Multilitteratus Incognitus

Derby Wharf, Salem, MA - Jan 2015 (Storm: Juno) I am sure that last one is a word I just made up on the spot. It's been a slow week in 802.  I was reading Lisa's reflection on Lurking in 802 (she is in last year's cohort, so she is two courses ahead of us in Cohort 7), and how she viewed 802 at the time as a make or break experience for the Ed.D. program.  While 801 last semester was a whirlwind tour of Online and Distance Education , this semester is a whirlwind tour (or boot-camp perhaps) on the topic of Research and how to go about doing it.  The textbook, by Cohen and the gang , is something that I have read before (a few year ago), but this doesn't help a ton ;-)  There is a lot to unpack, and this book is dense.  Even if one could memorize everything (not a good way to learn, by the way), it's like going to philosophy course - you are there essentially to argue for and support your stance. You are also called upon to explain your underlying fra...

Udemy is one of those platforms that frequently gets lumped into the "MOOC provider" category. Perhaps, these days, with the term being anything you want it to be, Udemy fits into this category.  Over the past few weeks I've been experimenting with their courses to see what Udemy is all about.  originally (a year or so ago), when I first went to Udemy I experienced sticker-shock.  The courses (or at least those one the homepage) were not free. This was not something that I was expecting to see from a MOOC platform. That said, this time around, I fished around and found six free courses.  Three were more like professional development workshops, traditional self-paced learning, and three were created by academics.  The three more academic courses were Ancient Greek Religion , Intercultural Communication , and a political science course on American Democracy . From a motivational perspective, I assigned up for these courses because they were free, and they were...

Last fall, when I was on an xMOOC-binge, I decided to sign up for a MOOC called Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application (#foemooc). I knew the subject matter, but I decided to participate so I can compare notes. After all, I am teaching what is the same course online this semester in a non-MOOC format. I was also curious how it would be done in a MOOC format because I've been thinking about designing some courses that could work "natively" in the MOOC format, like Connectivism and Connected Knowledge where some students take it for credit, while others just take it because they are interested in the course. In any case, work got the better of me, and instead of focusing on xMOOCs, I decided to focus on good ol' cMOOCs, since those are the MOOCs that are pushing the envelope on pedagogy; so I dropped #foemooc in January. It also didn't help that #foemooc was misunderstood by some (and therefore advertised among the blogosphere and twittersphe...