Multilitteratus Incognitus

I am a little behind the times in this breakneck-speed of development in the world of MOOCs, but some things (namely EDDE 804) have priority over the comings and goings of xMOOC providers. Close to a month ago IHE had reported in their quick takes  section that coursera will remove the option of free  for some of their courses .  Blink, and you may have missed it.  I also don't recall seeing much discussion about it in my usual edTech circles. My original thought was that coursera was just barring access (period) to some courses if you don't pay, however it seems that the actual process is a little more nuanced.  From the coursera blog : Starting today, when you enroll in certain courses, you’ll be asked to pay a fee (or apply for Coursera’s financial aid program) if you’d like to submit required graded assignments and earn a Course Certificate. You can also choose to explore the course for free, in which case you’ll have full access to videos, discussi...

Last week, despite the craziness, I completed two courses.  First, I completed the #fslt12 MOOC, which I really enjoyed a lot!  The interactions between my peers and the facilitators were great, there was a lot of sharing of best practices and lived experiences, and I took a lot of things away; both things that I can immediately put into practice, and things that I need to read up on :-).  It was a bit of a bummer that I was not able to attend the final session and present my microteaching activity (see a blog post or two back), but my peers did discuss it and gave me some feedback which was pretty cool! I hope that Oxford Brookes runs this MOOC again next year because I think it's beneficial to people that are new to the teaching profession :-) The other course that I completed was a course/workshop from the Sloan Consortium on implementing the quality scorecard in online programs.  This was a pretty interesting course. Going into it, I was under the i...

I am not sure if this counts as a MOOC, we'll see :-) In any case, I got this notice through coursesites.com the other day (I use coursesites to teach my research methods course this semester), and it seems interesting - at least I am curious about it. Here's the link to register for the course  in case you are interested. Free, Open Course With Dr. Curt Bonk:  Enroll Now Please join us in  CourseSites   for a unique opportunity to learn with Dr. Bonk -- and from each other -- in our first open course focused on increasing student engagement and motivation online. We know your time is valuable and limited, so in this course you choose your level of participation. Whether you simply drop in or fully engage, we hope to see you online! Course Title :  Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success Description : Motivating students and creating community within blended and online learning environments are crucial to academic achieveme...

OK, so my first MOOC is almost over...so what did I think? I have to say that as an experience LAK11 was actually quite interesting. The subject matter was interesting (even though we tended to go toward the business/finance side of the house quite often) and there were quite a few interesting personalities that were part of the course. The course started out with a bang! There were a ton of people in both the introduction round and in week 1...but then it fizzled! I am not sure why it did, but as the weeks went on, there seemed to be fewer and fewer people participating. Compared to CCK11 (now in its 5th week I think), the participation in LAK11 was mostly distributed at the beginning, while CCK11 seems to have more spread-out participation. I guess one reminds me of a sprint, and the other of a marathon. I think that learning and learner analytics is quite a fascinating topic. I wonder if (and how) a MOOC on this topic (LAK12?) could improve - What can you do to sustain parti...

Over the summer I started working on my field experience, one of the last requirement for my MA in Applied Linguistics.  Honestly, last summer I would have preferred to have gotten the practicum waived and taken phonetics and phonemics instead, but now I am glad that I have to take it.  I am getting a lot out of observing a seasoned (and pretty awesome) instructor do what they do best.  Over the summer, to get out of the "teaching" requirement (which seems to have been absent in previous semesters... but anyway...) I was thinking of creating an eLearning module, perhaps using something like captivate, where I would be able to use communicative approaches to teach content and language.  My initial thought was to teach a little bit about the Apple of Discord and Paris' choice.  This would have coincided with conditionals, so students could learn a little more about what supposedly happened that lead to the Trojan War and the events in the Iliad, and they would h...

Wow, this semester is really (REALLY) moving along quite fast. This month is just flying by, and December is going to be quite literally two class sessions. Lots of stuff is due, lots of papers, final projects, critical essays....wow... So what's on my plate? - Observation Analysis + Lesson plan for my ESL methods/materials class - Complete Thematic Unit Lesson Plan for my Foreign Language methods class (yes they are different) - Critical Analysis Essay for my Foreign Language methods class (plus an evaluation of a classmate's Essay) - Evaluation Plan for an eLearning class (see Kirkpatrick for details) - Put the finishing touches on the Academic Integrity Training that I am creating - Finish off the rough draft of my capstone. I guess I don't really have to do my capstone stuff given that I am actually supposed to do it next semester, but I am really into it, so it's hard to put something down when you've got a lot of inspiration for it. On top of all that I'...

I was reading University Diaries on InsideHigherEd the other day and I came across this point-counterpoint Point [C]atalogue copy is prepared yearly (sometimes twice yearly), which means that universities are almost always “lying” about their programs. Let’s say a student applies to a department because it offers a specialty he is interested in, and he arrives to find that the key players — the ones he wanted to study with — departed last month. It’s hard to see why he should have a legal remedy. There is really no one to blame... Counterpoint Has Fish not heard of the computer? Students rarely get course information from slowly prepared print media; everything's online now, including catalogue copy, so there's no reason why it can't be updated rapidly and constantly. Again, I agree with him that legal remedies for complaints about this are absurd; but he's not acknowledging the reality of universities. The problem's not the slow publication of information. I have ...