Group items tagged

History of higher ed...

Davidson is planning to run a MOOC soon on the history of higher ed, and has promised to blog her progress in its development.  This is the first installment.

Very useful stuff, seeing one MOOC being made.

<< NOTE: This is an ACTIVIST course, with MOOCs not just the platform but also the subject matter for our online conversations. For example, I am very excited about what we will all learn from a global forum directed at the question: "What is the history of defunding public education in YOUR country in YOUR lifetime?" >> The quote above struck me. Having read this course description makes me wonder, if MOOCs can not also be used a bit differently, to further open up the door to the international arena to our students on campus. I have recently been doing a lot of reading on transcultural literacy and competence, which focuses on being able to successfully navigate cultural differences between any culture and the own. Businesses today train their top executives to be transcultural, being able to work anywhere, and manage and lead in any country. I know foreign language curricula have not been very responsive in adjusting to this new need from firms. To full fill this demand, schools would have to push students to gain competence in multiple languages and cultures, on a more shallow level, instead of the mastery that is demanded in the current curricula in one language and culture. Since most institutions claim, that they promote global citizenship, maybe there is a way of assigning groups, and encouraging international and cross cultural communication between the students on campus, and those enrolled in the MOOC from where ever they might be located. I know that managing this, and keeping on top of the conversation partners could be a night mare, and that it doesn't entirely fit into the MOOC frame work, at least the way I understand it at the moment, but I'd love to hear what everyone else i thinking.

The comments at the bottom are interesting...

Cathy Davidson is one of the prominent voices out there right now taking a considered, balanced approach to MOOCs - I'm a little surprised she hasn't come into our conversations earlier. :) I especially like her point here, one this group has heard before, that it's alright to both be severely critical of MOOCs in their current form and be strongly interested in experimenting with them in the hopes of developing a much more robust future form.

"It's time that we all calmed down." Good post from Cathy Davidson. I attended the HASTAC conference she references. I also did not hear anything about MOOCs anywhere...

I like the way the author breaks "disruption" into 3 chunks, two of which look more like "finding efficiencies" and are easier to understand, and one ("reconsidering our fundamental assumptions of what it means to educate and be educated") which is "profound and truly uncharted." His callout to the "atomistic" view of education, in opposition to a more holistic experience, was touched on by Ron Griggs in a keynote at a recent GLCA conference. It wasn't captured on video but I'd really like to push him to write it up for publication.

That was a fun and unusual piece. I, too, like the multi-leveled analysis. But I'm not seeing the unbundling happening.

Some interesting notes, reflecting MOOC instructors' thoughts: -students shouldn't get credit at their school for passing a MOOC -MOOCs will lower college costs -teaching one takes time from other responsibilities

There's that grumpy 6% who have taught a MOOC and believe their institution will eventually offer credit for them, but don't feel students who succeed in them deserve it. What's going on there?

Heh! Darkness.

During any given semester at a liberal arts college like Wellesley, students may experience what will prove to be a transformational moment in their lives. A pre-med student from El Paso might come to Wellesley and publish research with her biochemistry professor.

Seems like she sees libraries as A/V support for MOOCs.