An Organizational and Governance Model to Support Mass Collaborative Learning Initiatives

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for your submission, I found the article an interesting read and with value to a wider audience.

To further enhance the value of the paper I would encourage the authors to reflect on the following points:

The manuscript reads like a policy paper rather than an academic paper which is fine, so long as it is clearly identified as such.

A feel some additional literature is required to strengthen the context, need to conduct research in the area and contribution. There is a heavy reliance on the work of Zamiri, which I can understand to a degree but one has to be careful with this. 

The methodology has to be more explicitly discussed and justified.

The data analysis is rather descriptive and limited to rather basic testing which again is OK if this a policy paper, as a purely academic contribution there has to be work conducted on the data analysis.

The conclusion section would benefit from enhanced discussion of limitations, mitigation of those limitations and further recommendations.

I hope these comments help strengthen the paper. Thank you

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for the analysis and positive assessment of the paper.

Please find the annex.

Best regards

Majid Zamiri

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I would like to thank the editors for the opportunity to read the article. Congratulations to the authors of an interesting research topic implemented under the Erasmus + funding

I appreciate the efforts in preparing the text, although I have a few comments:

- I suggest re-editing the abstract (9-22), which in its present form is more of an introduction. There is no specific information on the results of the research and procedures. There are no conclusions that flow from the article.

- The last paragraph of the Introduction (129-136) is redundant, in my opinion. The reader does not need the article to contain such indications as to be found in the following sections. This is indeed important when editing longer texts, e.g., books, but it seems unnecessary in the case of articles. Proposes to remove.

- The authors formulate a research question and hypotheses. However, in the further part, especially in the summary, there is no explicit reference to them, and there is no transparent verification of it. For me, this part is not clear.

- The authors cite and describe various examples of initiatives/websites/portals (175-321), which is interesting, but they refer here too vaguely to the source, which is Wikipedia references number: 16,17,18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 26). I understand that Wikipedia can be described based on Wikipedia (163-174). However, other elements can be written by referring to the pages of these elements or other sources, as was done with SAP or Makerspace. Please correct this and do not only refer to Wikipedia.

- Definitely the weakness of the text is the high percentage of references / footnotes to the articles included (footnote number: 1,2,3,5,6,8,29,30,31,33,50,56). I assume that the authors dealt with the topic before, but I see an imbalance in references to the works of other authors here

- In my opinion, the text lacks a bit of a discussion of the obtained results and analysis concerning the broader context and work of other authors. There is an impression of no conclusion in the paper  - this is just a brief mention that the research will be continued in the future. In my opinion, this is not enough.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for the analysis and positive assessment of the paper.

Please find the annex.

Best regards

Majid Zamiri

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

General comments

The paper is lengthy; there is quite some potential for condensing the paper.

I am not an expert on collaborative networks, but it struck me that the authors refer to own prior work / publications very often.

What I missed entirely is the discussion of research on communities of practice and its relevance to CN / MCL resp. the OGM-MCL-model developed in this paper. Also, I missed reference / link to (online) bar camps for learning. In particular, I missed mention / discussion of:

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Wenger, E., Trayner, B., & Laat, M. de (2011, May 31). Promoting and assessing value creation in communities and networks: A conceptual framework (No. 18). Ruud de Moor Centrum,  Open Universiteit Nederland.

Hew, K. F. (2009). Determinants of success for online communities: An analysis of three communities in terms of members' perceived professional development. Behaviour & Information Technology, 28(5), 433–445.

Carlén, U., & Jobring, O. (2007). Perspectives on the sustainability of activities within online learning communities. International Journal of Web Based Communities, 3(1), 100–113.

Carlén, U. (2010). A professional community goes online - A study of an online learning community in medicine (Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Applied Information Technology). Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg. 

Hipp, K. K., & Huffman, J. B. (Eds.) (2003). Professional Learning Communities: Assessment--Development--Effects.

Hipp, K. K., Huffman, J. B., Pankake, A. M., & Olivier, D. F. (2008). Sustaining professional learning communities: Case studies. Journal of Educational Change, 9(2), 173–195. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-007-9060-8

 

Specific comments

In Lines 160ff:
Several examples of MCs are listed / characterized. It is not clear, what the basis is for labeling some of their features as "positive" or "negative". It appears that these label (charaterizations) provided one source of input to OGM-MCL. This appears cyclical.

Figure 2 / Line 593:
Not clear: what is the reference point for evaluating adequacy, feasability, etc. No reference to the overarching goals of an instance of MCL (e.g. EDENPC). It appears to me that this is needed.

Table 1:
How is "popularity" defined / calculated? Percentage of responses "A" / "SA"?

Table 4:
Inclusion of a key word on what the functions (F1 etc are about) would make this easier to read. Readers need to consult section 4.1.7

4.1.10:
To me, it was not clear what "adjustment" is / how this was done.  

Lines 1123-1125 not relevant.

 

Language / wording issues (not exhaustive)

Lines 35, 99, 131, 163, 299, 327, 384, 1112 (suggestion: "It is worth taking note" - several instances), 1176 ("underlining"? "suggesting"?);

 

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for the analysis and positive assessment of the paper.

Please find the annex.

Best regards

Majid Zamiri

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for your re-submission.

To further enhance the value of the paper I would encourage the authors to reflect on the following points:

I still feel the manuscript reads like a policy paper rather than an academic paper which is fine, so long as it is clearly identified as such. I do not feel the manuscript has clearly been contextualised as such. 

I would add some additional literature to strengthen the context, the need to conduct research in the area and contribution. There is a heavy reliance on the work of Zamiri, which I can understand to a degree but one has to be careful with this, avoid relying on this author. 

The methodology has to be more explicitly discussed and justified.

The data analysis is rather descriptive and limited to rather basic testing which again is OK if this a policy paper, as a purely academic contribution there has to be work conducted on the data analysis.

The conclusion section has been added to but I still feel the limitations and further recommendations need to be enhanced.

I hope these comments help strengthen the paper. Thank you

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Please find the annex.

Best regards

Majid Zamiri

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for submitting the re-edited version of your paper. I appreciate your efforts and the dynamic of the edition. I think your article is better in the context of the potential for publishing, but I still have some doubts. Please find my complaints and advice below.

- Thank you for editing the abstract according to my advice. However, I still miss there the detailed results. The authors formulate a research question and hypotheses. However, there is no transparent verification of it. Maybe now it is too late for you to reformulate the research methodology. I am aware of this fact, so please consider it in the future. Now you can only reformulate the paper (more about the model and policy than the typical research paper). 

- The discussion and conclusion section could still be improved with the synthetic and analytical discussion of other research results compared to other researchers. There are still no references to further studies or other authors in the discussion section.

 

- I am glad the article has been supplemented with references to other authors. Thanks for your reply, and I understand in a way to show such a large number of previous articles on the same topic in which one of the co-authors is an author. However, in my opinion, this is simply incompatible with the art of preparing scientific texts for this Journal. Simply speaking, it is too high a level of self-citation.

- Since this article is so closely related to the previous ones, there is no indication of how much new research is, how much continuation, and what part of the entire research is in this article.

 

I think some elements cannot be improved at this stage, but some aspects can still be done

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Please find the annex.

Best regards

Majid Zamiri

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf