Group items tagged

By: Matthew LeBar Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are often described as the future of education - or at least a significant part of it. But there may be a significant problem with them: a very small proportion of students who start them actually finish. This poses a serious threat to their legitimacy.

This brings up the question of what it means to complete something? And why is it so important to us? And why 'productivity', a thing somebody defined ages ago, is so important to our humanity? .. or is it anymore?

Because I am taking a MOOC course but also on campus at University, I receive credits and grades where this is definitely one of the motivations for me to contribute. Although I agree that completion of the course is not essential to attain knowledge, what about our motivations to learn? And what about our incentives? Not saying MOOCs are not interesting nor helpful, I like MOOCs, but I think people like recognition too. I think to just receive the "statement of accomplishment" is not enough to prove efforts made within the course. However MOOCs are not as well developed at this stage, there definitely will be adjustments in the near future.

Subscribe to the MOOC Newsletter to keep up on the MOOC community's theory of MOOCs, new MOOC announcements, and news about MOOCs. Mooc.ca is provided by Stephen Downes ( books, newsletter) and George Siemens as a place to host MOOC news and information. Got a MOOC? Post it here on MOOC.ca.

Many interesting charts and data of the global internet use, access, and contributions

Atlas, publications, charts and tables of global information and internet geographies and impacts on information access, information production and information distribution, done over a four year period by Oxford Information Institute. Findings, data, and publication will be published in Open Access formats and platforms. The website is simple but contains lots of information relevant to the topics in Stanford. There are links to external related publications about information geography, access, distribution and production. Very good website. Some limitations include: bias from the two developers and producers as well as institution itself, unknown (not identified) contributors and sponsors.

A very valuable collection demonstrating how economic, political, cultural and linguistic ties impact the flow of knowledge is and information. Of course, such charts do little to explain, why this happens and where a more even distribution of knowledge is desirable. Also, the data that lies behind the visualisations is not always open. Especially vauable are the links to the data collections that are accessible.

David Wiley (aka @opencontent) is a long-time advocate for OER and the use of open content in education. He consistently blogs and tweets very relevant resources and information for this group.

I am a great fan of David Wiley. I follow his blog in my feed to make sure I get all his posts. He recently posted a great article about how MOOCs have hurt the open movement, rather than helped it since MOOCs are not using the word 'open' to refer to the same thing - one is open registration/participation versus open content. http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3557

@mbishon Marvelous article with one theme summed up in one of his sentences..."Their modus operandi has been to copy and paste the 1969 idea of open entry into online courses in 2014. " I have taken lots of MOOCs and they truly vary in quality. The best MOOC I every took was etMOOC that did exactly what David says open education should be--to revise, remix, and redistribute materials available for reuse, thereby adding value.

In the classroom, the MOOC material became a new form of textbook. The students found the video lectures easy to follow. They could watch each bite-sized two- to seven-minute video in its entirety and retain the information. The finger exercises following the video further reinforced their learning.

I was lucky to be in Berlin with some colleagues earlier this month for the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival and associated fringe events. There's really too much to distill into a short post-from Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for Digital Agenda, making the case for " Embracing the open opportunity," to Patrick Alley's breathtaking accounts of how Global Witness uses information, to expose crime and corruption in countries around the world.

A useful summary of some of the key take-aways from the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival, courtesy of Tariq Khokhar From the article: 1. There are some great open data initiatives around the world and two common themes are the need for a strong community of technologically literate data re-users, and the sustained effort needed within governments to change how they create, manage and publish data in the long term. 2. Spreadsheets are code and we can adopt some software engineering practices to make much better use of them. There are a number of powerful tools and approaches to data handing being pioneered by the scientific community and those working in other fields can adopt and emulate many of them. 3. Open data fundamentally needs open source software. App reuse often doesn't happen because contexts are too different. Reusable software components can reduce the development overhead for creating locally customized civic software applications and a pool of high quality civic software components is a valuable public good worth contributing to. Reading time: 15mins

I see that Google are the sponsors of the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival but despite having little knowledge about Google's role and interest in the Open Knowledge , I also feel they are the culprit when it comes to data manipulative for their own profit motives.

In an earlier issue of ETR&D, the editors provided an hierarchical framework of components to support learning and instruction. That hierarchy included information objects, knowledge objects, learning objects, instructional objects, courses, programs and ongoing efforts, with each subsequent component building on the former components.

Libraries have long been a source of mostly free information for many people dating back to the Library of Alexandria. Early libraries used scrolls, but Tod Colgrove suggests that more learning may have taken place via person to person learning in those spaces, then from the scrolls themselves. 2000 years later, although we have vastly upgraded the technology and have an abundance of information at our fingertips, right now we are still learning from each other by taking part in this MOOC and sharing our information and knowledge so that we can learn from each other. Another important point Colgrove makes is that as long as librarians can come up with cutting edge ways to share knowledge, there will be a place for libraries in our schools and public places.

Libraries have a role to play in our lives and the libraries of the past did the same on our ancestors. They continue to undergo metamorphosis in response to the demands of the future. Viva the spirit and the resilience of libraries!

A hundred years ago, higher education seemed on the verge of a technological revolution. The spread of a powerful new communication network-the modern postal system-had made it possible for universities to distribute their lessons beyond the bounds of their campuses. Anyone with a mailbox could enroll in a class.

This article provides a clear overview of the evolution of higher education along with the rapid development of technology during the past 100 year, and raises the issue whether today's networked education model has posted threat to higher education. Today's the rapid development of Internet and social networks have changed the way we learn, access information and connect with others. The emergence and popularity of MOOCs and various social media have brought a new learning model, connected learning, which is largely used in university and college courses. It expands learners' opportunities of learning, and brings them huge convenience to access information, share thoughts, and communicated with learners from world wide on the same topic. Learning in the current information age subverted the way we learn in traditional learning models, and sometimes caused problems. But I think it's normal for a new thing to cause problems, but as long as we figure out ways to overcome the problems and best utilize the new learning model and resource, it will bring us huge opportunities.

Who has heard of this festival about Open Knowledge? Who has been there?

I would like to encourage everyone that takes the OpenKnowledge course to contribute their top five favourite websites that can give us more information on open learning and information sharing and/or people, collectives and websites that are already doing it! This is a Library open to all which we can use now and in the future to search for the resources we need.

Hello, Teresa, As the amount of information taken from this course, as well as from resources related to it and taken from the web is simply overwelming, I decided to create a blog with all these resources. Some are from the course, others from different internet resources, all related to open learning and knowledge. I give you the adress here: learninglovers.wordpress.com Sorry for not compleating your document, but I am still in module 3 and I have recorded more than 300 resources, so it would take me for a little while to do so... Hope it's useful for you!

Research on a novel current topic with the intention to serve as a reference for future studies within the field of information science , as it addresses issues such as free access to information, the genesis and dissemination of knowledge through internet or social web

I really cannot recommend this resource highly enough. The brainchild and master's thesis of a lawyer-turned-information professional, SIPX is an incredible blend of copyright control centre, digital distribution hub, and online marketplace. With the impending downfall of Access Copyright and its rejection by most Canadian universities, schools have had to quickly learn about copyright and establish good practices and guidelines, but this product provides the safest legal protection while considerably upgrading the dissemination of course readings; it also makes strides that push against the dominance of the traditional textbook market. It has already been adopted by several major American universities, including Stanford (where it was developed; it seems all the greatest open knowledge stuff is coming out of there!) and Notre Dame. Did I mention that it even supports MOOCs? I just found out about this resource while doing a practicum placement for library school, and I can't believe that I'd never heard of it before. It's exactly the kind of integrated library and informational system that needs to happen in academic institutions, and while it's not explicitly modelled on open access, it relies on many of the same values that we've talked about throughout this course. Check it out!

If you are interested/involved in the field of Information and Digital Literacy, this site is for you. It is run by information professionals from key UK organizations actively involved in this field. This is an amazing source that has been created for practitioners, researchers, and anyone with such interest from around the world. It is well structured, maintained, and updated. It provides definitions and models, teaching materials, information about research in the filed of Information Literacy, extra reading (e.g. books, journals, websites, reports, etc.), and much more. You can search about Information Literacy by sector (e.g. schools, health, public, and special libraries, higher and further education, etc.). You can also get in touch with editorial team or leave your comment.

I dare also to share this paper which recently appeared on seminar.net. It deals with my PhD project and tries to link open government data with educational concepts, merging a critical perspective with productive approaches. If any other people in this MOOC are interested in this field, I would be truly glad to discuss these ideas and read/hear your opinions about it!

Using game like concept to teach kids and adults is becoming more and more recognize a great learning and teaching tool. I am also interested on using games for computer cognitive rehabilitation exercixes.

A very thorough paper especially useful for its careful analysis of the "flip side" of open government data. It presents the main objections raised against the OGD "paradise" and also analyses ways in which media pedagogy can alleviate these problems. It culminates in a very important question: » An educational conception towards 'governing students not to be governed (that much)' within formal, obligatory education can too easily act out what it pretends to counteract. Informal settings, however, run the risk of fortifying social injustice and privilege - if largely used by well-educated citizens and semi-experts, as assumed. «

A Video Community for Why Open Education Matters

This video was created in 2012, where the OER was already promoted, and I just learned about it in 2014. I guess there are still a lot of people who does not know about it. Now I wonder, what is going to change in the teacher's role? If there are more MOOC courses, does that mean the need of teachers will decline? When he mentioned that they use public funds to develop these Open Educational courses, does that mean the rise of taxes? Although I do support the OER, it is still developing, adjustments need to be made for the balance of these courses and the public sector.

I like this article. I think students are limited to get access to knowledge, resulting from distance, poverty, politics. Open education resources can reduce the distance, making people all around world join a same class. Free makes poverty students get chance to take courses which he couldn't afford before.

The book that I share with you is a treasure, is so extraordinary that in it we can find information about universities with high academic prestige just like Stanford University. It covers topics of great interest and dynamism like, augmented reality, game-based learning and global knowledge among others.

This is an international, peer- reviewed journal that aims to investigate information literacy in all its forms to address the interests of diverse Information Literacy communities of practice. This journal provides open access!! to its publications, and it is possible to download them as well. You can find here articles, projects, book reviews, conference corner, and archive. The journal is published twice a year. Great resource with such a wide scope!

This does look good -- thanks for sharing it.