Multilitteratus Incognitus

A while back I came across a post by Martin Weller titled MOOC Completion rates DO matter . Because my Pocket account was overflowing with some great content (including this one), I thought it was high time that I read this article ;-).  In this short post Martin writes that completion rates do matter in MOOCs, taking the opposite view of some cMOOC folks.  He goes on to tackle the analogy that MOOCs are like newspapers and that people don't necessarily read all sections, or even visit all sections.  As someone who doesn't really read physical newspapers that often any more (I only bought one last summer so I could get the Asterix comic that came with it), the analogy only gets me so far. I don't know what sort of analogy is valid for MOOC participant behaviors.  After pondering this a bit, I don't think that there is one analogy that will encompass all behaviors.  At the beginning of the MOOC I think the analogy of window shopping is most appropriate for everyt

Slowly catching up and getting back to normal, although I suspect with the semester beginning next week at work we'll be on a different sort of normal for the next few weeks.  I thought it would be a good idea to continue my blogging debrief of my orientation experience for Athabasca's EdD program that I did last week in Edmonton. Part of the orientation experience is presenting the first assignment while you're there.  The first assignment for EDDE 801 is a collaborative presentation.  In May we were informed of which team we would be in, and we essentially had from mid-May to mid-August to choose a topic and then negotiate as we saw fit what we would present in the 60 minutes that we were alloted.  Our team had a choice of Andragogy and Multimedia in education - we opted for Andragogy after a little discussion.  We were given some general ideas of what we were expected to present during this collaborative presentation, but it was open ended.  Part of the reason is t

Back in Boston!  I was off to Edmonton last week for my doctoral program orientation at Athabasca University . The orientation is a formal part of the first course ( EDDE 801 ) and it is a requirement.  Not attending the orientation means not being the program.  Those who know me on campus know that I am not a fan of cohorts, and I don't like residential requirements, so it might seem illogical to apply to a program that requires both.  Well, what can I say? I thought I would try something new for a change and go outside of my comfort zone and see what it's like (who knows, maybe I'll re-assess my stance on cohorts and residential requirements). The incoming cohort each year (this year we are cohort 7) is made up of 12 members.  We actually had 13 members to start off with, but one of us was wooed to go an join the DBA program at Athabasca, so he is gone from our cohort, but I consider him an honorary member. Apparently the optimal size of a cohort is 20-30 students (from

I guess today I will be taking off my "Instructional Designer" cap, and putting on my "Higher Education Administration" cap. My career in higher education goes back to the days of me being a  work-study student, working for the department of Media Services, providing all those nice A/V equipment that professors use as part of their course.  Since then I've had a variety of jobs with an ever increasing responsibility load.  Despite the change of departments, change in job descriptions and duties, I always remained outside of an academic department (you know, the ones that have professors and teach courses).  I was always in some support role, and usually one that involved technology.  I have always been a 12-month employee, not an academic-calendar employee (9-month, September to May) like the TT† faculty. If you had asked me back then if I would want to take the entire summer off, I'd probably tell you that you were nuts. Even if we factored in the lower p

Well, in a week I will be in Edmonton starting off my EdD in distance education at Athabasca University.  I know that most North American doctoral students probably don't think of their dissertation topic this early (I haven't even completed my first course), but I want to be pro-active and work on the thing while taking courses.  So, Rebecca's post on Educational Design Research (EDR) was quite timely.  This isn't my first go around at a dissertation topic, my current topic has evolved over the past couple of years as I was thinking about what I want to do (and which university is best to pursue this). My initial idea was to blend my background in Instructional Design and MOOCs to teach a language, specifically designing a MOOC to teach Greek as a foreign language to novices. This actually came out of making a MOOC out of my MEd capstone .  This was circa 2011-2012 after my experiences with MobiMOOC, LAK11, CCK11 and before the xMOOCs invaded the scene.  After so

With coursera MOOCs kind of slow this time of year, I decided to try out a MOOC on the subject of "Open" on P2PU. After my first P2PU course, #rhizo14, I thought I would flex the mental muscle a bit and get some P2PU experience.  The topic of this week asks us to ponder what Openness means to us as individual participants.  To be honest I haven't really sat down to write up what I think of Openess.  I've certainly discussed the topic with colleagues and friends over beer or coffee, but it's been on specific topics, like MOOCs.  Many in the xMOOC arena consider "open" to mean "free".  The previous post I wrote should have you convinced, to some degree, that Open isn't free. There is some cost associated with it whether or not you get it gratis . That said, for me Open is about a philosophy.  It may mean a number of things: 1. free-of-cost :  In some instances, such as all those free MOOCs that you can sign up for (even this one!) you

This past week on the #rhizo14 facebook group my colleague, and co-author, Rebecca Hogue posted a link to this TED talk by Shai Reshef on the Ultra-Low Cost University . This talk really bugged me for a variety of reasons. On the facebook group I wrote that I was angry when I saw this, but it was really more of a "WTF" reaction to the video.  More disbelief that the incredible amount of BS†, and the attempt to place a reality distortion field around this product. With a new cMOOC on the horizon for next week titled " Why Open ," I thought this would be a good chance to elaborate more on why I had such a visceral reaction to this video. As a side note, if you are interested in the whole Open thing, check out Stanford's Open Online Course starting this fall semester online. The topic is interesting, but after #whyopen, Wiley's #ioe12, and being steeped in this culture for the past decade, I don't know what a 13-week course (traditional semester) has

This past week I was able to attend Campus Technology and AAEEBL 2014 in Boston. I count myself lucky that I have two conferences every year that are pretty close to me (the other one being NERCOMP) that allows me to go and see some interesting presentations, engage with colleagues, and talk to vendors (and let's not forget the cool vendor swag ;-) ). This year, unfortunately, I didn't get an opportunity for post-conference beers, dinner, and discussion as I had last year with some pretty interesting people from both the US and Canada. Oh well, next year maybe :) Even though these things are local I don't submit session proposals. I feel more comfortable on the audience end (where I can report and comment on via twitter) than the presenter end. That said, I did want to comment on one session that I went to that has really made me rethink book publishing.  The session was titled "Are MOOCs the equivalent of college courses" (you can check out the recording of t