Multilitteratus Incognitus

We've had our first reported casualty in #oldsmooc this weekend :-) I have copied and pasted the discussion board posting from our Google Group, without identifying the author, but I do think that it's important to think, and talk, about this/ Here is the posting (commentary follows): Dear All I sincerely hope that you all find what you need.  I don't think that this is the right choice for me - I'm a first time MOOC user.  This MOOC feels more like a Massive Open Online Collaboration space - not a Course.   Whilst I have some time for the constructionist approach, 'authentic enquiry' if you prefer that way of thinking, there is a need for some level of common ground between those who are learning and those who are providing guidance (I hesitate to say 'teaching').  The image below is what I suspect would happen to me........ Not painted into a corner exactly, but certainly guilty of doing something very stupid - something that an experienced ...

Up until yesterday I was in the course "Think Again: How to Reason and Argue" on coursera. I decided to drop the course (more on this in a subsequent post), but my decision to drop the course was partly based on my free time to devote to this course, and the assessment factors currently available for math and science (and logic is a Math course for me ;-)  ). I was conversing with one of my colleagues the other day, about this very topic, after a workshop, and it dawned on me that I probably haven't written about it yet :-) One of the things that one hears, often, from the xMOOC crowd (especially from those xMOOCs in elite universities) is about the opportunity to learn from "the best." What they mean is "the best physicist, chemist, programmer..." and so on.  For them, the best would be someone like Albert Einstein for example (at least that's what I get from what they are saying in their presentations".  Don't get me wrong, Albert may ...