Thanks for placing the post with so much clarity and thanks all for commenting on what you do to catch up. This are practical ideas a learner can follow and try to implement.

I want to tell you Nancy that I came here from the EVO09 moderators training session, your post was quoted or those who felt burning up. When I saw your name I happily came to read.

The situation I have in Mexico with my teenagers is that they are not used to receive email so when they receive 6 or 7 emails in a row they get scared, shout laud “overload” and start to retreat. They don’t like to read. They also don’t respond to participating with mics, they refuse to take the mic even among peers. They are so used to write in their strange language with signs and icons at hotmail chat that is almost impossible to get them writing a few lines in a row.

If you come up with an idea using audio, just listening, please let me know. The kids are going that way and if someone finds a solution or discovers how to deliver content in audio form, I bet he or she will get rich!

See you around! Besos. Maru

As I think of the strategies I use in terms e.g., make an appointment with myself, set the timer, scan rather than read, skip over past portions, jump in at the current place only looking back when necessary for context or clarity, and still I often feel overwhelmed and rushed with little time for thinking about what I am reading – which means I too often .. shoot from the hip .. or should I say “lip”. Bron’s blog strategy is a wonderful help and still I have to READ all the content I consume and metabolize.

Here’s a real time scenario (from last week) I spent 11 hours on the road driving this past week (not counting airport time) and while I listened to other content on my iPod (been reading, uh,listening to the book, Influencer by Patterson) … I had no way to use that time to catch up on CCK08. I remembered your question and wondered … what if we could have an audio feed on a site? Something I could either stream on my computer, download and listen to on my iPod and wouldn’t it be great if it pushed to the mobile phone so I could have it no matter whether I am connected via computer?

Does anyone else find reading as the way to consume difficult to fit into a schedule? As I’ve been writing this post an idea popped for me. We may actually have a solution like this in Utterli (http://www.utterli.com/)? Would it be of as much value to others as I think it would be to me? Would people be willing to use it?

We say yeah, yeah, we’ll manage. But when it hits, I think the “flee” instinct kicks in! LOL

Leigh, I wonder what would change in our workshop and course designs if we stopped and included specific catch up phases? There is a niggling thought in that for me, in that when I design and lead a workshop, I am rarely remunerated for the number of hours I put in, so this feels too like “adding more work.” I hate to admit it. I applaud your intent to limit your time in facilitating the FOC08 course. I don’t think I have your discipline!

This leads to your observation, Shirley, about having/practices strategies overall as learners. One course won’t solve that, but I love the idea of the topic as a focus for both course designers, facilitators and learners to develop those practices!!

Sue, thanks for reminding me that I did not reference the two courses, and that context would have been helpful in the course. I’m going to go back and edit the post and include links. From a design perspective, how much integration do we want to do/can we do, and how much is simply making the flow available and people making choices about the flow? I think the tag for both of the courses alluded to in this stream have been a really interesting “window in” on the courses for me, but i have not mustered the time and discipline to make a coherent dive into them. So I just catch snippets, like Bron’s post that stimulated me to write this post. So the idea of subgroups appeals to me.

And yes, one at a time – what a SENSIBLE strategy!! LOL

While email forums and discussions boards help in some ways what would help the most is if all the RSS feeds from the participants posts are brought into the one location where participants could easily read each others posts, comment and reflect. This way the group could work easier as a community to learn. Takes a bit of coordination and use of the same tags but can work.

Obviously with Leigh’s course this is easier to achieve however with the sheer number of people doing CCK08 I would try and set up a community with a smaller subset of the participants.

My only other thoughts are after doing two very intensive online projects in the past year — I personally think it is better to do one course and do it really well since two could quite easily be too much.

One thing I really like about the Connected Futures workshop was that there was specific mention of what to do (or not do) if you were time challenged.

But I suspect that learners ultimately need strategies that work for them and cannot rely on others to solve the problem, but maybe it is something that people can learn. Perhaps there should be an online course on Catch up Strategies for Online course – or coping with Information Overload in the Digital World.