Multilitteratus Incognitus

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...

The summer semester is over!  Well, it's been over for several weeks now and the fall semester is in full swing, but I am not teaching this semester (focusing more on projects that have been on the back-burner for a while). Taking a break from teaching actually makes me think more about teaching in an odd way (I guess out of sight, but not out of mind). One of the courses that I teach is an intro course to instructional design and learning technology (INSDSG 601, or just 601).  Since this is a course that introduces students not only to the discipline, but also to the program of study at my university I though that it would be a good idea to give students some foundations in group work since this is something that they will encounter both in the "real" (aka working) world, but also in subsequent courses in the program and they need to be able to work effectively with one another. The way the course assignments work is that there is a big project that last the enti...

A recent hangout I was on talking about online pedagogy with some really cool people :-) Note to self: Ouroboros as a pedagogical symbol...

The other day I came across a post on ProfHacker written by Mah a B. where she talked a bit about her own teaching experiences and whether one assesses the process of learning or the product of learning.  I was thinking about this question in light of my own experiences as a learner, as a designer, and as an instructor who now has had experiences in introductory courses, capstone courses, and intermediate courses. Obviously there isn't a hard and fast rule about this.  In some courses, or parts of courses the final product matters enough so that it outweighs the grading component of the process.  My gut tells (and the educator) me that the process is really more important than the final product. However, my own acculturation into the field of instructional design snaps me back to SMART outcomes (you know, specific, measurable, accurate, realistic, and time-bound) wherein these goals are really about the product and not the process.  I suppose if you have the fre...

Dave is really HAL, who is emulating Dave Busy week!  Just finished grading my current class, and finished the syllabus for my summer class.  Now the next stage in the course development is to create some instructions of the assessments, supporting materials, videos... oh my! I guess this is making me a bit late to this week's Rhizo Party on #rhizo15.  I have not read responses of other participants yet (been focusing on Latour...) but I assume I will get to those sometime this coming week (I am almost caught up on Pocket!). This week Dave asks the following : in a rhizomatic learning environment How do we get rid of the idea of Dave? Should we get rid of Dave? How do we teach rhizomatically and what is the role of the instructor? Dave wants to focus on formal learning - which is fine with me because that's what I was going to address anyway ;-)  I don't think that we could discuss all learning environments, open, traditional, undergraduate, graduate, K-1...

Alright, being now back from my mini vacation, and back into the regular rhythm of work, reading, and very soon classes, I've caught up with a lot of my saved Pocket articles.  The one thing I saw is, still, the very schizo nature of MOOC reporting and commentary. This reminds me a bit of the headlines, back in the day on Engadget and other tech sites, about studies on cell phones causing/not causing cancer. In the MOOC context this is about whether or not MOOCs (in their many forms?) are/aren't good, revolutionary, the best-thing-since-sliced-bread, etc. Sometimes I feel like the Charlie Brooker of the field of education when I write these, but hey, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Right before the holiday break, one of my colleagues sent me an article from Technology Review which he thought I should publicly respond to (being the crazy MOOCie that I am).  The article is What are MOOCs good for ? and I may have read this a while back, but probably didn't real...

Siemens, 2014 It seems like Connected Courses is the cMOOC that keeps on adding while we are in the process of conducting the course.  I think, based on my own personal experience, that this (the addition of "features" as the course is in progress) is a hallmark of cMOOCs ;-). Anyway, Discussion forums have been added to  Connected Courses , and a discussion cropped up on whether students can opt out of the open course if you are teaching in an open environment.  If they are not comfortable with open, is there an option for them to participate in a closed version, which I guess is similar to an a traditional online course through an LMS.  I am not sure how much I will participate in the forum, so I thought it would be an interesting though exercise to post some initial thoughts on here and have a discussion about the topic on here (or via a network of blog posts) since it connects with what I might be doing as an experiment for my dissertation. So, really qui...

Take one blog, mix with others, add own thought and see what happens Over the past couple of days I've been reading what fellow participants have contributed to the blogosphere on #edcmooc.  I've watched the week 2 videos (more on that in post during the weekend), and I am slowly reading (or re-reading) some of the food-for-thought articles posted for week two. To keep things manageable, I decided to devote only 3 days to fellow participant's blog posts, so I can move forward with other materials well.  In this blog post I wanted to react to a couple of things I read from fellow participants in the last few days.  First off, we have the Sage on the Stage (SoS). I was reading this short post on why the Sage is likely here to stay .  Interesting post, and it's got a couple of comments. I highly encourage you to read and think about it as well.  The gist of the post, from what I read into it, is that the Sage on the Stage instructor is here to stay because (1...

It's week 7 in OLDSMOOC, and as we are windowing down we are tackling the topic of Evaluation . I will be switching tracks again, from the Blended Mobile Learning course (that I've been working on for a while), and going back to the idea of offering the course as a cMOOC. Going through OLDSMOOC I've gotten some good ideas about how to implement my own cMOOC.  I've been thinking a lot about the recommended paths that are available in some weeks (the short and the long path). This, in combination with badging, and deliverable, is making me think about the assessment aspect of the MOOC; but let's not get sidetracked, let's talk about evaluation. In terms of evaluation decisions, what immediately comes to mind are these: Should the content for this learning design be expanded, reduced, or remain the same? One of the tricky things about MOOCs is that you will always have critics, since there will be instances (many of them) where the MOOC does not hit the sweet sp...