Multilitteratus Incognitus

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 mention...

Just before my Athabasca semester starts I am trying to make headway in my Pocket 'to read' collection :-).  I had bookmarked this post by David Hopkins a while back where he asks for information about facilitation in MOOCs, and to some extent this runs into sustainability - something we briefly talked about in 2012 at UMass Boston when we hosted the MOOC sustainability symposium. In any case, the questions that David asks are interesting and important to consider, and I've been thinking about them on-and-off since I read his post, so here are some rudimentary, preliminary, working-thoughts. I should say that I am speaking more as an instructional designer and long-time MOOC follower, and not as someone who has developed and ran their own MOOCs. What are your thoughts on how we manage the course, the comments and discussion during the run, and the subsequent comments and discussion during re-runs? I think that the answer to this really depends on your philosophical s...

This week has been rough in the office.  We learned that our colleague - and my former professor - Pepi Leistyna passed away. Details are scant at the moment and everyone in the department is in a state of shock as his death was quite sudden and unexpected.  I was going to write a blog post about about my history with him, how I knew him as a person when I worked in Media Services (good ol' AV department) where he used to pick up VHS players on carts to show clips of films in his courses; how he influenced my development as a learner and a scholar; and finally as a valued colleague when I started working in the department of Applied Linguistics.  While I think this is valuable, and certainly part of the process, I think there is another area to home in on, thanks to this week on #HumanMOOC: Social Presence! Social Presence is defined as : ...the ability of learners to project their personal characteristics into the community of inquiry, thereby presenting themselves...

Captain Data (an android) End of another week.  Sometimes when I reach cognitive overload I feel like a stranded sailor - what days is it? where am I?  what did I do this week?  Did I learn this thing this week or last week?  Anyway,  I've taken some notes throughout the week so that I can discuss and summarize a bit things that made me think.  So, I had discovered a MOOC, on the Canvas Network, on Humanizing Online Instruction (or #HumanMOOC). I recognized some familiar names as organizers (which was a big draw), and the topic seemed interesting.  Something I could use in the way I conceptualize the course I teach (The Design and Instruction of Online Courses) so that I can keep materials fresh, re-work, re-frame, re-conceptualize the course.  I wasn't sure if I was going to participate in the course, and if past performance was any indication, I would not be "completing" this course; I haven't completed a course on canvas yet - and I'v...

Worlds have officially collided (either that, or the Rhizome has invaded my mind) ;-) This week is the beginning of Humanizing Online Instruction (or #humanMOOC) on the Canvas Network.  As is usually the case, I tend to lurk in more MOOCs than I can actually "complete†"in any given period.  Given my homework for EDDE 802, and my teaching work on INSDSG 684 (and let's not forget the day-job), I wasn't really going to follow #HumanMOOC that closely.  I still don't know how closely I am going to follow along - but heck, I'll give it the old college try. Even though I am not sure what my activity will look like, I thought it would be a good idea to introduce myself in case blogposts or tweets with #HumanMOOC started coming up with my name on them. One of the things that my brief interaction in the #HumanMOOC Forums reminded me of is the potentially Rhizomatic nature of knowledge and participation online.  For instance, I might read something on Maha's bl...