Tag Archive: Massive Open Online Course


OPEN EDUCATION : PUNKS vs THE X-FACTOR

Filed under: Blogging — 12 Comments
April 14, 2013

LEARNER EXPERIENCE IN MOOCS

Coursera+DS106

This is my assignment for activity 14 of the Open University’s ‘Open Education (#h817open) course  in which I look at how MOOCS have been defined and  compare the Direct Storytelling courses (ds106) with those provided by Coursera.

DEFINING MOOCS

The MOOC acronym was coined in 2007 by David Cormier and Bryan Alexander to describe the University of Manitoba course ‘Connectivism and Connective Knowledge’. This attracted less than 3,000 students so was, by some degree, less massive than more recent online courses.

Some have argued that the monolithic nature of MOOCs now depersonalises them to the point that they can only pay lip service to the principle of ‘connectivity’ and makes the use of the adjective ‘open’  a bone of contention.

An example of the backlash can be found in Reclaim Open Learning, a network which prefers to talk in terms of “small pieces, loosely joined’ rather than an unwieldy and impenetrable mass of resources.

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WHAT HAVE YOU DONE SINCE WE LAST MET?

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March 28, 2013

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:

Screen shot 2013-02-09 at 18.49.07

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.

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LEARNING OBJECTS – HUMAN SUBJECTS

Filed under: Music — 2 Comments
March 22, 2013

Robots are not teachers and teachers are not robots

Week 2 – H817, ‘Openness and innovation in e-learning’ – Some brief reflections on learning objects.

We have the tools to make learning objects but we should not objectify the teaching process. We are, after all, dealing with human subjects i.e. students, pupils, learners, and therefore need to get personal too.

In the planning of my two current advanced level English as a foreign language courses I have been influenced by my recent experience with MOOCs. This has convinced me that technology only works in the classroom when it consolidates what I actually teach. In other words the machines serve the humans rather than vice versa.

My groups are not large and these are not officially blended courses. Initially, I’m experimenting with basics by sending a weekly e-mail to all participants as a follow up to each lesson. This forces me to look critically at the objects for each lesson but, perhaps more importantly, it means I have to outline my own objectives. If these are not clear to me, how can I hope them to be clear to the learners. Continue reading →

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WHY OPEN EDUCATION IS NOT AN OPTION

Filed under: Music — 2 Comments
March 12, 2013

Scholars can no longer seek refuge in an ivory tower.

Today, to mark Open Education week,  I began looking at the readings for the Open University’s h817 Open Education course .

I started with an article by Martin Weller entitled ‘The openness-creativity cycle in education’ and published in the Journal of Interactive Media Education (JiME).

In this paper, Weller notes that the concept of openness in education is now taken for granted and that few talk in terms of resources being ‘closed’ or limited solely to an elite (paying) group of users.

He quotes from Gideon Burton’s article on the ‘Open Scholar’ : “In the digital age, the traditional barriers to accessing scholars and scholarships are unnecessary, but persist for institutional reasons”.

This begs the question as to how long these institutionalised barriers can resist to pressure from the digital networks in which Open Educational Resources (OER) are becoming the norm.

With sharing being the default position the million dollar question as to how this actually improves the learning process. Continue reading →

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ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MOOC

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March 8, 2013

Logo for the OU open course blog in Open Education

Having enjoyed the ELearning & Digital Cultures MOOC organised by Edinburgh University, I was keen to follow this up with more ‘open’ learning online. It seems I am not alone.

The seven week Open University – Open Education H817 course seems so compatible, and the timng is so good it is tempting to think that the two online courses were planned to run back to back.

My first impressions, without starting on any of the course reading is that the OU’s communication tools need some oiling.

The profile page for each student is not working so is you want to ‘meet’ any fellow course members you currently have to join the Google+ community. Continue reading →

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