Multilitteratus Incognitus

Hurray! The first semester of my doctoral studies is done!  Well, it was done last week, but as I wrote in the previous post (on #dalmooc) it's been one crazy semester.  I had hoped that I would blog once a week on the topic of EDDE 801 , getting some interesting nuggets of information each week to share , but between MOOC like #ccourses, work, and regular EDDE 801 work, no such luck.  I felt I was putting in enough time in EDDE 801 and that I gave everything into the closed system that is Moodle rather than on the blog.  So, here's one blog post to try to re-capture some thoughts I had while the semester was in progress. Early on one of the things I really dreaded were the synchronous sessions, every Tuesday at 8PM (my time).  My previous experience with synchronous sessions was not a good one, thus coloring my expectations for this course. Most of my previous experience has been one-way communication webinars (yaaaawn), or mandatory online course synchro...

Back in Boston!  I was off to Edmonton last week for my doctoral program orientation at Athabasca University . The orientation is a formal part of the first course ( EDDE 801 ) and it is a requirement.  Not attending the orientation means not being the program.  Those who know me on campus know that I am not a fan of cohorts, and I don't like residential requirements, so it might seem illogical to apply to a program that requires both.  Well, what can I say? I thought I would try something new for a change and go outside of my comfort zone and see what it's like (who knows, maybe I'll re-assess my stance on cohorts and residential requirements). The incoming cohort each year (this year we are cohort 7) is made up of 12 members.  We actually had 13 members to start off with, but one of us was wooed to go an join the DBA program at Athabasca, so he is gone from our cohort, but I consider him an honorary member. Apparently the optimal size of a cohort is 20-30 st...