Multilitteratus Incognitus

The other day, through some source I came across this " 4 downsides of MOOCs " from LearnDash. I should have known better than to read a vendor's blog, but then again sometimes they surprise me.  Anyway, the blog post seemed like link-bait because the downsides of MOOCs do not really seem that thought out. They are more reactionary than a deep pondering if the medium. So, here are my 2c on the issues brought forth: 1. Way to big The main thesis of this brief argument (and it is brief) is that because there are too many  people enrolled in the course it's hard to have intimate learning moments, access to the professor is limited, and there is too much of a chance of homogeneity of thought, so you don't learn to expand your worldview. That said, just because MOOCs have many participants in them it does not mean that you can't find a working group, a smaller cadre of students who would like to meet more regularly, in person or through something like a hangout...

Negotiable I was pretty surprised to get an email the other day, from the OLDS MOOC list of all places.  The subject heading was "MOOC vs MOC."  Sure, I was hooked in, both because I enjoyed OLDS MOOC and because it seemed like an interesting discussion to have.  Then I realized that this was sort of spam ;-) Here is the body of the message: Maybe wrongly, but I think of " an OC" as simply a very valuable tool to bring high quality education to the world. What a great export industry where the leading centers of intellectual property (such as US, UK, Germany, Canada, Australia...) has so much to provide others.. And, in a much better and easier way than every before. But, why is "Open" a necessary ingredient? Open = free. Are valuable pharmaceutical products that cost $10s of millions to research (though pennies to produce) given away for free? Is there any evidence whatsoever that this stimulates people to innovate? How about "Massive Onl...

Image by DawnOfHope2012 Over the past few weeks I've been knee deep in an initial literature review. This past summer, while vacationing, I met up with a colleague who teaches for my department as an adjunct, but he's got him own full post in Greece as well.  While having coffee and talking about life in general we spoke about my PhD prospects, and my current feeling on the subject is that I am interested in getting my hands dirty and working on a dissertation already.  I have already spent 2004 - 2010, full time (including summers) as a graduate student, having earned 4 masters degrees. Throughout those six years, I have taken 47 courses (138 credits). Thus, at this point, the prospect of spending late nights in class (another 14 of them minimum), plus qualifying papers before I get to have my dissertation proposal approved doesn't specifically appeal to me. If there were a PhD where I could just start working on my cool dissertation project, and fill in any gaps in my...

Now that my fun (and educational) little excursion to the world of the Ancient Greek Hero is over, I am more energized to go back into the world of the reportage and punditry around MOOCs.  I am not all caught up yet, but I did go through enough articles to have some thoughts on the news that has transpired over the last couple of months in the world of the MOOC. First of all,  more Acronyms.  What's up DOCC? This was an article on Inside Higher Ed this past week. On the one hand it's great to have big universities do something other than the xMOOC format, on the other hand the lack of background research on the format you are trying to "disrupt" is disheartening when it comes from academics.  I guess this fine group of folks wanted to disrupt the disruptors by coming up with their own concept, along with a nice little acronym (DOCC: distributed open collaborative course) that they can lay claim to.  The definition of DOCC is as follows: A DOCC is differen...

It's been a while, but I have completed the course.  I don't know if EdX considers me a "completer" but I got what I needed from the course ;-)  That said, the course I started back in the spring was The Ancient Greek Hero, offered through EdX (HarvardX in specific).  I had been looking for an EdX course to take so I could evaluate the platform and the pedagogy, but most of the topics really didn't jive with my interests, until this one. When I started the course in Spring things were busy at work, then I went on vacation, and when I came back the course was over, with me not having done more than half of the readings.  I did take the course textbook (downloadable as a free ePub from the course page), so I took the opportunity at the beach, and on the boat, while on vacation to do some reading.  In addition to the textbook ("slow reading") there was also a free reader with the Iliad, and additional original texts.  This was meant to be "fast readi...

Call for Chapters & Illustrators: The Great Big MOOC Book (version 1.0) Editors Apostolos Koutropoulos (University of Massachusetts Boston). Call for Chapters & Illustrators  Proposals Submission Deadline: October 1st, 2013 Full Chapters Due: April 15, 2014 R evision Submission Date: August 1st, 2014 Introduction  This book will explore the various aspects of MOOCs (cMOOCs and xMOOCs). It will serve as a primer into the MOOC field for professionals in the field of education, including professors, instructional designers, educational technologists, project managers, and administrators. The idea for this book came in 2011 after I had completed my first few cMOOCs, and seeing the nascent state of the field, I wanted to facilitate an open access book on the topic.  The original proposal, which got some traction but I never pursued, can be seen here:  http://bit.ly/147P574 Objective of the Book T his book will present chapters that revolve aroun...