Multilitteratus Incognitus

I got an email the other day that I was awarded a badge on OLDSMOOC (one of the peer reviewed badges), which prompted me to go into Cloudworks to see if there were any more peers that needed evaluating.  I had already completed one peer review ( see here for the first one) so why not complete a second one? It turns out that Itana Gimenes had submitted all her materials for the Learning Designer badge, so I decided to have a look and see what sort of review or feedback I could give her :) Itana's course design revolves around Agile Software Engineering, something that brings me back to my MBA days when I was working on my IT concentration.  Back then we briefly touched upon Agile methodology since it was new, but now it's much more prevalent. In any case, I found it interesting that she was wondering (scrutinizing her own design in Week 2) the type of support learners would get so that they could both learn and have a realistic (authentic?) experience in Agile Method...

We are almost there!  The course A boriginal Worldview and Education is almost over! It's one of the few xMOOCs that survived the great course purge of late 2012 (courses that I decided to drop before they started because of my time commitment issues in March). When I signed up for the course I thought that the course was about Australia and New Zealand since I had only heard of Aboriginals in that context before.  Even the course description didn't point to the fact that this was about Canadian Aboriginals. Intended for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal learners, this course will explore indigenous ways of knowing and how they can benefit all students. Topics include historical, social, and political issues in Aboriginal education; terminology; cultural, spiritual and philosophical themes in Aboriginal worldviews; and how Aboriginal worldviews can inform professional programs and practices, including but not limited to the field of education. The course and the instruc...

I just realized that it's been a while since I've posted something on here. I guess compared to other blogs I am still a regular poster, but I'd like to post more often.  Well, here I am!  I guess time flies when you are having fun, and getting over a cold (have we found a cure for that yet?) This month has been a crazy month, in addition to the day job, and my part time teaching gig (which is a lot of fun; there are lots of bright people I have the privilege to have in my class), I was: facilitating a MOOC Basics workshop for the Sloan Consortium which was a lot of fun presented a poster on MOOCs in higher education ( free download in PDF ) at NERCOMP 2013 moderated a panel discussion on building MOOCs with my colleagues (again at NERCOMP 2013) finished off a book chapter with a colleague on blended learning and still chipping away at the Twitter participation in MOOCs paper analysis with the MRT. I was a bit bummed that I couldn't really participate more in...

Hey! Another MOOC is done! The MOOC I am referring to is OLDSMOOC , and it will go down as one of the better MOOCs I've attended ;-)  When I signed up for the MOOC, I did so for two reasons: I wanted to learn more about Learning Design (seemed like Instructional Design going by another name). I wanted a cMOOC, damn it! :-) Don't get me wrong, there are some interesting courses on coursera but I don't really get that sense of community on xMOOC platforms; whereas in cMOOCs, like OLDSMOOC, I have had meaningful conversations with strangers (and I haven't gotten lost in the discussion). Anyway, as an instructional designer, I wasn't quite sure what I would get out of OLDSMOOC, since, in the end, it seemed like learning design was another term (or a related term) for instructional design.  I decided to use this opportunity, however, as a way to think about my mLearning MOOC (which is a back-burner project for the time being). Some of the weekly tasks were fo...

Today is a new day, and a new topic in OLDSMOOC.  Well, not so much a topic as a winding down on the learning process that has been occurring in this MOOC. On the topic of evaluation , there was an interesting discussion on the Google Group: is it the life blood of learning design or the bane of our existence? My, short, response was as follows: I think that there is a happy medium between the two. I do believe that evaluation and iteration (based on evaluation findings) are at the core of good learning design, but, by the same token, I do believe that there are people that can take it to the extreme. This then, can become, that tax (or smelly cod oil as someone else put it) in the learning design.  I think that if there isn't adequate evaluation (formative and summative) then a lot of learning design efforts can go to waste. We are not perfect beings (no matter how much we may think we are ;-) ), so we will not be getting something right on the first try. Evaluation ...

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...

This was shared as part of OLDSMOOC, but I thought it would be a good resource for any beginning instructional designer :-) Week 7 term_review from Thomas Reeves

OK, s, I (re)discovered that there are some crowd-sourced badges. I knew this in the first week of the course, but somewhere along the lines I forgot about them (probably because I wasn't planning on applying for those badges anyway ;-)  ) In any case, if you are participating in OLDSMOOC, do have a look at the badge application page , and help out a fellow oldsmoocer!  I'm doing my part right now! The first person 's materials I examined are Tiffany Crosby's. Tiffany has a project in mind to create a "business psychology course that combines facets of psychology, sociology, business ethics, fraud and ford endive, and decision-making." I think this sounds interesting, and it reminds me a bit of my Business Ethics course that I took while I was an MBA student (this was a really nice course!). As part of the deliverables for the badge she is seeking, she submitted the results of her card sort activity , and the course map for her course. From what I saw i...

It's week 6 of 9 in OLDSMOOC† and the topic is Curation of content , and one of the major areas is Open Educational Resources (or OER).  I had to go back to last summer, when I was working on the #ioe12 MOOC, and the week that was specifically tackling the topic of OER to see what I wrote then on the topic. I think my main "complain" about OER is that it, in addition to spending time to find OER resources, you also have to, usually spend, a lot of time on editing and adapting the OER for usage in your own classroom. After all, materials are designed with certain uses, users, and criteria in mind, and those uses, users, and criteria may not match your own LD/ID analysis.  Thus, the process isn't one of  Seeking & Deploying , but rather  Seeking, Evaluating, Modifying, Testing, Deploying . The process then can become a rabbit hole, where if you jump in too deep, you feel vested in the outcome and you probably don't want to scrap your current work on OER, if y...

I came across this pretty interesting TED talk on the loss of wisdom, hidden knowledge and skills, the reductionism in what we do. It's a must-see :)