Yesterday, I spent more time than was probably merited on thinking up questions to get students of a new course engaged in the idea that learning is about more than simply attending my lessons.
On reflection, I should have just written up the questionnaire compiled by Gardner Campbell, a professor at Virginia Tech:
This image is a screen capture from Gardner Campbell’s highly recommended talk ‘Ecologies of Yearning’ which was one of the resources on the e-learning & digital cultures MOOC.
Image from the video ‘A Day Made of Glass’
I have had quite a lot of experience of distance learning, the most significant of which was studying for my degree with the Open University in the pre-digital 1980s.
The quality of the material provided for these courses, six in total, was always exceptional and explains why employers accept OU graduates as being on a par with those from ‘conventional’ universities.
Although the study units were written with interactive components like self-evaluation questions and/or discussion points to consider, studying alone meant I had to ponder on these topics in isolation.
During the time it took to earn a BA, what I remember most was not the stimulating texts but the one week Summer Schools which gave me the opportunity to attend lectures and meet other students. This is what really ‘humanised’ the course and gave me the motivation to continue.
There are no such study breaks in the E-Learning & Digital Cultures MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) I am currently engaged in. This is just one of the ways in which it is different from previous learning experiences and yet the question of human involvement is just as vital, perhaps even more so. Continue reading
Today I watched Gardner Campbell‘s brilliant keynote speech for the Open Education conference in Vancouver which he delivered in October 2012.
This was one of the extra resources for week 2 of the mind-expanding E-Learning & Digital Cultures MOOC .
Campbell talks a lot about how what we mean by education and creative thinking. These topics have gotten deeply imbedded, lost or confused as a result of the plethora of open online courses. If you believe the hype, which he doesn’t, these offer a magical panacea to issues like quality, cost and accessibility in Higher Education.
The widespread availability of information (i.e. knowledge) on the Internet could, on the face of it, suggest that the dream of a tailor-made education for all who want it has become real possibility.
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