Multilitteratus Incognitus

Recently I read an article on Your Training Edge which aims to correct misconceptions surrounding MOOCs. The title of this particular post, and I guess myth that they tried to correct, was " MOOCs Aren’t Interactive, So There’s No Real Learning Taking Place ". The basic idea in this misconception is really preposterous.  I don't know when interactive became synonymous with learning , but it is clearly a flawed concept.  Yes, interactivity can aid in learning, but just because something isn't interactive it doesn't mean that learning is taking place, and vice versa - if something is interactive it doesn't mean that learning is taking place.  I can think of a lot of cases where there isn't interactivity, but learning happens never the less. Three examples that come to mind are: self-paced eLearning, while you might have some  interactivity (matching games, clicking "next" on the player, and so on), this interactivity is really token interact...

The other day I was reading this blog post on why MOOC forums are counter-productive .  I was really thinking hard about this and my initial inclination is to agree. Forums, in MOOCs, are  counter-productive. But, as with most things in life, there is a big asterisk here. If we look at how MOOCs are setup, and by MOOC here I mean xMOOC since that's what most people think of, the discussion board is one big crazy mess. Coursera has done something interesting in crowdsourcing thread relevancy by allowing people to up-vote or down-vote threads, but at their core these discussions are setup like every other discussion forum out there in traditional education: There usually is a prompt that people will answer, and answers can be repetitive as well, so when you are the 1000th poster to a question prompt and you see that others have answered something similar to your answers, what is the motivation to wade through many, many, many similar answers in order to find the subtle conte...

Well, another MOOC is now complete!  I still have a few more readings in Pocket to go through, blogs from fellow bloggers.  I have to say that the materials in this MOOC weren't a revelation for me.  I have encountered these topics before in my professional career, especially more recently when topics like MOOCs and alternative credentialing and badges are hot topics. If I already knew some of these things, why join?  Well, as we've said before, content isn't king.  Content is an important part, but not king.  For me, it's about interacting with other people, and getting to find out other important SMEs and thinkers in the field. To agree, disagree, debate, and write.  In addition to some of the usual suspects, like Serena (which gives me good reasons to practice my Italian :-)  ) and  brainysmurf , this time around I met another interesting MOOCer, Rolin Moe ( blog here ). I don't always agree with what he writes, but his blog was always a...

It's the final week of CHFE12 (edfuture.net) and the topic is something that we've beat to death in the past in MOOCs like #ioe12 (which I completed a bit late this September) and #change11 ; in which we discussed the topic of Open Research about a year ago. I may have also seen this topic crop up in eduMOOC in 2011 and a MOOC on Open Education (not #ioe12) also running this fall. In any case, I feel like I am really past the point of talking about Open Research, and I am more in the "doing" phase of things.  I know that academia has a problem with collaboration and co-research and co-publishing.  We are masters of saying one thing (we want collaboration!) but then we are also great at reprimanding people who do collaborate. In hiring committees and tenure decision making, we aren't as comfortable with candidates that don't have as many publications under their name, and their name alone.  A few months ago, I heard some colleagues from another on the elevat...

Yesterday, while commuting, I had written a longer post about my MOOC-coverage fatigue.  It seems as though MOOC coverage has gotten out of proportion and it's spilled over to other non educational news outlets that I frequent, where I go for non-educational news. In any case, it seems as though the Google Blogger client of my iPhone ate my post.  Maybe for the best, because I feel like I was getting to have a cranky "get off my lawn" slant to it ;-)† In any case, in thinking about re-writing that post, I was skimming some recent MOOC related news on Inside Higher Education, the Chronicle and the non academia blogs that suddenly have picked up and started reporting on MOOCs since they are the subject of venture capital news. Despite being an MBA, I don't get all excited about VC news, I am more interested about the product than figuring out right away how to make money with it. While going through a day's worth of RSS feeds, I just had this crystallize: Many ...

I must admit, I had planned on writing a post about how finding college leaders is like dating at times, you can go with the blind date and be pleasantly surprise, or date one of your friends and (hopefully) know most of the information before hand. As I was reading the Washington Post article, however, I was overcome with a severe sense of facepalm, and as I was responding to the article, it got long enough to need a blog post of its own.  I decided to interweaver some of the dating metaphors where applicable ;-) So here we go: On Hiring: The article starts by talking about how most educational leaders get their positions in academia, and the usual path tends to be through becoming a tenured faculty member, and then, at some point, becoming an administator. The article goes on...: The usual way to accomplish [getting tenure] is to develop expertise in a relatively narrow area and publish like mad in it. Bold efforts to open up entirely new fields or draw grand syn...

Last week was pretty interesting, but between storms, workshops, and work (it's advising and registration time), I only got away with one initial blog post last week.  I did keep up with the discussion, thanks to a large part to the daily newsletter for #cfhe12. As I was reading the various blog posts, this popped up to me: MOOCs and the Teaching Profession . I was really surpsised (I think my jaw dropped) when Rolin's acquaintance told him that he didn't think teaching was a profession.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised. In my area (as I am sure in others), K-12 is highly regulated, so much paperwork and documentation to be completed, I guess anyone pushing paper effectively was be seen as competent whethey they are or not.  K-12, however, is not my area of expertise, I know something here and there.  Higher Education I am more familiar with. I guess, in a higher education context, I am still shocked to hear that teaching is not, by some, considered a profe...

It's week 4 of #cfhe12 so it must be time for Big Data and Analytics as the topic of discussion. It's interesting coming back to this topic of discussion because it was the topic of the first MOOC I took part in, LAK11, and it's a topic I've been thinking (or at least keeping on the back burner) since I was in business school. On of th things to keep in mind when talking about Analytics is that there are quite a few definitions out there , so, when talking about learning Analytics it is important to define what we aim to get out of our discussion about Analytics and how we wish to employ the potential insight that we get from this data. There are two topics that have recently come up in my neck of the woods: knowing what sort of data one can get from the various campus systems, and knowing what it means (and accurately representing what the data tells us). First, it's important to know what sort of data you can get out of your systems, like the LMS. As I've...

The other day, seeing that there were a couple of videos in the HCI that were available. Since I didn't have time to watch them during lunch, and as established coursera has no offline viewing for their courses, I decided to try my luck with the iPhone while commuting. Since I do use coursera, and I do watch videos on my iPad when I am at home from time to time (on wifi), it would make sense that I would be able to do the same on my iPhone. Thus with 20 minutes left in my commute, and two 17 minute videos to watch, it seemed like a no-brainer. Well, the image I got was the image on he right, in plain English: video not playable. What gives? This can't possibly be a technology constraint, so it must be a course design and delivery constraint. It reminds me of the continuing discussion (well, a series of post in actuality) thinking about the constraints that LMS/CMS design place on teaching and learning, based on the assumptions that go into designing an LMS. It seems to me...

**sigh** The mobile client ate my post! I will try to reconstitute as much of it as I remember ;-) In this blog post I am continuing the train of though started by thinking about different levels of participation, and my blog post on MOOC registration.  Since MOOCs are generally not taken for credit, and since they generally don't need to conform to some sort of departmental outcomes standard (i.e. this course addresses Program Level Outcome A, D, and E), it would be easier for a MOOC, than in a traditional course, to design several tracks and have different requirements for those tracks. There might also be options for a create-your-track, depending on the course of course. When a participant registers for a MOOC they can pick their track(s) and the system can monitor the participant's progress.  I think of this like Nike+'s  goal setting. For example my goal was to do 72 miles in 2 (or 3) months. Sure, for a hard core runner that's probably nothing.  For a des...

It seems like Rebecca and I were on the same wavelength yesterday when we were composing our blog posts and reflecting on various aspects of MOOCs.  Rebecca wonders why there is only one level of participation in xMOOCs , and I have to say, having started my 3rd coursera MOOC yesterday (same one as Rebecca, the Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society on coursera), I can see that (from my limited experience) there is a limit on how participation is counted.  Granted, I've spoken out about participation in the past for cMOOCs, but I've considered participation as being active somehow (twitter, blogs, discussions, etc.).  In xMOOCs, and in particular my two experiences on Coursera for the Gamification course and  now the  Design: Creation of Artifacts  course, a participant gets a certificate of completion having done all the quizzes satisfactorily and by completing the assignments. This is one level of participation, and it's one of the valid ways to get...

The topic of open assessment came up during #blendkit2012 this week, which is quite a fascinating topic. Britt asked if peer review can work in small groups, having seen it in xMOOCs like coursera. I've written about open assessment before, but not specifically about this, I don't think. I have written some quick thoughts on the coursera peer review system which can be summarized even quicker by saying "hit or miss." In the one course (thus far) where I've opted to do the assessments and review my peers, the reviews were a mix. Some reviews of my work were good, others were lacking, and for some I wondered if they even read (or understood) the rubric! So, while I can see how massive open peer review can be good, the fact that its anonymous means that I can't seek clarification, and there is no apprenticeship into the rubric to make sure everyone gets it (and really understands the asynchronous lectures). Bringing this back into the blended classroom, I ...

This week on #cfhe12 I read a couple of posts of interest from my fellow participants (apologies, I am currently on the train with no connectivity, ore lease I would search for those post and link to them :-) ) and there were two key points that I wanted to reiterate, combine, and expand upon. The first point is that mass (well, "massiveness") is relative. I am sure I learned in physics that Mass is indeed relative there, too, but I'd have to take a MOOC to brush up on my high school physics ;-)In any case, 100,000 MOOC participants in course X does not mean that it is equivalent to 100,000 participants in course Y. If you have a course (MOOC) that Iran introductory level course (introduction to German for example), you will most certainly get to sign up (and probably retain) a whole lot more people than a more niche course (let's say "Seminal Works of Bertold Brecht" which is taught and discussed, and written about in German). The introductory course will...

It's week 3 in #cfhe12 and the topic of the week is Entrepreneurship and commercial activity in education , and I kicked off the week by reading The Evolution of Ed Tech in Silicon Valley and How the Internet is Revolutionizing Education . There are, of course, other readings that I intent on getting to, but these two were the only HTML documents that were easy to sent to Pocket (I did however skim the educational start-ups PDF because I was curious).  In any case, it was interesting to read about the venture capital process, how it related to EdTech, and how much quicker (and easier) it is to be innovative these days. Now, when I say "be innovative" I don't mean the actual having an idea part, but the ability to execute it. With services like Amazon's cloud services it's easier these days for someone who has an idea, and has some know-how (or access to know-how) to be able to get up and running.  Not that long ago one had to go to the appropriate authori...

Yesterday morning I was catching up on some #cfhe12 blog posts by Bryan Alexander (who I have not seen in a MOOC in ages), a blog post about d efining MOOCs  by Rolin Moe ,  and my colleague Rebecca who writes about the ease and usefulness in MOOCs†. First, let me respond to Rolin's points (since I happened to read his blog post first). There are lots of people looking at the future of academic publishing, pushing for an open movement. Some academic journals have gone open, but the majority of journals carry a high price tag which only exists as price opportunistic for educational institutions (and some rare corporations and organizations). Yet academic journals are part of the lifeblood of scientific research, especially for soft sciences (such as education). By only working with open resources, a cMOOC cuts many of these empirical, peer-reviewed research works out of its circulation, having instead to pull from free resources that often lack academic rigor. For a...

After a tittle like that, I feel like this blog ought to have a theme song ;-) Is this too dorky? Not dorky enough?  Chime in through the comments :-) In any case, it's Week 2 of #cfhe12 and the topic of the week is New Pedagogies: New models for teaching and learning . I find it interesting (and ironic) that Blended Learning and Online Learning are considered "new pedagogies" and "new models."  Even though I am currently undertaking 2 Blended Learning workshops (one MOOC #blendkit and one workshop through Sloan-C), I have known about blended learning for a while.  As far as Online Learning goes...I've known about it, and been active in it for much longer!  How can these models be considered new?  To me MOOCs are new because we are still exploring them.  There is no "one MOOC format", just as there is no one Online Course format. MOOCs are a subset of Online Courses, and MOOCs have many other courses that are a subset of a MOOC. That being said...

Well, yesterday afternoon I got fired up when listening to the final panel discussion of the day at Sloan-C's annual ALN conference. The panel was titled "Evolution or Revolution? What’s Happening with “Traditional” Online Learning?" and I have broken down my thoughts by speaker. Jose Cruz (The Education Trust, US) This was a pretty interesting speaker, and he made a good point about putting "learning" back in "online learning". The speaker pointed out that governments was accountability, higher graduation rates, and, of course, do it with less money. This speaker,  mostly focused on access to higher education and higher education completion along ethnic and socioeconomic lines. Beyond that the speaker focused a lot on the numbers of people, along different ethnic and racial demographics, that have a BA. It seemed to me that the basic assumption was that the BA degree was a necessity - period. There was no interrogation of why a BA is a requiremen...