Building a WordPress Syndication Hub

One way of teaching via a connected learning approach is that learners do their work in digital spaces outside of the course site and the institution owned servers but in personal hosted blogs (Domains of Ones Own), free hosted blogs, and social media sites.

A connected course type hub we can build is in a WordPress site that aggregates content automatically via RSS Feeds using the Feed WordPress plugin.

Below are are examples Alan Levine has worked on / developed. He has also published a five part Feed WordPress 101 guide for building sites this way that is a reference we will use for this activity.

• Since 2010 open digital storytelling course DS106 has syndicated 60,000 blog posts, the current seen in the blog flow. By using tags and caregories, views are available for different courses and sections (e.g. Paul Bond’s current UMW course, one Alan Levine taught for a George Mason University course in 2014, another one Scott Lockman taught in 2012 for a Cyber History course at Temple University Japan).
• The Educational Technology MOOC (ETMOOC) led by Alec Couros, more than 500 blogs fed the hub.
• Project Community (The Hague University of Applied Science) offered from 2012-2015 for design engineering students.
• The Harvard Future of Learning Institute was built for an annual professional development event (Justin invited me on to the project).
• rmooc (Thompson Rivers University) Arts and Reconciliation.
• Thought Vectors in Concept Space (UNIV 200 at VCU) a community course of multiple sections taught by multiple faculty.
• Connected Courses (DML) the inspiration for this workshop, subscribed to 245 blogs. See also DML Commons
• Covering the Coverage 24 courses sydndicated, curated into a magazine for the VCU Great Bike Race Book project.

Others have used and are using this same approach. These examples are from an open google doc where we collected examples of connected courses:

• t509 Massive: The Future of Learning at Scale (2014, Harvard) http://t509massive.org/
• Toward Open Education (2014, British Columbia) http://bcopened.org/category/bloghub/
• Connected Courses (2014, DML) http://connectedcourses.net/
• Situating the Global Environment (2011-2014, Lewis and Clark College) https://sge.lclark.edu/
• UMW Abroad (2009- University of Mary Washington ) aggregates blog posts from students who travel abroad to study http://studyabroad.umwblogs.org/
• Intro to Sociology (summer 2014, VCU) http://rampages.us/socy101croteau/
• Sociological Theory (Fall 2014, VCU) http://rampages.us/sociologicaltheory/
• Class, Status, and Power (Fall 2014, VCU) http://rampages.us/socy321/
• English 692: Special Topics–Digital Culture(s) (Fall 2014, Chico State) http://www.kimjaxon.com/digital/
• Program for Online Teaching Certificate Class (2012-13)
• Public Relations Publications (Spring 2014, University of Oklahoma) http://jmc3433.adamcroom.com Adam’s blog posts on project: http://adamcroom.com/tag/jmc3433-2/
• Making Learning Connected CLMOOC (2014) http://clmooc.educatorinnovator.org/2014/blog-hub/
• 9x9x25 Challenge (2013 – Yavapai Community College) http://www.telswebletter.com/tag/9x9x25/
• Critical Skills 101 (2013 – Chalfonts Community College, Bucks, UK – as part of my MA in Education Dissertation) http://jamesmichie.com/criticalskills/
• ocTEL – Open Course in Technology Enhanced Learning (ALT, 2014 & 2013) http://octel.alt.ac.uk/
• LitSync  http://www.astengorama.com/LitSync/
• 20th-Century Russia (2014 Virginia Tech) http://blogs.lt.vt.edu/soviethistoryf14/
• Deep History and Domestication (2013 Virginia Tech – hybrid course, honors colloquium) http://blogs.lt.vt.edu/domesticate/
• Historiography (2014 Virginia Tech) https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/gradhistf14/
• Mr Gelston’s One Room School House (home schooled math) http://www.mrgelston.com/
• Semana i Course (Ken Bauer, September 26-30, 2016) at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Guadalajara and remotely.

A Guide to Building A Connected Course Hub

A five part series by Alan Levine, Building Connected Courses: Feed WordPress 101, provides all the details (and more) for creating one of these course hubs in WordPress.

• Basic Concepts of Syndication – and what to think about even before you touch that WordPress thing
• Installing and Setting up Feed WordPress – Minimal settings, and planning the way content is sliced, diced, and recombined
• Feeding the Machine – How to get RSS feeds into the aggregator without losing a finger
• Some Feed Magic – Optional ways to improve feeds from sites such as flickr, twitter, etc, creating a twitter archive, RSS Feed TLC
• A Few More Tricks – leveraging categories, adding attribution, setting featured images

There are quite a few parts to this, but many others have built their own hubs following this guide.

Screencast Demo Segment Domain Camp Intro Video

This activity was part of week 7 of Domain Camp.

Example for "Building a WordPress Syndication Hub":
https://extend-domains.ecampusontario.ca/