Group items tagged

Article identified on Stephen Downes' home page, Juy 20, 2012. Excerpt "Although MOOCs share the common characteristics of being large courses open to anyone, there are two main types, one called an "x MOOC," and another called a "connectivist MOOC." The companies and partnerships that fall into the "x MOOC" include Coursera; an MIT and Harvard partnership called EdX, and a new venture founded by three roboticists called Udacity. Other universities follow a connectivist MOOC model developed by George Siemens, Stephen Downes and Dave Cormier in 2008. What's the difference between the two? Connectivist MOOCs are more social and focused on deriving meaning of the learning experience with others, Virginia Commonwealth's Becker said. And they allow students to participate through blogs, RSS feeds and other decentralized methods, said Downes, a senior researcher for Canada's National Research Council. By contrast, x MOOCs emphasize content mastery, centralizes courses on one website and uses automated grading tools to support hundreds of thousands of students. But regardless of the category, MOOCs as a whole will change how universities offer courses, Downes said. And they're not going away. "Universities can't just keep doing what they're doing and hope this whole online thing goes away," Downes said."

Master's degree using MOOCs at Georgia Tech in computer science--interesting comments in the discussion

Article on Autar Kaw, mechanical engineering professor at USF in Tampa. He won the professor of the year award from Carnegie Foundation in 2012. "As a pioneer in open courseware resources, Kaw is mindful of the impact that massive open online courses (MOOCs)--those in which students participate through the Internet--will have on learning and higher education. According to Kaw, the most effective MOOCs will include thoughtful interaction between students and their instructor. If MOOCs fail to include this component, "we will start losing a lot of students. Many students will get lost in the material and that will be a travesty, especially for students from low-income families." "

Harold Jarche, learning expert, September 26, 2012

The New York Times examine the MOOC phenomena.

article by Cathy N. Davidson, The Chronicle Review, December 10, 2012 Excerpt: "The lab means to remake education from preschool onward, adding in such fabulous open-source learning experiences as Scratch, a free online resource that has enticed more than a million kids to create and share animations, and mix and remix narratives and games while learning basic programming skills. In the words of Joi Ito, the dynamic new head of the lab, himself a famous college dropout, the key to 21st-century learning is "antidisciplinary," not just "interdisciplinary." Ito's goal is "a world of seven billion teachers," where everyone on the planet has something important to teach to someone else, and everyone does." Excerpt: "Read against Wired UK's story, the opportunity Forbes describes seems revolutionary but, in its DNA, is the opposite. The MOOC model depicted here ossifies the already outdated mission of 19th-century education. Far too many of the MOOC's championed in the article use talking heads and multiple-choice quizzes in fairly standard subject areas in conventional disciplines taught by famous teachers at elite universities. There is little that prepares students for learning in the fuzzy, merged world that Negroponte sees as necessary for thriving in the 21st century. Making courseware "massive" may dangle the eventual possibility of trillion-dollar profits (even if they have yet to materialize). But it does not "fix" what is broken in our system of education. It massively scales what's broken."

interesting blogpost by John Sui Fai Mak, 3.29.13 on mentoring in MOOCs and networked environments. Brings up how much control a mentor should/could have on an independent learner who is either proceeding within an organizational or network construct online.

Wonderful HoTEL (Holistic Approach to Technology Enhanced Learning) visualization of learning theories from key concepts, to learning paradigms or 'world views,' learning theorists, and scientific disciplines, from Edudemic.com. The online learning facilitator role that we are most familiar with functions primarily in communities of practice, social constructivist settings, and connectivist networks including MOOCs

excellent article by Terry Anderson, Athabasca University--Canada's Open University, October 2003, IRRODL, on creating optimum learning conditions online. Makes me want to see an update.

I like this post by Cathy Davidson at HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory), August 4, 2012 on offering students the chance to design the MOOC to express what they are learning in in the form of online course offerings.

Leveling Up research project makes me think about all the benefits of being associated with a purpose driven online adult group. It may start out as a research group, one may participate to help deliver an outcome/product, but the growth that one can experience through reflection, application, adaptation, and sharing with the 'team' is where the learning occurs on an individual basis. How can one do a better job of harvesting the learning collectively for the group and for exporting (for whatever reason) to other audiences? Excerpt: "Our gaming cases center on the learning resources and supports that surround specific game communities. The experience of games is bigger than the designed games themselves. Players think about and work on games before, during, and after play. They develop complex relationships to their play, write detailed theory about their play, invest in their gaming reputations, and bring all of this into other social contexts. All of this "other" activity is known as the metagame, and designing for it is a key consideration in the crafting of games. More explicitly, gaming activities that include a social media component, span physical and virtual space, leverage the social labor of players in ways that reinforce and extend the experience into the everyday lives of the players."

Interesting assessment of MOOCs and push toward MOOLEs on EdTechDev (developing educational technology), early May 2012 Lisa Lane shows up in comments advocating for her SMOOC (small to medium open online course) on pedagogy. Need to check it out. She has a lot of cred with me!

article in Academic Matters, the Journal of Higher Education, by Stephen Carson and Jan Philipp Schmidt, May 2012 issue. Excerpt: "Expertise will be earned and maintained through ongoing lifelong education, not conferred once and good for life. Open learning systems offer the possibility for the kind of continuous lifelong learning that will be necessary as the pace of technological and scientific knowledge development increases. Like athletes, learners will not just learn once, but will maintain a level of performance ability in their chosen field through ongoing study and participation in learning communities."

Look at this list of eight skills needed by a community manager. It's a different take.

Book about online courseware case studies at MIT, Yale, Columbia, Berkeley, etc. with the best known at MIT by Taylor Walsh, 2011, Princeton Press

Blog by John Sui Fai Mak on #Change 11 where he refers to an article by Zimmerman. I believe this excerpt is important for eCH schools teaching their students because of the increasing reliance on online classes. Excerpt: "Traditional teaching methodology designed to educate through the assumptions of the past is no longer viable for more recent generations. The development of learning strategies, time management, goal setting, self-evaluation, self efficacy and intrinsic beliefs are key processes in promoting more self-regulated individuals who are capable of succeeding in the school context and in life (Zimmerman, 2002). Self regulatory processes as part of strategic learning that fosters reflection are teachable and are regarded as responsible for the increase of students' level of motivational performance (Zimmerman, 2002)."

Social Networked Learning in Complex Information Environments by George Siemens, Slideshare, January 13, 2012, presented at American University at Society for Learning Analytics Research Fabulous overivew of social networked learning. 1/4 the students in HE took at least one online class in Fall 2010

Preview of Google PLus's value to HE Excerpt: "Facebook does allow some selective sharing, but doing so is difficult to master. As a result, many professors have decided to reserve Facebook for personal communications rather than use it for teaching and research. "I don't friend my students, because the ability to share is so clunky on Facebook," says Jeremy Littau, an assistant professor of journalism at Lehigh University. "This gives us ways to connect with people that we can't do on Facebook." In Google Plus, users can assign each new contact to a "circle" and can create as many circles as they like. Each time they post an update, they can easily select which circles get to see it. B.J. Fogg, director of Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab and a consulting faculty member for computer science, says he plans to use Google Plus to collaborate on research projects: "Probably every project in my lab will have its own circle." Mr. Littau is even more enthusiastic. He posted an item to his blog on Thursday titled: "Why Lehigh (and every other) University needs to be on GPlus. Now." "I want to start using this in my class next term," he says, adding that he aims to expose his students to the latest communication technologies in all of his classes. He plans to try the video-chat feature of Google Plus, called "hangouts," to hold office hours online. The new system allows up to 10 people to join in a video chat. Mr. Littau may also hold optional review sessions for exams using the technology. "I can host chats a few nights a week," he says."

Slide show by Harold Jarch on PKM--personal knowledge management--uses systems theory to show how we learn on mega (society), macro (organization), and micro (person) levels. (February 2010) It seems to me that a large part of a MOOC's value is forcing people to build a personal knowledge management process. They might have been able to ignore such a need before enrolling in a MOOC but cannot manage the avalanche of material otherwise. Not only do they need to become better organized in their seeking (this is where the MOOC departs from the day to day personal/professional learning sequence since it aggregates the begining content for them and continues to aggregate the work of MOOC participants), they then need to make sense of it (here again the social filtering and assessment are very helpful), and share their findings/unique perspective. As feedback is received, it motivates the first learner to keep trying to go forward. We all need an alliance of informed and thoughtful folks to keep up with the speed of change. The tools developed in the course of the MOOC can then be the core of PKM. This slide show also makes me realize that ALL online learning communities require some type of PKM and if one doesn't have a regular method for pulling information in and pushing tentative or firm opinions/conclusions out, full value cannot be realized.

Very interesting blog post by David Griffiths, July 4, 2012. It's interesting because he took the release of an analysis of American Intelligence in Afghanistan and used it to surface issues in online CoPs. Excerpts: "What I find interesting is that I have had very few conversations where organisations have described their need for CoP to be driven by a need to become more dynamic, agile or adaptive - a major concern for organisations today ..." "Many CoP are far too large, much like a sprawling metropolis, it is difficult to find the boundary for the community; this results in low levels of trust and sub communities that create their own 'neighborhoods' with interesting sub cultures. Others are devoid of purpose, well intentioned in their conception, but reduced to a shell, tumbleweed blowing down dried up knowledge flows; a creaking sign blows back and forth over the community portal:" "This CoP was presented as a panacea for problem solving, but it was built upon community leaders who were chosen by the organisation for their high level of expertise, which in this case also meant they had been with the organisation for a long period of time. I was left to wonder whether this was a community at all, or whether it was just a problem solving network. I asked how they surfaced new ideas, how they encouraged variety, how they used signals from the front line to make wider strategic or operational decisions? Did they use the community to monitor the type/nature of problems that were emerging and how community leaders were responding? Were the problems signalling disturbances in the environment that required a strategic response?" "The lesson to be learned for those operating CoP in organisations is to by all means use community 'leaders', but use them not as community police, or regulators, but as catalysts to surface relevant intelligence for the organisation. I would argue that you will start looking for different types of people, with differe