Change MOOQ

Blog post by Martin Weller, The Ed Techie, November 15, 2013, on Thrun's enlightening on MOOC learners failing to complete the courses.

Nice compilation in GlobalHigherED of bloggers' reactions (including Siemens) to Thrun's denunication of MOOCs for regular university students, November 15, 2013.

Lisa and Doris - a bit in the middle here about over-abundance of information for your next event... Otherwise, nice intro to GS and his work and his interest in SNA and analytics as ways to improve learning and how learning might operate outside the context of a siloed course

great background on George Siemens

I just signed up for this as it looks really interesting. A Professor at Duke, Cathy N. Davidson has created a MOOC about MOOCs and the future of learning, which also is part of a global initiative to examine this topic. Here's the link to the inside Higher Ed article about it: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/11/04/duke-u-professor-plans-massive-collaborative-effort-tackle-challenges-facing-higher Davidson is the co-founder of the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Alliance and Collaborative, or HASTAC. The MOOC will track the origins of what has become accepted features of higher education, from majors and graduate programs to grades and multiple choice tests, and evaluate new forms of teaching and learning. At the same time, students in affiliated face-to-face courses in disciplines as different as African and African-American studies, gender and sexuality studies, and film studies will contribute to a centralized wiki. The end result could be a massive collection of ideas on how to change higher education.

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." "

interesting interview with Philipp Schmidt, now at MIT, on co-creating, peer to peer support. Schmidt founded P2PUniversity.

Lisa and Doris - Read Chapter #3

Interesting POV about how lack of bridging assistance in MOOCs may fall unduly heavily on learners who are not able to integrate ideas with their life experience. Quote: "Daphne Koller, promotes the "personalized" learning that a MOOC can offer. Coursera can track how each learner uses the course material and how his or her quiz performance correlates with given in-course behaviors. With that information, Coursera can guide students toward the activities that will best help them to learn: additional video lectures or a specific discussion-forum thread. I cannot customize each student's education as precisely as Coursera claims it can. But I can personalize it, in the sense that I can help students connect what they learn in my class to who they are as people-their biographies, aspirations, shortcomings. MOOC creators assume that learners' intellects are detachable from their broader life circumstances. You take the MOOC, but you're on your own in figuring out how your learning fits into the rest of your life-or how it might require changing your life. That's fine if you just need to know about analog circuits to work on a specific project. But people come to universities at all ages, with unsettled identities and life plans, or with plans that education itself will unsettle."

Great videos on e-learning with such topics as: How does one get started as Instructional Designer? Does Social Media Selling Works? How to build your digital footprint. What's your learning style? Knowledge Creation Digital Age. Embrace the digital communication age. What we're learning from online education. The educators is as site that has resources and blogs about learning. You can spend days here!

Very interesting process map on how to argue with research results, Grant Wiggins' blog

Interesting explanation of how the CCK MOOC would be evaluated for research purposes and used to inform and redesign future courses.

Godin has started Krypton learning groups for f2f gatherings. Interesting development. Looks like learning bubbles to me.

article by Alan Finder in NYT, September 2013--reprinted in Tampa Bay Times October 21, 2013 Excerpt: "they share several main elements. Courses are available to anyone with access to the Internet. They are free, and students receive a certificate of completion at the end. With rare exceptions, you cannot earn college credit for taking one of these courses, at least for now. "

Jenny explains her experiences with cMOOCs and xMOOCs, and the difference between them as xMOOCs go beyond the didactic video lecture approach. She basis her blog on her experiences taking two xMOOCs and the several cMOOCs she has taken and designed and led. One of the biggest differences is that cMOOCs were designed to test out a theory, connectivist theory, while xMOOCs are not theory based. As a result, xMOOCs are convened on a designated platform, while cMOOCs are designed as massive networks, or to create them. Going forward, she believes that the route will depend on our fundamental beliefs of what education is for.

Interview of Kio Stark by Howard Rheingold on interdependent learning, April 2013. See video (15 minutes). Kio Stark wrote a handbook on how to do in(ter)dependent learning--"Don't Go Back to School" From post: "But one important change has erupted in recent decades, enabled by the advent of digital media and networks, that alters the traditional power equation between holders and seekers of knowledge: schools no longer hold the monopoly on learning. When I want to learn how to do something, I can find a video, an Instructable, a blog post, a peer-learning platform. Schooling is still essential for many - perhaps for most - but for independent learners, tools we didn't dream of a generation ago are available through the nearest web-connected device." Excerpt: In our brief video interview, I talked with Stark about what she learned from independent (more properly, we should probably call them "interdependent") learners like "Cory Doctorow about learning to be a working writer, Dan Sinker about learning to code, Quinn Norton about learning neurology and psychology." I suspect that Anya Kamenetz, Kio Stark, and the Peeragogy Project are forerunners of an entire nascent genre about how to learn anything outside of formal schooling.""

Business models for innovation in higher education

article in eCampus news that Bronwyn Stuckey identified on Facebook for me on what MOOCs don't have but should. I had never thought about the physical lack of immersion in MOOCs. "There is a totality of experience in the classroom that sitting at home with a laptop cannot deliver. In other words, the 'event boundaries' that generate and support the appropriate cognitions, expectations and behaviors for learning are lacking. I suspect some of this problem could be overcome by using wholly-immersible virtual reality delivery methods, where there is a proper 3d perspective present, and even avatars of the other students too (groups contexts are important for learning - think transactive memories)."