Interesting blog post by Chris Collison on starting learning initiatives although he calls them knowledge management, posted July 16, 2013. They are more like variations on a theme than discreet choices. Nevertheless, they are important for enterprise learning facilitators to know about. 1. Top Down, Big Bang-"The challenge, of course is to find ways to keep people's attention - particularly when the board or senior sponsors have moved onto their next big bang." 2. Top Down, Bottom Up--"there is a deliberate effort to harness the energy and passion of workers at the front line, and to involve them in the programme, perhaps as group of advisors or a community of practice." 3. Slipstream--"Slipstreaming is about working in partnership with other initiatives or "transformation projects"" 4. Outside in--"Sometimes things just sound better when they are heard from the outside." 5. Viral--"you need to be prepared for it to be messy - it's a case of let a thousand flowers bloom, pick the best ones and do the weeding and gardening later. However, it's hard to imagine "lessons learned", "knowledge retention" or the creation of knowledge products spreading like wildfire." 6. Stealth--"build up your organization's capability to manage and share knowledge without them realising what your master plan actually is." 7. Copycat--" it's often successful to point to examples of successful KM from other organisations (competitors and customers are particular impactful) to create some "me too" or "me better" demand." 8. Pilot--"A pilot enables you to try the aspects of KM most likely to make a difference quickly, to build credibility locally, and to learn from each implementation." 9. Buffet Menu--"this approach works with the demand already present, and provides an array of tools and techniques which the organisation chooses from at will, once their "palate" is sufficiently educated." 10. Phoenix from the Ashes--"For a lot of organisation

article by Steven Mintz for the Chronicle of HE, July 22, 2013 Excerpt: "But the most important challenge involves a shift in the way students consume higher education. Instead of attending a single institution, students receive credit in multiple ways, including from early-college/dual-degree programs, community colleges, online providers, and multiple universities. Students are voting with their feet, embracing online courses and undermining core curricula, which served as a cash cow, by turning to alternate providers, and pursuing fewer majors that require study of a foreign language." Fifteen innovations: 1. e-advising 2. evidence-based pedagogy 3. decline of lone eagle teaching 4. optimized class time 5. earlier educational transitions 6. fewer large lecture classes 7. new frontiers for e-learning 8. personalized adaptive learning 9. increased competency based and prior learning results; 10. data driven instructions 11. aggressive pursuit of new revenue 12. online and low-residency degrees at flagships 13. more certificates and badges 14. free and open textbooks 15. public-private partnerships

A description of The Extended Mind by Richard Menary, editor. This excerpt below captures the debate: The environment has an active role in driving cognition; cognition is sometimes made up of neural, bodily, and environmental processes. Their argument excited a vigorous debate among philosophers, both supporters and detractors. This volume brings together for the first time the best responses to Clark and Chalmers's bold proposal. These responses, together with the original paper by Clark and Chalmers, offer a valuable overview of the latest research on the extended mind thesis."" I found this mention of the Extended Mind from a PBS Next Avenue blog post on 8 ways to make yourself smarter. To me, it suggests that if we place ourselves in learning situations such as networks or MOOCs, we will increase our cognition AND through the mix of intellectual connections/people we know there, we extend our minds considerably.

Amazon reviews of The Extended Mind collection of essays edited by Richard Menary and how far an accessible, reliable, and fully trustworthy object can "produce effects/results that are sufficiently comparable to those of components of the natural (internal, biological, original, classic) mind; in essence, it's about multiple realizability/functionalism." The examination of the extended mind, to me, relates to connectivism learning theory in how we expand our minds by belonging to learning networks that exponentially increase our knowledge or access to it through objects or people sharing their understanding.

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.

A blog by Geoff Cain on MOOCS and Connectivist Instructional design from October 27, 2012. Very interesting history of how this teacher of health information management used collaborative technologies to teach the class and help the students work online in a multi-model delivery method. See below for implications on any online courses and how OS it feels. There were weekly guest lecturers as well as presentations by the course facilitators. The real heart of the course was the groups of students who would meet virtually, using the collaborative tools of their own choosing, who would discuss the presentations and readings. These groups were self-organized, leaderless, and informal. Yet, there always seemed to be someone in the group who would carry the discussion back into the course to have questions answered by the facilitators. And the facilitators would sometimes participate in the discussions. This experience was highly interactive. There was interaction with the facilitators, the content and between the students. Interestingly enough, the research shows that interaction is one of the primary measures of success and retention in online classes: the higher the degree and opportunity for interaction, the more successful a course will be. This course completely changed how I think of course design.

A description of ubiquitous learning from the introductory chapter on Ubiquitous Learning by editors Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, 2008, University of Illinois Press. It explains how "ubiquitous computing can lay the groundwork for ubiquitous learning." ..."ubiquitous learning is a new educational paradigm made possible in part by the affordances of digital media." It conveys seven changes or moves of ubiquitous learning as follows: Move 1: To blur the traditional institutional, spatial and temporal boundaries of education Move 2: To shift the balance of agency Move 3: To recognize learner differences and use them as productive resource Move 4: To broaden the range and mix of representational modes Move 5: To develop conceptualizing capacities Move 6: To connect one's own thinking into the social mind of distributed cognition and collective intelligence Move 7: To build collaborative knowledge cultures

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.

History of MOOCS a la Stephen Downes and contrary to historians who start with OpenCourseWare at MIT and then jump to Stanford's MOOCs around 2009

fabulous post on networks; watch video by David Ronfeldt to understand TIMN framework

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.

Blog post by William Bowen, March 25, 2013, on movement towards online education. He would like more hard evidence to understand impact/success among other effects, tool kits (platforms), new mind-set to attempt online to reduce costs without adversely affecting educational outcomes, what we must retain in terms of central aspects of life on campus such as "minds rubbing against minds." Excerpts: "My plea is for the adoption of a portfolio approach to curricular development that provides a calibrated mix of instructional styles." ... "Their students, along with others of their generation, will expect to use digital resources-and to be trained in their use. And as technologies grow increasingly sophisticated, and we learn more about how students learn and what pedagogical methods work best in various fields, even top-tier institutions will stand to gain from the use of such technologies to improve student learning."

Review by Rob Jenkins on the Chronicle, 3.18.13, on why MOOCs are a massively bad idea for wait-listed community college students in California as proposed in new legislation there. Excerpt: "We know that succeeding in online classes requires an extraordinary degree of organization, self-discipline, motivation, and time-management skill. A simple Google search of "how to succeed in online classes" yields a plethora of Web sites-including many college and university sites-offering students such gems as "be organized," "manage your time wisely," and (my favorite) "stay motivated."" Excerpt: So to recap, California's plan (or to be fair, one senator's plan) is basically to dump hundreds of thousands of the state's least-prepared and least-motivated students into a learning environment that requires the greatest amount of preparation and motivation, where they will take courses that may or may not be effective in that format. Here's a prediction: Those students will fail and drop out at astronomical rates. Then the hand-wringing will begin anew, the system will pour millions more dollars into "retention" efforts, and the state will be in an even deeper fix than it is now. (Virtual cheating will probably run rampant, too, followed by expensive anticheating measures, but that's another blog post.) Look, I'm not a politician or an economist. I don't know the answer to California higher education's budget woes. But I'm pretty sure herding community-college students into MOOCs is not it.

Stephen Downes' blog Excerpt: "The process perspective asks whether the MOOC satisfied the criteria for successful networks. Of these, the most important are contained in what I call the Semantic Condition, which ensures that the MOOC remains a living system. The semantic condition contains four parts: autonomy, diversity, openness, and interactivity. The MOOC is assessed against each of these and a degree of compliance may be found."

The Connectivist Phenomenon, pre-course activities for the EDC MOOC on Slide Rocket. Great presentation and spirit depicted here.

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

white paper by the Brainyard on "The State of Community Management" for physical businesses

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.

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. "