The first course carrying the name MOOC was offered in 2008, so this is new phenomenon. Second, the
pedagogical style of the early courses, which we shall call cMOOCs, was based on a philosophy of connectivism and networking. This is quite distinct from
the xMOOCs now being developed by elite US institutions that follow a more behaviourist approach. Third, the few academic studies of MOOCs are about the
earlier offerings because there has been no time for systematic research on the crop of 2012 xMOOCs. Analysis of the latter has to be based on a large
volume of press articles and blogs. Fourth, commentary on MOOCs includes thinly disguised promotional material by commercial interests (e.g. Koller, 2012)
and articles by practitioners whose perspective is their own MOOC courses.
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Connectivism and Networked Learning - 0 views
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Making Sense of MOOCs: Musings in a Maze of Myth, Paradox and Possibility | Daniel | Jo... - 0 views
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The term MOOC originated in Canada. Dave Cormier and Bryan Alexander coined the acronym to describe an open online course at the University of Manitoba designed by George Siemens and Stephen Downes. The course, Connectivism and Connective Knowledge, was presented to 25 fee-paying students on campus and 2,300 other students from the general public who took the online class free of charge (Wikipedia, 2012a).
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In 1841 the 'inventor of the blackboard was ranked among the best contributors to learning and science, if not among the greatest benefactors to mankind'. A century later, in 1940, the motion picture was hailed the most revolutionary instrument introduced into education since the printing press. Television was the educational revolution in 1957. In 1962 it was programmed learning and in 1967 computers. Each was labelled the most important development since Gutenberg's printing press.
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But first, we agree with Bates (2012) that what MOOCs will not do is address the challenge of expanding higher education in the developing world. It may encourage universities there, both public and private, to develop online learning more deliberately, and OER from MOOC courses may find their way, alongside OER from other sources, into the teaching of local institutions.
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With such support MOOCs provide a great opportunity to develop new pedagogy. In a world of abundant content, courses can draw from a pool of open educational resources (OER) and provide their students with better and more varied teaching than individual instructors could develop by themselves. The University of Michigan (2012) (which made history by using OER from Africa in its medical school) uses OER extensively in its Coursera course Internet History, Technology and Security. UC Berkeley (2012) draws extensively on OER in its course on Quantum Computing.
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teaching methods 'are based on very old and out-dated behaviourist pedagogy, relying primarily on information transmission, computer-marked assignments and peer assessment'.
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Another myth is that computers personalise learning. Bates (2012) again: 'No, they don't. They allow students alternative routes through material and they allow automated feedback but they do not provide a sense of being treated as an individual.
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He notes (Siemens, 2012) that 'MOOCs are really a platform' and that the platforms for the two types of MOOC that we described at the beginning of the paper are substantially different because they serve different purposes. In Siemens' words 'our cMOOC model emphasises creation, creativity, autonomy and social networking learning.
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pedagogy is not a familiar word on the xMOOC campuses. It is a myth that professors distinguished by their research output are competent to create online courses without help.
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This, in turn, will put a focus on teaching and pedagogy to which these institutions are unaccustomed, which will be healthy. At the same time academics all around the world will make judgements about the intellectual quality and rigour of the institutions that have exposed themselves in this way.
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With such support MOOCs provide a great opportunity to develop new pedagogy. In a world of abundant content, courses can draw from a pool of open educational resources (OER) and provide their students with better and more varied teaching than individual instructors could develop by themselves.
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shared by Diane Gusa on 16 Jun 11
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The Ed Techie: Using learning environments as a metaphor for educational change - 0 views
nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/...or-for-educational-change.html
module 2 21stcenturylearning e-learning WEB2.0 education learning_environments
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It has often been noted that when a new technology arrives we tend to use it in old ways (eg Twigg 2001), before we begin to understand what it really offers
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t has often been noted that when a new technology arrives we tend to use it in old ways (eg Twigg 2001), before we begin to understand what it really offers
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t has often been noted that when a new technology arrives we tend to use it in old ways (eg Twigg 2001), before we begin to understand what it really offers
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It has often been noted that when a new technology arrives we tend to use it in old ways (eg Twigg 2001), before we begin to understand what it really offers. So, for example the television was initially treated as ‘radio with pictures’
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In an attempt to move towards the possibilities offered by a completely digital, online world, they have started with the education model we are familiar with. They are, in effect, a virtual classroom, or course, with content (which map onto lectures) laid out in a linear sequence with discussion forums linked to this (mapping onto tutorials). In one LMS (the open source Bodington system, http://bodington.org) they even went as far as to make this mapping explicit by making the interface a building which you had to navigate to your lecture room.
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Heppell (2001) argues that “we continually make the error of subjugating technology to our present practice rather than allowing it to free us from the tyranny of past mistakes.
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Daniel (1996) has argued that elearning is the only way to cope with expanding global demand for higher education, claiming that “a major university needs to be created each week” to meet the proposed demand.
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f we view our online learning environments not as analogies of how we currently teach, but rather as a metaphor for how we engage with changes required for a digital society, then this provides us with some insight in to how to tackle the issues above (and others).
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Siemens (2008) argues that “Learning theories, such as constructivism, social constructivism, and more recently, connectivism, form the theoretical shift from instructor or institution controlled teaching to one of greater control by the learner.”
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To learn is to acquire information Information is scare and hard to find Trust authority for good information Authorized information is beyond discussion Obey the authority Follow along
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Why would we seek to recreate the sort of learning affordances Wesch highlights in a virtual environment, when we are free to construct it however we wish?
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Arguably then there has never been a better alignment of current thinking in terms of good pedagogy – i.e. emphasising the social and situated nature of learning, rather than a focus on knowledge recall with current practices in the use of technologies – i.e. user-generated content, user-added value and aggregated network effects. Despite this, the impact of Web 2.0 on education has been less dramatic than its impact on other spheres of society – use for social purposes, supporting niche communities, collective political action, amateur journalism and social commentary.”
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"Tools such as blogs, wikis, social networks, tagging systems, mashups, and content-sharing sites are examples of a new user-centric information infrastructure that emphasizes participation (e.g., creating, re-mixing) over presentation, that encourages focused conversation and short briefs
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connectivism (Siemens 2005) places decentralisation at the heart of learning:"Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual. Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing"
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Wikipedia succeeds by decentralising the authoring process, YouTube succeeds by both decentralising the broadcasting production process, but also by allowing embeds within blogs and other sites, thus decentralising the distribution process
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Knowing how to link to and locate resources in databases and search engines is a skill for a decentralised information world. The result is that online references are forced into an existing scheme, which has an inherent preference for physical resources. The traditional reference is often provided in papers, when it is the online one that has actually been used because the referencing system is biased towards the paper version.
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‘eduglu’
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SocialLearn has been conceived as a deliberate attempt to discover how learners behave in this sphere, how to develop the appropriate technology and support structures, what pedagogies are required and what are the business models for education in a disaggregated educational market.
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E Pedagogy - 2 views
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E-Pedagogy: Does e-learning require a new pedagogy? 5 The emergence of e-learning As part of the technological revolution, the use of e-learning, or blended learning, isincreasing. This is particularly true of Higher Education, which offers most programmespartly or wholly online. In the future, e-learning is likely to be more widely used in thetertiary and school sectors. Another driver for e-learning is life-long learning, whichrequires on-going training and re-training of the adult workforce.In many cases, e-learning is delivered through a virtual learning environment (VLE),which is a custom built environment designed for online learning. VLEs, such as Blackboard and Moodle , typically provide all of the software tools required for onlinelearning such as communication and file sharing facilities. These environments are oftenmodelled around the traditional campus, providing ‘virtual staff rooms’ and ‘onlinecommon rooms’. E-portfolios provide the digital equivalent to the traditional paperportfolio; these typically provide online storage for a range of media types (such asdrawings, photos and videos). Dedicated e-assessment systems, such as Questionmark ,facilitate large-scale online testing, providing many of the question types that arefamiliar to teachers.Some academics have pointed out the potential of e-learning to improve current practice.Garrison and Anderson (2003) write:“E-learning has significantpotential to alter the nature of theteaching and learning transaction.In fact, it has caused us to face upto some of the current deficienciesof higher education, such as largelecturers, while providing somepossible solutions or ways tomitigate these shortcomings. Seenas part of pedagogical solution, e-learning becomes an opportunity toexamine and live up to the ideals of the educational transactiondescribed previously.” New learning opportunities The changing environment facilitates new kinds of learning. Teachers have traditionallyfocussed on content; indeed, many consider the identification and delivery of learningmaterial to be their prime role. But it has been argued that the traditional skill of contentcreation is redundant in the information-rich learning environment. Some of this contentis very high quality, even world class, and certainly superior to a hurriedly producedhandout of the type often used by busy teachers.It has been suggested that the contemporary teacher should be more “guide on the side”than “sage on the stage”. The ready availability of information makes facilitation moreimportant than direction . The pedagogic issue is not too little information but too much:the contempora
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changing learning landscape poses fundamental epistemological questions about thenature of knowledge and how it is acquired. Dede (2008) writes: “In the Classicalperspective, knowledge consists of accurate interrelationships among facts, based onunbiased research that produces compelling evidence about systematic causes […]Epistemologically, a single right answer is believed to underlie each phenomenon […]The epistemology that leads to validity of knowledge in Web 2.0 media such as Wikipedia is peer review from people seen, by the community of contributors, as having unbiasedperspectives. Expertise involves understanding disputes in detail and proposingsyntheses that are widely accepted by the community
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hatever new theory of learning emerges in thenext decade, it will likelybuild upon thesepedagogie
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George Siemens introduced this theory in his paper Connectivism: Learning as networkcreation (2004) to address “the shortcomings of behaviourist, cognivitist andconstructivist ideologies”.Connectivism conceptualises knowledge and learning as a network, consisting of nodesand connections. Knowledge, at any point in time, is a particular (probably temporary)configuration of nodes and connections (a sub-network). Learning creates newconnections between existing nodes (changes to existing knowledge) and/or creates newnodes (entirely new knowledge). Learning, therefore, is about network (node andconnection) creation.His theory differentiates between data, information, knowledge and meaning: • Data : raw elements • Information : data with intelligence applied • Knowledge : information in context and internalised • Meaning : comprehension of the nuances, value and implications of knowledge.“Learning is the process that occurs when knowledge is transformed into something of meaning.”Connectivism embraces eight principles:1. Learning and knowledge rest in diversity of opinion.2. Learning is a process of connecting specialised nodes or information sources.3. Learning may reside in non-human applicances.4. Capacity to know is more important that what is currently known.5. Maintaining connections is needed for continual learning. (function() { var pageParams = {"origHeight": 1276, "origWidth": 902, "fonts": [3, 1, 2, 4, 0], "pageNum": 9}; pageParams.containerElem = document.getElementById("outer_page_9"); pageParams.contentUrl = "http://html2.scribdassets.com/4o2mjijnuo850n3/pages/9-7fefce237b.jsonp"; var page = docManager.addPage(pageParams); })(); Scribd.Ads.addBetweenPageUnit(9); E-Pedagogy: Does e-learning require a new pedagogy? left: 3830px; top: 276px; color
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Rote learning of factual information, which typifies behaviourism, isvalueless when students are one click away from Google and Wikipedia. The “teacher-knows-best” idiom of cognivitism is questionable in a time of “the wisdom of the crowd”.The constructivist approach (and, particularly, social constructivism) appears to be abetter fit for 21st century learning – but needs to be updated to embrace the modernlearning environment that includes virtual worlds such as Second Life. ‘Connectivism’,‘E-moderating’, ‘E-Learning 2.0’ and ‘Assessment 2.0’ may not provide the answer – butdo highlight the problems with the status quo and emphasise the need for a newapproach to teaching, learning and assessment
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shared by Irene Watts-Politza on 05 Jun 12
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elearnspace › Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives - 0 views
www.elearnspace.org/...immigrants-and-digital-natives
web2.0 Siemens Prensky digital immigrant native
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