Posts

Showing posts from March, 2013

Don't close the doors yet - OLDSMOOC has one more thing!

I got an email the other day that I was awarded a badge on OLDSMOOC (one of the peer reviewed badges), which prompted me to go into Cloudworks to see if there were any more peers that needed evaluating.  I had already completed one peer review ( see here for the first one) so why not complete a second one? It turns out that Itana Gimenes had submitted all her materials for the Learning Designer badge, so I decided to have a look and see what sort of review or feedback I could give her :) Itana's course design revolves around Agile Software Engineering, something that brings me back to my MBA days when I was working on my IT concentration.  Back then we briefly touched upon Agile methodology since it was new, but now it's much more prevalent. In any case, I found it interesting that she was wondering (scrutinizing her own design in Week 2) the type of support learners would get so that they could both learn and have a realistic (authentic?) experience in Agile Methodology.

Aboriginal Worldviews and Education

Image
We are almost there!  The course A boriginal Worldview and Education is almost over! It's one of the few xMOOCs that survived the great course purge of late 2012 (courses that I decided to drop before they started because of my time commitment issues in March). When I signed up for the course I thought that the course was about Australia and New Zealand since I had only heard of Aboriginals in that context before.  Even the course description didn't point to the fact that this was about Canadian Aboriginals. Intended for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal learners, this course will explore indigenous ways of knowing and how they can benefit all students. Topics include historical, social, and political issues in Aboriginal education; terminology; cultural, spiritual and philosophical themes in Aboriginal worldviews; and how Aboriginal worldviews can inform professional programs and practices, including but not limited to the field of education. The course and the instruct

Time flies when you are having fun

I just realized that it's been a while since I've posted something on here. I guess compared to other blogs I am still a regular poster, but I'd like to post more often.  Well, here I am!  I guess time flies when you are having fun, and getting over a cold (have we found a cure for that yet?) This month has been a crazy month, in addition to the day job, and my part time teaching gig (which is a lot of fun; there are lots of bright people I have the privilege to have in my class), I was: facilitating a MOOC Basics workshop for the Sloan Consortium which was a lot of fun presented a poster on MOOCs in higher education ( free download in PDF ) at NERCOMP 2013 moderated a panel discussion on building MOOCs with my colleagues (again at NERCOMP 2013) finished off a book chapter with a colleague on blended learning and still chipping away at the Twitter participation in MOOCs paper analysis with the MRT. I was a bit bummed that I couldn't really participate more in

The end of #oldsmooc

Hey! Another MOOC is done! The MOOC I am referring to is OLDSMOOC , and it will go down as one of the better MOOCs I've attended ;-)  When I signed up for the MOOC, I did so for two reasons: I wanted to learn more about Learning Design (seemed like Instructional Design going by another name). I wanted a cMOOC, damn it! :-) Don't get me wrong, there are some interesting courses on coursera but I don't really get that sense of community on xMOOC platforms; whereas in cMOOCs, like OLDSMOOC, I have had meaningful conversations with strangers (and I haven't gotten lost in the discussion). Anyway, as an instructional designer, I wasn't quite sure what I would get out of OLDSMOOC, since, in the end, it seemed like learning design was another term (or a related term) for instructional design.  I decided to use this opportunity, however, as a way to think about my mLearning MOOC (which is a back-burner project for the time being). Some of the weekly tasks were fo