Multilitteratus Incognitus

Una o due settimana fa h o causato un po' di ansia per i lettori di questo blog quando ho scritto sul tema della partecipazione in in MOOC. Veramente non volevo causare di ansia, ma voluto fornire alcune spunti per riflessione. Credo che molti, non sola la mia amica Serena, quando hanno letto la mia idea per il sistema di "notificazioni" pensano a la scuola, i controlli, e le segnalazioni. Io non li colpa di essere ansiosi perché questi metodi di educazione e di docimologia sono metodi di educazione molto strutturati, senza immaginazione, e molte volte la docimologia è punitiva. Nello stesso tempo, quando qualcuno parla della partecipazione, molti pensano a la discussione, o forse un blog post, o qualche cosa visibile a molti come qualcosa scritta a twitter. È vero che questi sono topi di partecipazione ma io credo che la partecipazione ad un corso MOOC deve essere ripensata perché un MOOC non è come altri corsi, allora la docimologia, e allora che voglio dire "...

Yesterday while taking the train back home from work I was catching up with Change11 related blogs.  Two of them caught my eye and sparked my imagination (or perhaps cognitive process is a better word...in any case it got me thinking). First I read Tony Bates' initial summary of the week he facilitated , and then Jenny's response to him on selfish blogging . Tony writes (and this is not the only thing he writes so read his entire post): There could be all kinds of reasons for the shortage of comments on this week’s topic, but I was more struck by the form in which they occurred. Participants did not comment directly to my post for this week, but within their own blogs. I call this the syndrome of the selfish blogger. We all do this. If we have something interesting to say, we’d rather say it on our own web site than someone else’s (it would be nice though if the post was also copied to the site that originated the topic). I had to go and cull all the comments from the #Ch...

I was reading Micheal's blog the other night and I realized that the Conference Proceedings for mLearn 2011 are now up!  You can download them from the Conference website , or you can read them on Scribd (see bellow) In other news, it seems like the MobiMOOC research team is big in China :-) We were contacted yesterday by PhD students (under the direction of their advisor) to see if we would consent to have our mLearn paper translated into Chinese for publication in a core Chinese academic journal - this is both a great honor and über cool! mLearn 2011 (BeiJing) Conference Proceedings

Αυτή την εβδομάδα στο Change11 MOOC, το θέμα είναι το OCW ή OpenCourseWare. Όπως μάλλον γνωρίζετε το OCW  άρχισε εδώ στα λημέρια μου στο γνωστό MIT και από εκεί επεκτάθηκε σε άλλα πανεπιστήμια, και ένα από αυτά είναι και το δικό μου. Συγκριτικά το δικό μου πανεπιστήμιο δεν είναι στην ίδια κατηγορία όσον αφορά το μέγεθος των πόρων που έχουμε στο δικό μας OCW. Αυτό που αναρωτιόμουν είναι αν στην Ελλάδα, που  πολύ εκπαιδευτική ύλη φαίνεται να είναι public domain. Αν δεν κάνω λάθος τα βιβλία του ΟΕΔΒ είναι δωρεάν στους φοιτητές και είναι public domain, έτσι; Η Ελλάδα θα ήταν καλό περιβάλλον για μια ακαδημαϊκή αναγέννηση, με κάθε ΤΕΙ και ΑΕΙ να έχει κάποιο OCW, και τα βιβλία να διανέμονται δωρεάν και σε μορφή ePub, καθώς φυσικά και άλλα δεδομένα όπως ασκήσεις, σημειώσεις, παρουσιάσεις και άλλα σχετικά. Δεν ξέρω, μπορεί να είμαι πολύ αλτρουιστής και να μου πει κανείς «εδώ η Ελλάδα καίγεται, ο κόσμος άστεγος και πεινασμένος και εσύ μου μιλάς για OCW;» Εντάξει, η Ελλάδα έχει ...

I was reading a blog post from inlearning  titled Is Demanding Synchronous Bliss Missing the Point of Change?  Quite an interesting blog post to read so head on over there after reading this post ;-)  It's interesting how different people have different preferences.  I for example dislike synchronous online meetings, and  I have never attended a synchronous MOOC meeting as long as I have participated in MOOCs. Instead I download the MP3 later on, put it on my iPod and listen to it while commuting to work. I know other people feel differently about the topic, but I fit it curious. If the point of change (change in education in general, not just Change MOOC) is to get away from the sage on the stage  and seek out our own peer learning groups, aren't Massive  synchronous sessions antithetical to that?  Why would I want to attend a Massive  synchronous voice chat (where only one person can speak at a time)?  My voice would be drowned and I...

OK, so now I am sort of in catch up mode to respond to some interesting blog posts I've read in the past few days on Change. I was reading a blog post from Brainy smurf on being allergic to measurement where he asks: Why does it even matter how I learned to perform as long as I can do the job well ?!”  I think that you're not allergic to assessment (or measurement) but rather you are allergic to crappy assessment .  The easiest way to think of assessment is to gather some sort of number - clicks on a link, or amount of time spent in a discussion forum, or number of paragraphs in an essay or number of correct answers in a multiple choice test, heck the multiple choice test is itself an instrument of assessment. Now, just because you have a hammer, not everything is a nail, and this is where crappy assessment comes in.  Numbers gathered are meaningless in a decontextualized environment - so who cares how many people have clicked on a link and "read" an article if...

It seems like it's OCW ( open courseware ) week at ChangeMOOC .  When I read the initial description (it referring to OER) I was wondering what sort of readings or thoughts would be seeding this week's discussions. In my initial post for the week I made reference to the paradox of OER (I think it was David Wiley who originally wrote about it), but I am glad that this week is about OCW. I have to say that personally I have a love-hate relationship with OCW.  I love that OCW exists; I think it is an awesome concept because not only does it open up academia, it offer cross-pollination opportunities with other colleagues in other schools (that you don't necessarily know of), it makes courses more transparent to your current and future students, and it offers opportunities for people to self-study if they can't come to your institution or can't afford your institution.  I often look for OCW content in my own disciplines to see what other institutions are doing...

Last week on the MOOC Research Google Group the following post came up by Alan Selig (reproduced here with permission): I just got around to listening to the presentation by Tony Bates. Toward the end Stephen made reference to the surveys that many institutions give to students at the point of graduation. Not surprisingly these are usually very favorable, as the respondents have self-selected according to their favorable feelings toward the school. It made me wonder (again) how we get evaluations in a MOOC from those who only participate at certain points in the overall schedule. Especially since we want to affirm that sporadic or episodic participation is a successful approach to MOOCs, how do we get summative evaluations when the end point for an individual participant can be anywhere during the course of a MOOC, or event beyond the official end of it? While I don't have the time right now for an immediate answer, I intend on co...

Cette semaine sur ChangeMOOC le thème est vers les ressources éducatives libres pour l'apprentissage. Notre hôte est Rory McGreal de l' université d' Athabasca au Canada. Le thème des RELs n'est pas nouveaux dans ce MOOC. Aujourd'hui nous n'avons pas d'aces sur les matérielles de la semaine et donc je ne sais pas quels sont les objectifs de la semaine et quoi veut Mr. McGreal communiqué à nous. Je dois admettre que le titre du module de cette semaine, pour moi, est un peu déroutant parce que la raison d'être pour les RELs est l'apprentissage, alors est il pas redondant de dire "REL pour l'apprentissage"? Ou peut être il y a des usages des RELs dehors l'apprentissage que je ne connais pas! Pour moi, les RELs, comme une idée sont intéressants, mais (de mon expérience) c'est trop difficile trouver des RELs qu'on peut utiliser sans pain dans leur cours. La majorité des RELs sont très spécialisés ou ils sont trop général, a...

Αυτή την εβδομάδα στο ChangeMOOC ο καλεσμένος καθηγητής της εβδομάδας ήταν ο Tony Bates και το θέμα μας ήταν η αλλαγή της ανώτατης παιδείας και αν αυτή θα οδηγηθεί απο εσωτερικούς παράγοντες και ανθρώπους ή αν οι αλλαγές θα έρθουν απο έξω, εκτός που πανεπιστημίου. Έχω ήδη γράψει μια ανάρτηση στο μπλογκ στα αγγλικά για το αμερικανικό σύστημα αλλά έτσι περιληπτικά να γράψω πως το σύστημα είναι δύσκολο να αλλάξει εσωτερικά. Υπάρχει μια άλφα τεχνοκρατία στο πανεπιστήμιο που αν δεν θέλουν όλοι (ή τουλάχιστον πολλοί) μια ριζική αλλαγή, αυτή η αλλαγή δεν γίνετε. Πιστεύω πως τα πανεπιστήμια τώρα έχουν τον χειρότερο συνδυασμό του παλιού "ακαδημαϊκού καθεστώντος" και ενός συστήματος επιχειρησιακής διοίκησης που κοιτά μόνο αριθμούς, "παραγωγικότητα" (όπως και αν μετριέται αυτή σε ένα ακαδημαϊκό περιβάλλον) και κοιτά μόνο τα έσοδα και τα έξοδα αλλά μόνο για τους "μικρούς" - τα μεγάλα κεφαλιά που πληρώνονται τα πολλά λεφτά που παίρνουν τις αποφάσεις και διοικούν ...

Congrats to everyone in the MobiMOOC research group for getting the  Best Paper Award at the mLearn 2011 conference!  In addition to myself, the team is made up of  (alphabetical order):   Sean C. Abajian ,  Inge deWaard ,  Michael Sean Gallagher ,  Rebecca Hogue ,  Nilgün Özdamar Keskin , and  Osvaldo Rodriguez  . A big thank you to Rebecca, Michael and  Nilgun for representing our team at mLearn in Beijing (wish I could have gone but oh well, looking forward to meeting the rest of the team in person one of these days :-)  )  I wonder if the presentation was video recorded. Inge has uploaded our paper at Academia.edu for anyone who is interested and the conference slides up on SlideShare (link bellow). I have to say that I really enjoyed working collaboratively with the MobiMOOC research team both on this project and on projects we are currently working on. While there is still place for solo-research activity, I t...

I have to say that this week I haven't been as active on the main topic of Change11 but rather following side-threads or catching up with previous weeks.  I think part of it has been my own frustrations with institutionalized information technology, even though I work for "the man" (the man being IT).  As an instructional designer and educational technologist my job is not to be some sort of technology pusher but rather to try to figure out what technology best complements and augments the instructor's learning goals and help them implement this technology in their classroom.  As a corollary to that, if we don't happen to have this technology; if there is a lot of demand; and  if these services need to be campus provided for better access, my job is to lobby, on behalf of these instructors, to get my institution to pony up for these services. What we see however (not all the time, but enough times) is that technocracy takes hold in institutions. The process of ...

On of the themes that has come up time and again in MOOCs is the nature of openness. It's also come up in my twitter stream these past couple of days with Educause 11 underway, and Blackboard announcing that they are now open (I will reserve my cynicism and scoffing for other media ;-)  ). One of the ways in which MOOCs are reported to be open is that MOOCs allow the participants (learners) to define their own learning goals and learning outcomes and what this translates to, generally, is an "everything goes" attitude from MOOC participants. I don't disagree that having learners have their own personally meaningful goals is important. After all many research studies have shown that if a learner has strong internal motivation (as exhibited in MOOC by  having your own set goals), then the learning is much more meaningful to the learner and they take away more.  This is great, but in my opinion it doesn't absolve the instructor, the instructional...

The other day I was reading ZML Didaktik on the topic of MOOC participants. In MOOCs, one of the big questions is why are people lurking and not participating? If more than 500 people join a MOOC, why are only 10% contributing with any amount of regularity?  On the same blog, in a previous blog post, I had commented (it was an open stream of thought really) that perhaps there should be an open enrollment period, and then if the system sees that certain participants are bellow a threshold of activity, the system may give them the option to self-identify as a lurker, or un-register from the class. This line of thought went along a view that compared to the traditional classroom; in a traditional classroom students register for the course, they can attend classes for a week and then decide whether or not they want to stay with the course or not. If they do stay with the course they know that there is a certain amount of "lurking" that they can get away with, but they do have ...

Cette semaine, à Change11, l'hôte de la lecture est Tony Bates et le thème est la gestion de la technologie pour transformer l'enseignement. Cette discussion se cencentre sur le monde de l' Université et, je crois, l'agilité de l' université. Est-il possible que la change, (ou l' innovation) en l' enseignement, vient naturellement des processus existants? Ou, peut-être, devons nous inventer des nouvelles méthodes et nouvelles formes des études supérieures que ne songe pas déjà institutionnalissées? Le thème est trop intéressant pour moi parceque je travaille comme technologue éducatif pour dix ans et mes opinions autour la technologie éducative change le plus que j'apprends sur la technologie éducative et le plus que je m' expose à la bureaucratie universitaire. - Posted using BlogPress from my Newton 3000 (iPad)

I was reading this post yesterday by Paul Prisloo on his reflections on Open Content .  I found his post enlightening because through my studies I had not really encountered to topic of history of distance education  and the evolution of distance education has been of interest to me.  I have to say that I somewhat  agree with Paul's view that lecturers (professors) are in the teaching business and not necessarily in the content creation business.  Any content creation (aside from scholarly publishing which is another activity that professors undertake) is really a happy by-product of preparing for teaching and carrying out that teaching.  I do however disagree  with Paul on two issues. Paul seems to diminish the curation  aspect of teaching. From what I gathered, Paul doesn't really see the collection and curation of a set of materials (yes, other people's scholarly output) as something that is worth while recognizing.  I think he is dead w...

The other day I was organizing some materials at home and I came across a box of things that I used to have hanging around on my old office's pinboard, things that I haven't brought to the new office yet.  The index card on the right is one of those items and it is an artifact FROM learning (as opposed to an artifact of learning...maybe it can be both, who knows). In any case, the story behind this artifact comes from my days as an MBA student. It was in one of my Human Resources courses, Labor Relations to be precise, that this artifact was generated. In this course we were broken down into teams of Labor Leaders and Managers and we had to negotiate a new union contract because our old one had expired. I have to say that this was and interesting and useful experience despite the fact that it was a mock negotiation.  The card was given to me by one of the members of management (quite a character that classmate!) when I had brought up an alternative to their suggestion i...

Αυτή την εβδομάδα στο ΜΑΔιΜΑ (κοίτα να δεις που αυτό θα γίνει ειρωνικό όνομα για τα MOOC τελικά, να μου το θυμηθείς! χα χα!) έχουμε το θέμα του ανοιχτού υλικού (open content) με τον David Wiley. Η ύλη αυτή την εβδομάδα περιέχει κανά δυό βίντεο και δύο άρθρα που έχει γράψει ο ίδιος περί του ανοιχτού υλικού , τον πρόγονο του Creative Commons , την ανοιχτή παιδεία, και το OpenCourseWare. Η αλήθεια είναι πως βασικά δηλώνω άγια για το ελληνικό σύστημα παιδείας επειδή ήρθα στην Αμερική μετά το γυμνάσιο οπότε ούτε λύκειο έβγαλα στην Ελλάδα, ούτε πανελλήνιες έπρεπε να δώσω, ούτε ξέρω και πως είναι τα πανεπιστήμια στην Ελλάδα. Ότι γνωρίζω το γνωρίζω από τις εμπειρίες φίλων και γνωστών. Εδώ στην Αμερική τα βιβλία που χρησιμοποιούν τα σχολεία είναι όλα από εκπαιδευτικούς εκδοτικούς οίκους, οπότε οι εκδοτικοί οίκοι έχουν τα πνευματικά δικαιώματα, και τα βιβλία αυτά δεν τα βρίσκεις ποτέ (νόμιμα) σε δωρεάν ψηφιακή μορφή. Απ' όσο γνωρίζω, τα σχολικά (και πανεπιστημιακά;) βιβλία στην Ελλάδ...

This morning while commuting to work I had the opportunity to the last of this week's reading from David Wiley and Erin Edwards (Change MOOC) on Online Self-Organizing Social Systems . I have to say that this really piqued my interested. While reading the document I was transported back to my MBA days when I first started learning more about the topic of Knowledge Management and the work of Etienne Wenger . I am a big fan of communities of practice and I have attempted to get an instructional design community of practice going with mixed results (mixed results are just my opinion, other's opinions may vary- more in article form here ). I have realized for a while now that instructional design and knowledge management go hand in hand however I had never bothered to actually put anything to formally bind them.  At times instructional design can seem very rigid, after all it is a systems view of learning, and there is a process to getting things done (also known as "a meth...

I was watching David Wiley's two videos ( video 1 and video 2 ) on Open content, open publishing and open educational resource, oh and creative commons licensing too! I haven't had the chance yet to read the articles yet - but I plan on doing that before the weekend comes. I thought I would start off this week's Change thoughts on Open Content with my own history with it - and the cognitive dissonance that goes along with it! So one side of the brain acts in the persona of the student .  As a student (and I've been a student for a very long time), I am all for open content!  I wanted to see the professor's syllabus before the semester started. I wanted to know what the course content would be so I could prepare for the course in advance, or just figure out which courses would work well together. I also wanted my professors to have their content as open content because it meant that I didn't have to keep reams of printed paper material (not always searchable) ...

Wow, I honestly didn't think that my open pondering about "knowing" would get this traction - but this is the beauty of the massive open course (and heck...perhaps this is a great example of collective learning!) First, Brainy Smurf wrote an interesting post about the process (or perhaps the indicators) which are necessary for him to write a response to something he finds online. I have to say that he's hit the nail on the head with most indicators. I do dislike errors in blog posts - but I do take certain into consideration: if I read something that has errors in insidehighered.com  or chronicle.com , then I am less likely to respond because I feel like the bar is higher - those people are not my peers.  If I read something in this MOOC, despite any minor grammar issues I am more likely to respond because I see MOOC participants as peers. As far as profiles go (i.e. does the profile provide any info on the person), that's not are as a high factor for me beca...

Εδώ και κάτι εβδομάδες έχει αρχήσει ένα Μαζικό Ανοιχτό και Διαδικτυακό Μάθημα (ΜΑΔιΜα; ή μήπως ΜαΔΑΜα;) κοινώς γνωστό στα Αγγλικά ως MOOC (Massive Online Open Course). Στα προηγούμενα MOOC (ας χρησιμοποιήσουμε λατινικού χαρακτήρες γιατί το ΜΑΔιΜΑ δεν μου ακούγεται και ωραίο) έγραφα μόνο στα Αγγλικά, αλλά ευκαιρία γράψουμε και στα Ελληνικά και να εκπροσωπήσουμε λίγο την Ελλάδα στην διεθνή παιδαγωγική σκηνή.  Αυτή την περασμένη εβδομάδα το θέμα στο Change MOOC (με θέμα την αλλαγή της παιδείας) ήταν η Συλλογική Μάθηση. Η ιδέα πίσω από την συλλογική μάθηση είναι η μάθηση που χρησιμοποιεί την συλλογική γνώση. Αυτό που είναι διαφορετικό στην συλλογική γνώση είναι το ότι ο Ένας και οι Πολλοί είναι αναπόσπαστοι ο ένας από τον άλλον ( παραπάνω πληροφορίες εδώ, στο άρθρο της Άλλισον Λίτλετζον ). Κοίτα, ενδιαφέρον η σκέψη, αλλά πιστεύω πως πάντα είχαμε αυτή την συλλογική παιδεία. Στο κάτω κάτω εδώ και χρόνια έχουμε βιβλιοθήκες που είναι συλλογές από την ανθρώπινη γνώση και τις χρησιμοποιούμ...

The other day I was reading a Forbes article, which came to me via someone I follow on twitter, and the topic was Why MBA Programs Don't Produce Leaders . As someone with an MBA I was intrigued by the topic and what the author's views were so I added it to my Read It Later account for  my commute home. Hansen (the author) argues that MBA programs were places that people went to learn hands-on knowledge but at some point in time (50 years ago as quoted by an HBR article ) business schools shifted from practice to science - measuring and learning. As a result MBA students tend to be directed toward the numbers and an analysis of a situation but not act on this info; and the criticism is that soft skills aren't offered. Now, I have to say that I am of two minds on this.  My first reaction is that Graduate schools aren't workshops. I think that the point of graduate education is to get you acquainted with a few key sets of facts, figures, laws and mechanisms that are...

The other day I came across a recent #change11 post by Jaap on his blog and there was an interesting question: Do we need to know each other when we are sharing knowledge and collaborating? This is a case where I had an immediate response, then I thought back to my own personal examples of sharing...and then I ended up with no answer at all, but rather I was left with a giant question mark (i.e. this needs some research) My initial answer, without giving it much thought, was: of course we need to know one another to share information!  - This reaction came from my own preferences when meeting and talking to people. If I don't know someone I tend to size them up before I offer up any information. They also tend to be the conversation initiators. Then, I had to take a step back and evaluate my online interactions, examples of which would be on forums like macosx.com and howardforums.com . In my online interactions I have  initiated conversations, both in the forms of que...

This week in Change MOOC, we see in Littlejohn's position paper that one of the things that one of the things that binds people together in collective learning is the creation of a social object. The example given is a group of scientists coming together to produce some sort of report. Littlejohn asks us, the MOOC participants, to share our view of what binds people in collective learning. While the creation of a social object is indeed something to think about - take for example my (and possibly your) many, many, many group experiences where you needed to come together to produce something - in my case it was homework and school presentations during my Masters programs and various projects at work. I think that this work-based view of what binds us is limiting and I think it's incorrect. I don't think that as a species our imperative, our raison d'être, is to produce stuff. I think that this is potentially a sign of our consumption-based society; and you can't...

On my commute home last night I had the opportunity to catch up with the initial readings for this week on Change MOOC . The topic this week is collective learning with Allison Littlejohn . I have to say that the concept was rather interesting, and technology has certainly enabled the possibility for Massive  collective learning - but the idea of collective learning isn't new. Some early personal examples of collective learning is my long term participation in forums like macosx.com and howardforums.com . I did spend a number of years discussing and learning when I was active on those sites, and I probably taught (or provided info for) many other members then, and maybe even now since the archives of those discussions are available. I also spent time (admittedly less than these two forums) on topics like PDAs, PocketPCs, and in communities like the NewtonTalk community. Again, through participation and through lurking I learned a lot. Even in the pre-internet era (yes, I was t...

I was sitting on the train this afternoon On the train catching up on the Digital Scholar (Martin Weller's book from last week on Change MOOC), reading some of the seed-posts from this week's facilitator and reading some initial posts from people who've already written something on thus week's topic (collective learning). I have a few blog post to dos on my list for the next couple of days (which require more text and brain power than I have now...otherwise I'd get crackin' on writing those thoughts down right now) but I had this idea for gRSShopper: a digg feature for blog posts. If you really like a participant's blog post (or diigo submission or tweet or whatever) you could +1 them. Then top posts could rise up at the end of the MOOC as something to revisit if you didn't get through them the first time around. OK that was the idea. What do you think? - Posted using BlogPress from my Newton 3000 (iPad)

OK, the change in tagline happened last spring, but I thought I would record it now (better late than never). When I first started the blog the tagline was "blogging about my education, one class at a time." I think my inspiration was the cooking show "Mexico, one dish at a time." Since I graduated I though the tagline was no longer fitting so I changed it to "traversing the land after the Masters degree and before the PhD." I am not sure what my inspiration was but I am pretty sure I was channeling Will Farrell and the movie Land if the Lost.

I know I retweeted this the other day, but it's just too good to not share 

This was a pretty interesting keynote presentation on the future of the profession. I guess it was great that a former boss called me a "loudmouth with big ideas"...even though he didn't know it at the time ;-)

I have to say that I am a bit behind on my self imposed goals for this week in Change11. I had intended to read all of the Digital Scholar: How Technology is Transforming Scholarly Practice, but I was only able to read about 4 chapters some were "assigned" through the MOOC, and others looked interesting enough for a side track. The book remains in my ReadItLater list on my iPad so I will probably finish it this week anyway (it's interesting and easy to read, so it shouldn't be a problem). The thing that kept coming to mind while reading the certain chapters (and the chapter devoted to publishing) was the academic carrot or stick: tenure and promotion. If committees that determine your tenure (or non-tenure) and your promotions and merit raises don't value digital scholarship, but rather value the traditional journal, you (as a young budding tenure track faculty member) might be tempted to forsake open scholarship in favor of the closer "norm" for your o...