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This, to me, signifies the success of a cMOOC: "Our study also shows that top ten nodes with the highest in-degree were primarily hashtags. This suggests that people were connecting around thematic markers of common interest, referring to them and making them popular. In fact, thematic analysis of the same dataset confirms that the learners were more focused on the topics of interest, rather than those suggested by course facilitators, and that those topics emerged quickly in the course, and were maintained by the groups of people that adopted them." Fascinating paper; if you're interested in cMOOCs don't miss it.

Icon I have talked in the past about how we as a society are developing a new multimedia language (and in the process, reshaping what 'language of thought' theories could possibly mean). We are seeing more and more evidence of this, beginning with this lead story. It's a great set of thought-experiments on how authors could respond to specific audience needs with more useful and informative multimedia responses. Do they work? Yes - as Poynter points out, the most popular features on the New York Times web site were interactives and multimedia, not stories. And the upstart (and excellent) news site Quartz has just launched Atlas, a site for charts and graphics. We won't recognize that we think of as 'learning content' in just a few years, as we move beyond texts and courses and toward engaging and interactive multimedia.