Multilitteratus Incognitus

Check, check. Is this thing on? Linguistics isn't generally considered a topic, like one of those sexy STEM courses, that everyone talks about when they talk about degrees and fields to study for job related purposes. For this reason we haven't seen a lot of linguistics related MOOCs.  Last year we had the Virtual Linguistics Campus offer three MOOCs using their own approach to teaching MOOCs which seemed more like self-paced eLearning. I didn't complain (much) because it was, after all, courses in linguistics. This time around, the University of Lancaster is offering a course on Corpus Linguistics, which I have naturally signed up for.  There is at least one colleague from the #rhizo14 MOOC taking this course, so I am curious to see what they think of the course after all is said and done.  In the meantime, I have some initial thoughts on the course itself, as well as the mechanics of the future learn platform, as they are realized through this MOOC. The first ...

Apple's Clarus the cowdog; and his "moof" 'bark Well, it's the end of 2013 and it's been a MOOC-kinda year, so before I head off for a small break (which is probably going to involve a lot of MOOCing), I thought I should write a summative post for my year's exploits in MOOCs. 2013, other than it being the year of the Anti-MOOC (according to some) was really the year of the xMOOC for me.  I participated in a lot of xMOOCs and got to see how different organizations had different takes on how to approach courses that are online and have, potentially, a large amount of participants.  Most of my MOOC experiences were coursera based (it seems like they are at the top of the hill at the moment), but I did expand my horizons by taking a course on EdX on the Ancient Greek Hero, a Harvard course, and a couple of courses through the Virtual Linguistics Campus which are courses offered through the Philipps-Universität Marburg . The VLC, interestingly enough got ...

In a few days I will be leaving on vacation, so I won't be MOOCing...or at least I won't be MOOing.  I have downloaded textual materials on my iPad, and I plan on getting a local SIM where I go to keep up with my RSS feeds (until Google Reader decides to kick the bucket).  I thought it would be a good idea to write a few thoughts while I have a hardware keyboard in hand. First up, edX and the Ancient Greek Hero course that I have been following. In a previous post I had mentioned that I had fallen behind with reading of the Iliad Scrolls (the side materials for the course) and I was only keeping up with the main textbook, the Ancient Greek Hero in 24 hours. Week 6 and 7 were actually quite long, compared to previous weeks, in terms of reading, so I have fallen behind on that one too. It is on my iPad, so I will be completing it during my vacation.  That said I did have a lightbulb moment when I was thinking of academic rigor for MOOCs and how xMOOCs are replicating exi...