Multilitteratus Incognitus

"Fractured Spock" - by me and Net Art Generator, for #clmooc Over the past couple of years, since the silly acronym "SPOC" was invented to denote a course that was the antithesis to the MOOC, a Small Private Online Course , I've had issues with the acronym, and took exception to this new discovery  on the part of schools that newly invented  this form of education, considering that there are schools that have been doing it since the early aughts. In any case, I was finally going through my Pocket account today, trying to read as many things as I've saved for later reading since Rhizo15 when I came across a couple of articles that really made me roll my eyes a bit and made me want to facepalm... The first article is a featured article in Harvard Magazine, July/August issue, titled Is Small Beautiful? This was a fairly quick read, but I couldn't help but think that this was mostly a PR piece on the part of Harvard and Harvardx. There is a lot ...

It is a bit of an odd thing to admit, but ever since I started formal school again in order to pursue a doctorate the amount of pleasure reading has gone down.  Now, this is to be expected, time resources need to be allocated differently in order to meet the rigorous demands of a doctoral program.  That said, my pleasure reading was research articles anyway, so it's kind of hard to out down your candy (research articles about MOOCs and online learning) in order to have your balanced meal consisting of research in other fields that you aren't necessarily aware of.  This is a good thing, but the amount of research on MOOCs keeps piling up in my dissertation drawer at work.  Summer project! Anyway, I digress! I saw that France Bell and Jenny Mackness had a recent article in Open Praxis about Rhizo14 .  I actually did with it what I do with all MOOC articles these days - download the PDF, archive it, print it out, add to my "to read" pile. Normally that would h...

I suppose that it's not quite random, it's actually part of the work I am doing for my first doctoral course.  That said, I thought I would post this here (now that its been submitted) to see if others have read this particular article and what they think :) Power, T., & Morven-Gould, A. (2011). Head of gold, feet of clay: The online learning paradox. The International Review Of Research In Open And Distance Learning , 12(2), 19-39. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/916/1739 The article’s thesis is that the paradox of online learning is this concurrent appearance of a boom and a bust. Since online learning, like any other complex system, is multifaceted this seems plausible. This piece has three main sections: (1) a literature review on attitudes toward distance education spanning 1999 to 2009; (2) a description and reconceptualization of the iron triangle which has three constraints cost, quality, and access; and finally (3) a propo...