Multilitteratus Incognitus

Just in case you missed it the other day, here is the link for the stream (which was live, but now should be available to stream) for the CIEE and USDLA sponsored event on Sustainability in MOOCs (in which I was a panelist ;-)  ). The event was quite interesting and this was my first panel discussion - where I met quite a few interesting people! In any case, if you see the stream you will see two keynote presentations before the panel, and both were interesting. In the first presentation what I found interesting were the philosophical foundations of MOOCs which include many elements of the Open movement such as Creative Commons, Open Source and Open Courseware; as well as the ethos of Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs). While the connection was probably there somewhere in my mind, I really hadn't thought about it that much in depth. The one thing that I corrected (tactfully, or not-tactfully, you be the judge :-)  ) is the assertion that the Stanford AI course was ...

One more MOOC is done! A coursera xMOOC to be more precise called Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society with Karl Ulrich from UPenn. For this course I took the "auditor" approach to participating in the course. I did listen or view (or listen and view) all the lectures, and I did poke around the assignments, but never bothered to submit any of them.  I did enjoy Karl Ulrich's presentations, so for me the course was more like a series of related TED videos, and not specifically a course. The assignments, I must admit, were intriguing, but the combination of the level of my interest in the subject matter, coupled with the peer review and (lack of) accreditation accreditation made it not worth my while to go for that certificate of completion. Now, if I had more spare time, I may have cared a bit more to create some artefact based on this course, but given that I don't have a ton of time, and that the assignments are peer reviewed (and that there seems to be n...

Last week I was reminded of the Canvas Network . Despite the fact that I have a friend and colleague that works for the company there are so many things happening at work that made me forget. In any case, I am glad I stumbled upon the Canvas Network again because it gave me an opportunity to see how another EdTech company, one whose bread-and-butter is the LMS, is approaching MOOCs. Last week I was writing about the innovations that I think are worthwhile exploring further in the Canvas Network, namely letting students know what they are in for if they choose a specific course to take. This got me thinking about campuses today, and admittedly this goes beyond the LMS. Most students have only a small blurb, that is often outdated, to go by when choosing courses for their next semester. Even if you know what a course is about, you don't necessarily know much about the format of the course, the assessment types, whether there are synchronous, asynchronous, or blended components ...