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Howard Rheingold interviews George Siemens on MOOCs, May 2011, 21 minutes long video Youtube based, Week 1, September 12, 2011 EXCERPTS that intrigue me: At 2.12 into interview: "We encouraged people to create their own spaces. Our assumption was that educational institutions need to stop providing spaces for learners to interact, and allow learners to bring their spaces with them which means they have an archive. So people were setting up spaces in Second Life. We had the course syllabus translated into 5 languages, we had 2,300 people signed up to join. We let people do basically what they wanted." At 3:22 -"We wrap the social elements around the content. That's how traditional education is done. Here is your text, here is your readings, now talk about it. Our assumption was partly that we wanted the social interactions to actually produce the content which doesn't mean that we wanted to run through open meadows learning randomly. We still started off each week with readings, literature that we wanted them to engage in, videos, we wanted to keep everything open. We did have a closed journal but those were optional." 4:11 "The content isn't what you are supposed to master at the starting point. The content we provide you with at the start is the catalyst to converse, to form connections with other learners in the course, with other academics around the world, to use the content as a conduit for connections. Because once the course ends, the learning experience typically in a university setting typically stops. It's done. And even if you are really passionate about it, the university severs those connections on your behalf. But with the internet, those connections exist well past the course." But if your colleagues are blogging ... or are active on the internet, it's easy to stay connected. 6:05 HR question: In regard to Moodle are you using a Discussion Board or chat board, what parts of Moodle are you using? 6:12 "We are continuing to experime

The new science of social physics which is about the way human social networks spread ideas and transform those ideas into behaviors. Alex Pentland has a new book: Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread: The Lessons from a New Science that explores the patterns of information exchange in social networks, the ways humans are like bees, and how networks large and small can be tuned to increase exploration and community engagement.

The new science of social physics which is about the way human social networks spread ideas and transform those ideas into behaviors. Alex Pentland has a new book: Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread: The Lessons from a New Science that explores the patterns of information exchange in social networks, the ways humans are like bees, and how networks large and small can be tuned to increase exploration and community engagement.

Interesting blog by Cathy Davidson, HASTAC, 2.7.13 on what MOOCs are really saying about the desirability of college degrees. This excerpt speaks to who chooses MOOCs for learning. "If anything, MOOCs illuminate the terrible economic disparities of higher education (worldwide) by offering a cheap, massive alternative, not to those sitting in the classrooms of tenured professors, but for those who have no opportunity to be in those classes. MOOCs work for those, for example, seeking to retool their learning to prepare for new professions when their own no longer exists, who are seeking a second career, or who want to simply enjoy the benefits of learning but are not able to participate in actual face-to-face classroom learning. To have the time and be in a location where you can actually attend college physically is pretty rare in a world of two-career families, for example. And community colleges (where tenured professors are rare indeed) do a great job but they too require f2f engagement and cannot begin to serve all the students who want to take courses. "

Very interesting assessment of participation and learning in Change 11 MOOC on Learning in the workplace blog by Caledonian Academy researcher Colin Milligan, December 2012 For me, the recurring theme from this research was that massive courses do need management (of learners, and their expectations), or at least a recognition of the diversity of learner backgrounds, preferences, expectations and motivations that come together in a MOOC, that is then reflected in the design of the learning space which is constructed. I suppose the prevalent (c) MOOC philosophy is that learners should be left to their own devices and they will find their place in the emerging learning networks(anywhere on the spectrum from lurking to leading). We certainly saw interesting evidence of self-organisation, especially among those who engaged with the course through the facebook group, and the twitter chats. But our findings indicate that some users either didn't find these emerging networks (or at least didn't identify a network that suited them), or didn't recognise the central role that these networks play in leveraging the value of the course. While I don't advocate creating rigid structures, I do think there are some simple things that could be done to make sure MOOCs such as Change11 are accessible by the full range of prospective participants.

Great blog post by Jane Hart at Learning in the Social Workplace on Enterprise Community Management for managing and supporting learning within the workplace. It takes the comments by Donna LaCoy in 2012 discussion about how learning is not always a recognized component of work to show that in fact, someone has to manage and support such learning in ECM. Excerpt: his emerging practice is known as Enterprise Community Management (ECM), and is much wider than just supporting one small team or community of practice within an organisation, but is about having responsibility for building and sustaining a community across the whole of the organisation. In fact as ECM can include a significant range of responsibilities, in a large organisation it undoubtedly needs to be undertaken by a number of people. Screen Shot 2013-03-17 at 08.14.02ECM activities are likely to include integrating all social and collaborative initiatives into a common platform planning the new community's strategic approach promoting and supporting its use within training (both online and face-to-face, but particularly within induction/onboarding) helping to support its use for team knowledge- and resource-sharing supporting individuals as they build and maintain communities of practice and other interest groups developing an ongoing programme of both face-to-face and online activities and events - to encourage employee engagement on an ongoing basis helping to model social and collaborative working and learning behaviours as a major part of helping workers use the technology building the new personal and social skills required for productive collaboration in the organisation measuring the success of community in terms of business performance (not just in terms of social activity) Whoever takes on these ECM responsibilities is going to have a significant influence and impact on the business. But more than this, as face-to-face training goes out of fashion an

This is a chapter from a book written by the Ed Techie guy Martin Weller. What is interesting is how he detailed the new methods he used to write his most recent book. Many of the sources and practices that he engaged in for writing the second book did not even exist six years before when he finished writing his first book. These new aids include ready e-journal access, Delicious/social bookmarking, blogs, Youtube, Wikipedia, Slideshare, Scribd, Cloudwords and other sites, his own blog, social network especially twitter, Google alerts, etc. I am not sure how this relates to MOOCs and open landscape learning except he has so much more to manage, and gain from, in having a well developed dashboard of tools for seeking, sensing, and sharing.

Choose, Commit, Crash, Create, Copy, Converse, Collaborate which Quinn calls the 7 C's of natural learning. He urges designers to build systems that encourage learners to engage in this way. Some pushback in the comments on the use of a mnemonic as a stifling controlling device in the hands of a 'learning manager.'

Absolutely fabulous video (6 minutes) on Connected Learning and how we must change the outcomes based focus of education to awaken the curiosity of each learner and engage with them in learning how to learn given the distribution of resources, ideas, experts, etc. while preserving the learners' autonomy, access to diversity, openness to others for learning, interactivity with similar and diverse co-learners, etc. Film by Nic Askew at Soulbiographies.com interviewing McArthur Foundation person and two professors of education

Article by Adam Grant in the Atlantic, March 17, 2014. Who comes out ahead by helping others and serving as johnnie on the spot repeatedly. Excerpt: "Instead of carrying the burden alone, Allen had the wisdom to engage the whole group in helping. This may be the most valuable skill that a giver can develop. In the long run, inviting others to help may be critical to sustaining our own sanity. It may also be the best way to facilitate learning and growth."

Fabulous discussion by Siemens on how their DALMOOC that started recently was designed to solve certain problems such as the 1. students floundering for lack of timely support 2. Learners having limited engagement in developing knowledge together 3. Learners not getting to know each other 4. Availability of MOOC resources after course is finished 5. Lack of adaptivity of content for learners to start where they are and proceed with their interests

video that came up in CPsquare discussion 10/2013 on Open Social Learning in Higher Education

In trying to implement an open course for educators in West Africa, they found that everyone engaged, except the West Africans

Terese Bird and Grainne Conole are holding a webinar on A Pedagogical Look at MOOCs. Funded by the EU project eMundus, they are trying to map out patterns of open educational partnerships between institutions around the world. This webinar will take a pedagogical look at MOOCs. They chose 5 MOOCs, each corresponding to a primary learning approach. They then mapped each MOOC against the 12 dimensions Grainne identified. The blog goes on to attempt to do this with one MOOC as an example.

Excellent comparison of xMOOC and cMOOC and justification of cMOOC by who else, the cMOOC creator himself, Stephen Downes, February 11, 2015. Highly recommend it.