poems.  I'm also taking a poetry class from this faculty member in which the students critique each other's work.  While I appreciate and learn from my classmates' feedback, my faculty mentor's feedback is invaluable because of her experience and knowledge from years of being a published poet.  I predict working with her will be one of the most significant experiences of my undergraduate education. 

Could mentored learning as well as peer to peer learning become part of the online learning experience and not just something available at a university?  With the resources available on the net, I think it could definitely be possible to connect with experts or experienced enthusiasts and set up meaningful mentored learning relationships with them online. That's probably one of the relatively untapped possibilities for online learning. It would be great to see a website aimed at connecting mentors and mentees. I can see how mentored learning could enhance and complement the valuable peer learning that goes on in many open online learning models.  A mentor could easily issue a badge to a learner who had completed a significant supervised project.

What do you think?  How could mentored learning enhance the online learning experience?  How could we use the Internet to make it happen more often?