Multilitteratus Incognitus

What does that spell?  elp-ss-ss ;-) OK...well that sounded more funny in my head... Anyway! Week 5 of NRC01PL (last week! All caught up! yay!) was about Learning Performance Support Systems.  My first introduction to LPSS (a brief one at that) was in an instructional design course almost 10 years ago (if my memory works).  The funny thing is that we did talk about LPSS (without using that label) in a Knowledge Management course while I was doing my MBA.  The lesson here?  Interdisciplinarity is indeed a thing worthwhile practicing! :-) When we learned about LPSS way back when, it was within a corporate learning context. The idea of an LPSS, which in my knowledge management course tied into communities of practice, was that employees, who are also learners, have access to a system to get realtime, just-in-time, help with whatever they are doing.  An example of this might be, for example, a short video on how to print something from your computer to a networked printer in your o

Moving right along with #NRC01PL - this is a (hopefully) short post on Personal Learning Environments, which was the topic of week 4 of NRC01PL.  Maybe this week I can actually catch up  to this week's discussion (although twitter has been surprisingly quiet in this cMOOC). In any case, I love discussing PLEs because in order to meaningfully discuss PLEs we need to discuss the context in which education is happening, and those pre-requisite learner skills and behaviors that I wrote about a little bit in my previous post. So, what are PLEs?  PLEs were defined this week as learning environments where leaders can integrate distributed information, resources, and contacts; and reflect about learning progress and learning products based on standards and interfaces (Schaffert/Kalz, 2010). It's interesting to consider this definition because what we see (well, at least what I see) is a modularization of the learning environment.  As a matter of fact Stephen mentions a proposi

Moving along in NRC01PL, here are some reflections of what was presented in week 3 of the Personal Learning MOOC.  It's been rather busy at work, and at Athabasca as I am wrapping up my semester, so I haven't really gelled with anyone else in this cMOOC.  I think that the topic would be interesting to discuss in connectivist fashion, but I have not yet (satisfactorily) done any wayfinding . I see some friends from other MOOCs in the twitter stream (like Autumm and Jupidu), but don't see much in the place of discussion.  Maybe once I "catch up" I'll pay more attention to what others are doing?  I am getting a similar vibe now to the one I got in the Wiley MOOC on OpenEd (#ioe12)  - I am in a museum tour, and I am a few rooms behind the group.  Good opportunity for mischief and creative exploration, but it's always fun to have another friend around to share the experience with. In any case, in week 3 the topic was the (curious) case of the cMOOC, wher

Hey!  It's week 2 in NRC01PL!  Well... no, it's not, it's probably like week 5 or something, but I am working at catching up ;-)  The second week of this MOOC (which I've only now joined the Google Group) is on the Content/practice dichotomy. It's interesting because this comes up quite a few times in discussions in academia. The pendulum seems to swing from extreme to extreme.  Too much practice (which I gather is perfectly fine with Stephen D), or too much theory and content. The videos that Stephen had for this week were pretty interesting.   It was interesting to get a little backend view of OpenEdx (considering that I have no interest in setting up my own LMS). From the demonstration of OpenEdx I think that it's nice that OpenEdx has the ability to break a course into sections...but as Stephen demonstrated this functionality I found myself questioning the rationale behind this. Sections are tools  we use in traditional classes in academia to manage

The past several weeks felt a little like a marathon and a spring combined while our team was getting ready to present on our topic.  For the second assignment for EDDE 804 we explored and proposed leadership implications and educational interventions for a complex issue in society.  The subject we selected was sexual harassment and assault in the armed forces (specifically in Canada).  Paper | done.  Presentation | done (clocked in at just under 26 minutes).  Now all we have to do is moderate a forum for a couple of weeks on our topic. 3 weeks left to go! (Can we get a break yet? ;-) ) EDDE 804 Educational Interventions & Leadership Implications Presentation from Apostolos K. EDDE 804 - Assignment 2 by Apostolos Koutropoulos

The other day I came across this PhD Comics strip on grading rubrics. As a trained instructional designer (and having worked with instructional designers on and off since I started university as an undergraduate student) the concept of rubrics has really stuck with me.  That said,  I generally struggle with rubrics. In theory they are brilliant - a way to objectively measure how well someone has done on whatever assessable assignment. On the other hand, they are not that great and they could be a means for discontent and discord in the classroom (the "why did you indicate that my mark is in category B when it's clearly, in my student mind, in category A?" argument). For this reason I try to create rubrics that are as detailed as I can make them.  That said, it seems that detailed rubrics (like detailed syllabi) are rarely read by students ;-) Another issue arises with inherited courses. When I've inherited courses from other people that's also a source of

The case of MOOC standards (as well as MOOC sustainability) is something that keeps coming back to me as a topic of pondering.  I read about it in other blogs.  Then, I want to respond to some of these articles, and bounce off some ideas, but I lose motivation and decide "m'eh" - this topics isn't much of interest.  Then, a little while later, my interest on the topic rekindles.  I thought it would be best to at least write something to keep this conversation on quality going (it might even motivate me to write more in depth...or collaborate with some colleagues to produce something more "academic"). In any case, the most recent thing I read about MOOC Quality, and what that might look like is from eCampus News from about a month ago (something sticking out in my Pocket to-read list). The article points to recent research published in IRRODL where the Quality Matters rubric was used to keep the quality under control in a MOOC. I haven't read the

Last week my goal of attending all 806 sessions this semester got derailed by fatigue.  For those keeping score at home, I've attended 3, and written about 4 (including this post) this semester - still ahead of the game ;-).  Thank heavens for recorded sessions! As the sole member of Cohort 7 representing in 806 I feel like I should be more on top of things ;-) In any case, the presentation this past week included a presentation by Robyn Gorham (cohort ?),  an interlude by Lisa and Peggy (Cohort 6), and a presentation by Djenana Jalovcic (cohrot 5), who I met briefly in one of the virtually connecting sessions where I was a virtual buddy for a conference she was presenting in. The nice news (that I would have missed had I not viewed this recording) is that for our 806 presentation we don't need to limit ourselves to the traditional 20-minute presentation, we could do something new, innovative, experimental, (insert other adjectives here) where we can experiment with n

The other day I was reading a blog posted by Rebecca on marking and getting a sense of that impostor syndrome creeping in . I love reading posts like these because I still consider myself new  to the teaching, even though I've been doing it for a couple of years now.  Some of the things that she describes are things that I have thought or experienced, and some are not. In terms of an impostor syndrome, it hasn't come out for me with grading assignments.  In the past, when I have momentary panics or thoughts that impostor syndrome is setting in, it's usually around content-area knowledge!  Early on, when I started teaching, I wasn't even a doctoral student.  I was a practitioner and life-long learner, with a little research under my belt.  I knew enough, but I didn't consider myself the font of all knowledge - and that was scary.  What would learners think of me?  What if I was in a 'pop quiz' type of situation and the learners asked me some question a

In my quest to catch up on Pocket - before the news becomes stale, I came across this post by cogdog on seeking the evidence behind digital badges . The anatomy of the Open Badge include the possibility of including links to evidence for the skill that you are being badged for.    Of course, just because there is an associated metadata field available for people to use,  it doesn't mean that people actually use it! I know that the evidence part of badges is something that is often touted as an improvement over grades in courses, or diplomas, because grades don't indicate what specific skills you've picked up, and this problem is a bit worse with diplomas and graduation certificates because you can't evenly compared one candidate to another (let's say in my case it would be comparing me to some other computer science major from another university - or heck even my own university). Anatomy of badge, by ClassHack So, in theory, badges are superior to th

Classroom space, in second life A while back I really wanted to develop a course (for the instructional design program I teach in every now and again) on environmental factors of learning.  I know that the topic might seem nebulous but I think that's where the strength of the course would come from†.  We could examine not only  technologies which we use to facilitate our learning (and how they promote and don't promote learning, or certain kinds of learning), but also look at learning from a cross-disciplinary perspective including room design, social factors, architecture, technologies, learner attitudes, and so on. This idea is still in the nascent stages while I am working on my doctorate‡.  That said - despite the busy schedule this semester - I decided to dive into  #NR001PL , a cMOOC looking at Personal Learning Environments which is hosted by the National Research Council of Canada (where Stephen Downes works).  The course is interesting in that it ties in gRSSho

It seems that Inside Higher Education is playing a game of 7 questions . I thought that it would be interesting to respond to these when I has little more brain space to write some more in-depth answer instead of "agree or disagree" which was the original prompt.  These might very well fit into my Educational Leadership course now that I think of it.  So the questions are in italics , and my responses are in regular text. 1) A higher education program where students graduate with a credential, but without substantial career development, is a failed experience. It depends! I don't necessarily see higher education as being concurrent  with career development.  Sometimes, in some programs, and certainly depending on the degree, the benefits of higher education are seen in the long term, not just in the short term after graduation (i.e. gaining a new job or obtaining a promotion).  Some programs require  apprenticeships or practica.  In such cases I would say that the a

I've been slowly working on EDDE 804 assignments and reading (which is why I have not been as active on this blog lately).  I've been slowly working on my third assignment, the 'big one' for this class, which is a portfolio of all my learning in 804.  As part of this I am uploading my first assignment, in which I explored the concept of emergent leadership  The portfolio is coming along...slowly...but I guess I need to turn my attention to our team project first where we're looking into the issue of Harassment in the Military. More on that later (once it's all done). Until then, here is assignment one. EDDE 804 - Assignment 1 by Apostolos Koutropoulos