Multilitteratus Incognitus

Una o due settimana fa h o causato un po' di ansia per i lettori di questo blog quando ho scritto sul tema della partecipazione in in MOOC. Veramente non volevo causare di ansia, ma voluto fornire alcune spunti per riflessione. Credo che molti, non sola la mia amica Serena, quando hanno letto la mia idea per il sistema di "notificazioni" pensano a la scuola, i controlli, e le segnalazioni. Io non li colpa di essere ansiosi perché questi metodi di educazione e di docimologia sono metodi di educazione molto strutturati, senza immaginazione, e molte volte la docimologia è punitiva. Nello stesso tempo, quando qualcuno parla della partecipazione, molti pensano a la discussione, o forse un blog post, o qualche cosa visibile a molti come qualcosa scritta a twitter. È vero che questi sono topi di partecipazione ma io credo che la partecipazione ad un corso MOOC deve essere ripensata perché un MOOC non è come altri corsi, allora la docimologia, e allora che voglio dire "...

Yesterday while taking the train back home from work I was catching up with Change11 related blogs.  Two of them caught my eye and sparked my imagination (or perhaps cognitive process is a better word...in any case it got me thinking). First I read Tony Bates' initial summary of the week he facilitated , and then Jenny's response to him on selfish blogging . Tony writes (and this is not the only thing he writes so read his entire post): There could be all kinds of reasons for the shortage of comments on this week’s topic, but I was more struck by the form in which they occurred. Participants did not comment directly to my post for this week, but within their own blogs. I call this the syndrome of the selfish blogger. We all do this. If we have something interesting to say, we’d rather say it on our own web site than someone else’s (it would be nice though if the post was also copied to the site that originated the topic). I had to go and cull all the comments from the #Ch...

I was reading Micheal's blog the other night and I realized that the Conference Proceedings for mLearn 2011 are now up!  You can download them from the Conference website , or you can read them on Scribd (see bellow) In other news, it seems like the MobiMOOC research team is big in China :-) We were contacted yesterday by PhD students (under the direction of their advisor) to see if we would consent to have our mLearn paper translated into Chinese for publication in a core Chinese academic journal - this is both a great honor and über cool! mLearn 2011 (BeiJing) Conference Proceedings

Αυτή την εβδομάδα στο Change11 MOOC, το θέμα είναι το OCW ή OpenCourseWare. Όπως μάλλον γνωρίζετε το OCW  άρχισε εδώ στα λημέρια μου στο γνωστό MIT και από εκεί επεκτάθηκε σε άλλα πανεπιστήμια, και ένα από αυτά είναι και το δικό μου. Συγκριτικά το δικό μου πανεπιστήμιο δεν είναι στην ίδια κατηγορία όσον αφορά το μέγεθος των πόρων που έχουμε στο δικό μας OCW. Αυτό που αναρωτιόμουν είναι αν στην Ελλάδα, που  πολύ εκπαιδευτική ύλη φαίνεται να είναι public domain. Αν δεν κάνω λάθος τα βιβλία του ΟΕΔΒ είναι δωρεάν στους φοιτητές και είναι public domain, έτσι; Η Ελλάδα θα ήταν καλό περιβάλλον για μια ακαδημαϊκή αναγέννηση, με κάθε ΤΕΙ και ΑΕΙ να έχει κάποιο OCW, και τα βιβλία να διανέμονται δωρεάν και σε μορφή ePub, καθώς φυσικά και άλλα δεδομένα όπως ασκήσεις, σημειώσεις, παρουσιάσεις και άλλα σχετικά. Δεν ξέρω, μπορεί να είμαι πολύ αλτρουιστής και να μου πει κανείς «εδώ η Ελλάδα καίγεται, ο κόσμος άστεγος και πεινασμένος και εσύ μου μιλάς για OCW;» Εντάξει, η Ελλάδα έχει ...

I was reading a blog post from inlearning  titled Is Demanding Synchronous Bliss Missing the Point of Change?  Quite an interesting blog post to read so head on over there after reading this post ;-)  It's interesting how different people have different preferences.  I for example dislike synchronous online meetings, and  I have never attended a synchronous MOOC meeting as long as I have participated in MOOCs. Instead I download the MP3 later on, put it on my iPod and listen to it while commuting to work. I know other people feel differently about the topic, but I fit it curious. If the point of change (change in education in general, not just Change MOOC) is to get away from the sage on the stage  and seek out our own peer learning groups, aren't Massive  synchronous sessions antithetical to that?  Why would I want to attend a Massive  synchronous voice chat (where only one person can speak at a time)?  My voice would be drowned and I...

OK, so now I am sort of in catch up mode to respond to some interesting blog posts I've read in the past few days on Change. I was reading a blog post from Brainy smurf on being allergic to measurement where he asks: Why does it even matter how I learned to perform as long as I can do the job well ?!”  I think that you're not allergic to assessment (or measurement) but rather you are allergic to crappy assessment .  The easiest way to think of assessment is to gather some sort of number - clicks on a link, or amount of time spent in a discussion forum, or number of paragraphs in an essay or number of correct answers in a multiple choice test, heck the multiple choice test is itself an instrument of assessment. Now, just because you have a hammer, not everything is a nail, and this is where crappy assessment comes in.  Numbers gathered are meaningless in a decontextualized environment - so who cares how many people have clicked on a link and "read" an article if...

It seems like it's OCW ( open courseware ) week at ChangeMOOC .  When I read the initial description (it referring to OER) I was wondering what sort of readings or thoughts would be seeding this week's discussions. In my initial post for the week I made reference to the paradox of OER (I think it was David Wiley who originally wrote about it), but I am glad that this week is about OCW. I have to say that personally I have a love-hate relationship with OCW.  I love that OCW exists; I think it is an awesome concept because not only does it open up academia, it offer cross-pollination opportunities with other colleagues in other schools (that you don't necessarily know of), it makes courses more transparent to your current and future students, and it offers opportunities for people to self-study if they can't come to your institution or can't afford your institution.  I often look for OCW content in my own disciplines to see what other institutions are doing...

Last week on the MOOC Research Google Group the following post came up by Alan Selig (reproduced here with permission): I just got around to listening to the presentation by Tony Bates. Toward the end Stephen made reference to the surveys that many institutions give to students at the point of graduation. Not surprisingly these are usually very favorable, as the respondents have self-selected according to their favorable feelings toward the school. It made me wonder (again) how we get evaluations in a MOOC from those who only participate at certain points in the overall schedule. Especially since we want to affirm that sporadic or episodic participation is a successful approach to MOOCs, how do we get summative evaluations when the end point for an individual participant can be anywhere during the course of a MOOC, or event beyond the official end of it? While I don't have the time right now for an immediate answer, I intend on co...

Cette semaine sur ChangeMOOC le thème est vers les ressources éducatives libres pour l'apprentissage. Notre hôte est Rory McGreal de l' université d' Athabasca au Canada. Le thème des RELs n'est pas nouveaux dans ce MOOC. Aujourd'hui nous n'avons pas d'aces sur les matérielles de la semaine et donc je ne sais pas quels sont les objectifs de la semaine et quoi veut Mr. McGreal communiqué à nous. Je dois admettre que le titre du module de cette semaine, pour moi, est un peu déroutant parce que la raison d'être pour les RELs est l'apprentissage, alors est il pas redondant de dire "REL pour l'apprentissage"? Ou peut être il y a des usages des RELs dehors l'apprentissage que je ne connais pas! Pour moi, les RELs, comme une idée sont intéressants, mais (de mon expérience) c'est trop difficile trouver des RELs qu'on peut utiliser sans pain dans leur cours. La majorité des RELs sont très spécialisés ou ils sont trop général, a...

Αυτή την εβδομάδα στο ChangeMOOC ο καλεσμένος καθηγητής της εβδομάδας ήταν ο Tony Bates και το θέμα μας ήταν η αλλαγή της ανώτατης παιδείας και αν αυτή θα οδηγηθεί απο εσωτερικούς παράγοντες και ανθρώπους ή αν οι αλλαγές θα έρθουν απο έξω, εκτός που πανεπιστημίου. Έχω ήδη γράψει μια ανάρτηση στο μπλογκ στα αγγλικά για το αμερικανικό σύστημα αλλά έτσι περιληπτικά να γράψω πως το σύστημα είναι δύσκολο να αλλάξει εσωτερικά. Υπάρχει μια άλφα τεχνοκρατία στο πανεπιστήμιο που αν δεν θέλουν όλοι (ή τουλάχιστον πολλοί) μια ριζική αλλαγή, αυτή η αλλαγή δεν γίνετε. Πιστεύω πως τα πανεπιστήμια τώρα έχουν τον χειρότερο συνδυασμό του παλιού "ακαδημαϊκού καθεστώντος" και ενός συστήματος επιχειρησιακής διοίκησης που κοιτά μόνο αριθμούς, "παραγωγικότητα" (όπως και αν μετριέται αυτή σε ένα ακαδημαϊκό περιβάλλον) και κοιτά μόνο τα έσοδα και τα έξοδα αλλά μόνο για τους "μικρούς" - τα μεγάλα κεφαλιά που πληρώνονται τα πολλά λεφτά που παίρνουν τις αποφάσεις και διοικούν ...