Multilitteratus Incognitus

...ambivalent?  I am not sure if ambivalence is the word I am going for because I am getting hints of nostalgia too.  Perhaps though I should take a step back, and start from the beginning. This past weekend two things happened: The first thing is that I've completed reading full books as part of my literature review for my dissertation, and I have moved onto academic articles, articles I've been collecting on MOOCs and collaboration in general. While MOOCs aren't really the main focus of my dissertation study, they do form the basis, or rather the campgrounds on which the collaborative activities occurred on, and it's those collaborative activities I want to examine. This review of MOOC articles (while still relatively in the early stages) made me reflect back on  my own MOOC experiences since 2011. The second thing is that I received a message from FutureLearn which was a little jarring and made me ponder.  Here is a screenshot: My usual process, when ...

Another docublog from virtually connecting from a few weeks ago, at OpenEd Berlin with Alec Couros.  This one has the innovation of being the first "pop up" virtually connecting session.  Enjoy!

Last evening I joined 806 (which seemed to have a very small group of people attending) for their bi-weekly meetup.  I think that for this post I will write more about my 2 take-aways from the session in general, rather than recap both presentations.: Take-away #1: Small sample sizes aren't necessarily a problem.  Both Tracy and Leslie (presenters of the evening) were taking about their work (well, the work they are gearing up to do), and they both have between 6 and 12 participants for their research.  I am thinking about my own dissertation process, my own "problem" (which isn't a problem, so I hate using that term, but whatever), and how many people can be my informants (at most 16, but most likely 10 or so will agree to be part of it).   I've been thinking that AU might have issues with such small sample sizes. However, considering that I am not aiming at generalization (and neither are the presenters from last night's session), I am encouraged to co...

OK, I am almost 'caught up' with the stuff I missed while I was on vacation (at least as far as 806 goes).  I remember receiving an email from Pearl indicating that Sir John Daniel would be presenting. Too bad the internet wasn't that reliable :-/  Oh well, thank goodness for recordings ;-) Sir John Daniel seemed like a pretty interesting  person, and very knowledgeable (with over 300 publications to his name) and he must be a respectable human being because he wouldn't hold 32 honorary degrees from 17 different countries if people only liked him for his scholarship.  I guess the bar has been set for me (haha! :-) ). The only area where I surpass him is in the amount of MOOCs I've taken vs how many he's taken.  Even as a recording it was great to get to 'meet' such a distance education heavyweight (maybe I can email him and we can go for some coffee and discuss the future of DE next time I am around his neck of the woods in Canada ;-)  ). In any ...

Now that I am back from vacation (was off to Spain, but spent a little time in Istanbul on the way to and from), it's time to catch up a bit on EDDE 806. On the day that I was flying out to begin my vacation A lec Couros was presenting....D'oh!  I missed the opportunity to be live in that 806.  Not only was Alec on, but there was also a fellow EDDE student who is also Greek.  It would have been glorious to have so many Greeks on on 806 session. Oh well - maybe next time :p In any case, Alec's presentation was titled "The Making of an Open & Connected Educator" which was really interesting.  Parts of what he presented on were familiar to me because I've been following Alec since 2011 when I got into MOOCs, and I learned more about ED&C 831 (his open course). Parts of what he presented were new to me.  For instance I didn't know he was a school teacher before he got into his current career.  Props to anyone who is a school teacher - I don...

One of the items I've wanted to comment on for a while was a blog post posted by friend and colleague Rebecca Hogue .  Rebecca writes that she teaches courses (similar, or the same courses as I do at UMB anyway) and these courses would be well served by a decent eBook that is published (and updated) for the course.  I wholeheartedly agree!  For the past half a decade I've been thinking about trying to put together an edited volume for the introductory course in instructional design†, or just write the book myself. I've been thinking that this should be open access, given my philosophical leanings toward open access for education, however - just like Rebecca - I am not paid to teach full time. I teach because I like it, and I like to mentor others. Writing a book (or putting something edited together) takes up a lot of time and effort, and of course that needs to be maintained.  Expecting that someone will do it for free is not realistic.  It's a good thing...

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...

The other day I was reading a recent post by Jenny Mackness on questions about being open. Jenny had attended the recent ALT-C conference and was responding to a fellow ALT-C participant's questions on openness.  Specifically Viv Rofle ponders: I’m questioning not just openness by my motives behind wanting to contribute to it. What motivates academics and teachers to get involved in areas of practice that are NOT supported by their institutions?  Why invest even longer hours in supporting educational practice? My dentist doesn’t give me free root canal treatment outside of work?  Why personally finance conference attendance and travel, and what are the implications of this for the education sector?  What is in it for those willing to ‘go open’? These are good questions, and I think that the fact that I, a non-participant in ALT-C, am able to view, ponder, and engage with such questions and discussions is really the reason why you'd want to be open. E...

It's been a while, but I am finally (sort of) getting back to addressing some feedback that my colleague and I got on an article we are working on with regard to MOOCs.  My colleague, Zaharias, thought it would be a great idea to sit down and make an (initial) typology of issues around the development of MOOCs. The abstract was accepted for a special issue of a journal, but our final version was not.  This I found a bit odd, but I've taken the peer reviewer's comments to heart, and I am thinking of ways of addressing them.  Some, in my mind, are valid.  I "live" in my head, so for me terms like cMOOC, xMOOC, FSLT12, CCK11, MobiMOOC, connectivism and so on are second nature.  I think to some audiences there might be some need to explain what this alphabet soup means.  Other comments that I also took to heart revolve around typos that just sneaked under our radars. After 8200 words, and multiple readings, who could blame us ;-) As a newly minted editor, tho...

With coursera MOOCs kind of slow this time of year, I decided to try out a MOOC on the subject of "Open" on P2PU. After my first P2PU course, #rhizo14, I thought I would flex the mental muscle a bit and get some P2PU experience.  The topic of this week asks us to ponder what Openness means to us as individual participants.  To be honest I haven't really sat down to write up what I think of Openess.  I've certainly discussed the topic with colleagues and friends over beer or coffee, but it's been on specific topics, like MOOCs.  Many in the xMOOC arena consider "open" to mean "free".  The previous post I wrote should have you convinced, to some degree, that Open isn't free. There is some cost associated with it whether or not you get it gratis . That said, for me Open is about a philosophy.  It may mean a number of things: 1. free-of-cost :  In some instances, such as all those free MOOCs that you can sign up for (even this one!) you ...

This past week on the #rhizo14 facebook group my colleague, and co-author, Rebecca Hogue posted a link to this TED talk by Shai Reshef on the Ultra-Low Cost University . This talk really bugged me for a variety of reasons. On the facebook group I wrote that I was angry when I saw this, but it was really more of a "WTF" reaction to the video.  More disbelief that the incredible amount of BS†, and the attempt to place a reality distortion field around this product. With a new cMOOC on the horizon for next week titled " Why Open ," I thought this would be a good chance to elaborate more on why I had such a visceral reaction to this video. As a side note, if you are interested in the whole Open thing, check out Stanford's Open Online Course starting this fall semester online. The topic is interesting, but after #whyopen, Wiley's #ioe12, and being steeped in this culture for the past decade, I don't know what a 13-week course (traditional semester) has ...

Last week I was somewhere between work, teaching, the NERCOMP symposium I co-facilitated and the annual Sloan Consortium Emerging Tech for Online conference. It was nice to see some familiar MOOC faces on both twitter and on the live stream presentations. I think it was in Jen Ross's presentation (of EDCMOOC fame) that a Rhizo14 participant was quoted anonymously.  I really didn't think much about it at the time. It was more of an "wow, I didn't think rhizo was really that well known outside of some crazy circles."  In any case, it turns out that the quote was from the autoethnography that we are working on (slowly but surely I guess), and that no permission was sought to use the quote.  Before I knew the specifics the prompt on the rhizo14 facebook group was: I have to admit that my gut reaction was "someone's watching? Who's reading our stuff?" But, I should point out, that this isn't indicative of a  negative reaction, but rather a ...

The cone of silence ;-) In most cMOOCs I attempt to go back and respond to fellow participant's posts after something has provoked some thoughts.  If I am less busy, I tend to blog more, if I am more busy, I tend to leave more comments.  I guess this semester I am sort of in-between ;-) In any case, from week 1 of the #rhizo14 MOOC here are some things that have piqued my interest: From Jenny comes to the following quote: For me, learning isn’t so much about what we do – cheating or otherwise – but more about who we are and who we become – and as such is associated with ethical and moral dimensions. Does living in a digitally networked world, a world of rhizomatic learners change what we commonly understand to be the basic moral principles that govern behaviour between learners? This was quite interesting, and something that made the gears in my head turn. If I had to discuss learning, especially the learning that happens in MOOCs, I would say that learning is abou...

It's the final week of CHFE12 (edfuture.net) and the topic is something that we've beat to death in the past in MOOCs like #ioe12 (which I completed a bit late this September) and #change11 ; in which we discussed the topic of Open Research about a year ago. I may have also seen this topic crop up in eduMOOC in 2011 and a MOOC on Open Education (not #ioe12) also running this fall. In any case, I feel like I am really past the point of talking about Open Research, and I am more in the "doing" phase of things.  I know that academia has a problem with collaboration and co-research and co-publishing.  We are masters of saying one thing (we want collaboration!) but then we are also great at reprimanding people who do collaborate. In hiring committees and tenure decision making, we aren't as comfortable with candidates that don't have as many publications under their name, and their name alone.  A few months ago, I heard some colleagues from another on the elevat...

The topic of open assessment came up during #blendkit2012 this week, which is quite a fascinating topic. Britt asked if peer review can work in small groups, having seen it in xMOOCs like coursera. I've written about open assessment before, but not specifically about this, I don't think. I have written some quick thoughts on the coursera peer review system which can be summarized even quicker by saying "hit or miss." In the one course (thus far) where I've opted to do the assessments and review my peers, the reviews were a mix. Some reviews of my work were good, others were lacking, and for some I wondered if they even read (or understood) the rubric! So, while I can see how massive open peer review can be good, the fact that its anonymous means that I can't seek clarification, and there is no apprenticeship into the rubric to make sure everyone gets it (and really understands the asynchronous lectures). Bringing this back into the blended classroom, I ...

Well, with  my work on #ioe12 done, it's time for a little reflection! For whatever reason, as I may have stated before, I completely missed the announcement for #ioe12, which I guess ran from January to April (or May) 2012. I thought, that since the material is still available on the course site ( OpenEducation.us ) I would be able to go through and self-study. I did indeed go through and self-study, and I invited some fellow MOOCers to participate, but they had other things happening. This meant that the lone through the asynchronous MOOC might be lonely, and indeed it was. In the end #ioe12 was a really good course, but if I weren't so interested in the topic, I would probably have dropped out by week 7, or I would have just skipped some topics.  In the various MOOCs that I have participated in, other learners/participants have helped get me through topics that I either didn't care for, or just didn't appreciate the topic as much before I saw others talking abo...

This is it! The last topic in #ioe12 - Open Policy ! To be honest, there is almost nothing new to see here, if you've been following along with #ioe12 week-by-week.  All of the previous 11 topics do connect with one another, and policy issues  have  come up in the past, we just didn't cover them specifically. The crux of this topic is that anything that is publicly funded should be open.  For instance, for all federal grants, the research produced by these grants should  be under some sort of open license so the individuals who paid for it (the people of a give country, and heck  the people of the world) should be able to use it for free. In my own experience, having lived and gone to school in Greece K-8, I know that there is a national textbook publisher in Greece. These textbooks are free  to children who go to school.  These books aren't free as in "I am loaning this book to you for free", but rather " here is a free copy, do with it as you ...