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Morris, N., & Lambe, J. (2014). Studying a Mooc : a Guide. Retrieved from http://www.palgrave.com/resources/Product-Page-Downloads/M/Morris-Studying-a-MOOC/Studying-a-MOOC-Neil-Morris-James-Lambe.pdf How-to "free" guide book from Palgrave to help anyone prepare themselves to study a MOOC course. As MOOCs tend to appeal to learners with good digital study habits already - this will bring less technically savvy people familiarity with MOOCs as well as people who are not used to studying in an online environment the essential information that they need to know about the online features. It is extremely clearly written, easy to follow, with good advice in each section and not too long. It covers the A-Z of MOOCs from the learner perspective. It provides really useful hyperlinks for finding courses. (The only information not given is related to the copyright issues for user content.) It is a 'first' as far as I can tell in this sort of study guide. It would be useful to younger students (say highschool level) who have never taken an online course before or to older learners (over 30) who have good study habits but are not familiar with digital technology and online communication methods and etiquette and want to learn how to participate in MOOCs including discussion groups, etc. before they start. I thought that it would be a useful resource prior to starting the MALET programme as it gives a lot of practical advice that is relevant to all online learning.

The increasing use of screen readers on mobile devices means organisations must address the accessibility of their mobile content, Jonathan Avila, Chief Accessibility Officer at SSB BART Group writes. The comparison of Google to Apple is rather interesting.

I thought I could read my students' body language. I was wrong. As an experiment, I used Socrative when I taught binary numbers. What I learned forever changed my views on being a better teacher. Formative assessment is done as students are learning. Summative assessment is at the end (like a test). This is a very interesting link about some online (formative) assessment tools. Plickers looks very interesting.

Steven Novella discusses a survey of how younger people reason and evaluate online information sources. This Stanford University study looked at 7,804 student responses across 12 states, divided among middle school, high school, and college students. The goal of the study was to see if these students could distinguish reliable sources of information from fake or unreliable sources.

Another "round-up" of articles, but a great place to go for more information on game-based learning.

While not directed to any article in particular, I love Edutopia as being a site to go to for education news and resources. This page links out to a variety of great articles relating to game-based learning.

When reading the literature review about mobile gaming it got me thinking more about online gaming programs to use in the classroom. I did some digging to find this article about the effectiveness of games in education.

Although it's based out of Taiwan, this study used performance standards created by the International Society for Technology in Education and looks at six subscales for technology integration in the classroom with one of them being an ethical piece. The established scale examines the existing concerns for technology, pedagogy and professional development at once with a new addition of ethical and safety issues, which demand growing attention in teachers of future generation.

Although it's a few years older, I think this article could be a good starting point for reviewing the various uses of technologies in the K-12 setting.

Virtual reality is catching on as a tool in medicine. The technology has been used to treat phobias, reduce pain and even help doctors perform surgery. Now virtual reality is being tried as a way to help people with disabilities explore the world that might be difficult or impossible in real life.

By Sue Gregory in New Media and Digital Culture. Learning theories have been around for more than a century, however, the theories of how adults learn are relatively new, having only been developed in the past 50 years. These theories are all based

"Not every classroom can get a laptop every day, so [devices like smartphones], even if you have to pair up, become something useful for teachers," Halla says. "The number of kids with phones has just been blown out of the water the last couple of years," he adds. This is an interesting take on the use of smart devices in learning. Being at an institution where we still have 30+ computer classrooms and over 250 open access computers - 100 of which are 24/7/365 access - I wonder what the future of these sorts of labs hold for students and whether they will even be a part of their learning process.

Reference Gasevic, D., Kovanovic, V. Joksimovic, S., Siemens, G. (2014). Where is Research on Massive Open Online Courses Headed ? A Data Analysis of the MOOC Research Initiative. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 15(5), 135 -176. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1954/3111

Marian, this is an involved research report on MOOC research initiative! Specifically, the issue of low course completion and high degree of student attrition was often pronounced as the key challenge of MOOCs & that understanding factors that affect student engagement, completion and success in MOOCs is a complicated psychological process. Theory of planned behavior (TPB) - used to study behavioral change - in the study's case, changing students intention to complete a MOOC and thus, increase their likelihood of course completion - it remains to be seen to what extent a student's intention can be changed if the student did not have an intention to complete a MOOC in the first place. What would be a reason that could motivate a student to change their intention in cases when she/he only enrolled in a MOOC to access information provided without intentions to take any formal assessments? Side note - are you aware of (or have you already taken) ESC's EDU-681111 Metacognitive Analysis: U Albany & Empire State College MOOC? Also, you may be interested in reading this article - Beyond MOOCs: Is IT Creating a New, Connected Age? EDUCAUSE Sprint 2013.

Guo, P., Kim, J., & Rubin, R. (2014). How video production affects student engagement: An empirical study of mooc videos. Proceedings of the First ACM Conference on Learning @ scale conference. Retrieved from http://pgbovine.net/publications/edX-MOOC-video-production-and-engagement_LAS-2014.pdf

Ho, A. D., Reich, J., Nesterko, S., Seaton, D. T., Mullaney, T., Waldo, J., & Chuang, I. (2014). HarvardX and MITx: The first year of open online courses (HarvardX and MITx Working Paper No. 1). Retrieved from http://ssrn.com/abstract=2381263 The report analyzes in detail the interaction between the students and courses and draws conclusions based on the findings and suggests further research. One of the insights that makes MOOCs quite different than traditional classroom courses is the usage patterns. The authors pointed out that "[n]ew metrics, far beyond grades and course certification, are necessary to capture the diverse usage patterns in the data. A simple comparison of grades and viewed content shows thousands of users who fit a range of profiles. Of particular interest may be those students who accessed substantial course content but did not participate in assessments." (Ho, et al., 2014, p. 3.)

To Marian: I never really paid that much attention to MOOCs until you presented all this information on them. I suppose distance learning and MOOCs are the wave of the future. I am going to have to learn a lot more about MOOCs to understand where higher education may well be going -- at least at the undergraduate level.

Marian: We have an unusual culture where I work. If there is work, it comes with a price. We have many faculty who feel that they need to be paid a lot more to develop in this platform model. 100 students in a course is hard for them to imagine, but much of the grading can be automated. I would like to encourage the use of MOOCs for a few reasons, but I have two that are of value to the education industry. The first is students who are unsure of their educational goals can take advantage of the free or very low cost access to content to see if the path is for them. Second, there seems to be an opportunity for increased enrollment. This is an area that many institutions across the nation are struggling with. Having so much more online availability and larger classes could be part of the solution.

What are Open Educational Resources (OERs)? Why should I care about OERs? What are some examples of OER projects? How has UNESCO supported OERs? What is the 2012 World Open Educational Resources Congress and what are its aims? What is the Paris Declaration? How can I get involved?