Group items tagged

I tend to fall into this camp...the best MOOCs will be focused on learning and using best practices for online learning. Obviously, the size of MOOCs make that challenging...

"I soon wasn't watching all the videos, and I certainly wasn't doing the practice homework that no one would ever grade. Honestly, I felt more like an audience member than a student." It seems that we have gotten too reliant on stimulation and feed back. Our entire school system and university system is built around mentoring and motivating, where the teacher has the role of an encouraging trainer more than anything else. Have we lost our ability of independent learning, not for a carrot that a teacher holds out in front of us, but for ourselves? I find myself in the same boat as the author of "Essays on disappointing experience". I am not disappointed with the MOOC experience, but am surprised that it takes such high levels of discipline to sit down and do the assignments asked for in the MOOC. Maybe this is a problem of the well to do, that have on some level lost the connection between the insemination of knowledge and the real possibility of upward mobility? NPR had a fascinating report: How Much Can Children Teach Themselves ( see the link below) and again, the children in question grew up in a poor area of Southern India. (http://www.npr.org/2013/06/21/179015266/how-much-can-children-teach-themselves?utm_medium=Email&utm_source=share&utm_campaign=)

Good provocation by Derek (always worth following). Again, the old Two Cultures divide returns.

I thought this comment was of interest to Liberal Arts Colleges: Justin Sipher, VP of libraries and information technology at St. Lawrence University, said the liberal arts colleges who have so far been lukewarm to the MOOC phenomenon might be making a mistake by "sheltering students from an experience of lifelong learning" that they ought to be exposed to. Even if an institution is concerned about diluting its brand with online offerings, students probably ought to be required to learn how to learn in an online course "just like you must learn a lot of other things as part of a liberal arts education," he said.

Justin's a fine CIO thinker.

"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...

This is a thought-provoking article. More about learner-initiated learning than MOOCs.

Trent's a brilliant guy. Well worth the read.

I'm not sure if the market has room for another player. But p2p learning is potentially a big differentiator.

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.

I watched most of this. I liked the format of the webinar itself.

From the executive director of Quality Matters

Watters has a compelling argument for the rewriting of MOOC history. Fascinating read.

This is indeed fascinating! I find myself feeling a little silly that I didn't already know more about the work of people like Siemens and Downes, though I've started learning bits here and there as a product of my participation in our discussion group :) And it bothers me that publications like Wired, The NYT, and the Chronicle are complicit in handing us a warped sense of the history of online learning. But I do feel like "MOOC" as a term (like all terms) has meaning through its circulation and use, and as such may have been hijacked in some senses but may be "naturally evolving" in others. What I'm certain we do need is more contextualizing pieces from the folks who know - folks like Siemens, Downes, and Watters - so I'm glad she wrote it.

A fine talk (and must have been delightfully rude in that setting). Aren't you guys glad we began this program with the xMOOC/cMOOC distinction?

Fascinating reflections and issues. I wonder what a better platform would look like.

Major followup study on MOOCs for learning.

Fascinating! Good to see the emphasis on learning. I wonder why nothing from China.

The comments at the bottom are interesting...

Josh Kim answers why he thinks AT&T got into the MOOC business.

<< 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.

Google doc thrown together by some of the participants of this year's @MOOCMOOC

Thank you for adding this, Paul. And welcome to this Diigo group!