Tag Archive: open education


OPEN EDUCATION: MARKING MOOCS

Filed under: Music — 6 Comments
May 5, 2013
Robo-teacher

“Shouldn’t there be a dot on that ‘i’?” – Can machines help humans mark MOOCs?

The issue of how a mark MOOCs is a moot point at the moment.

As Europeans race to play catch up with their U.S. counterparts, (no educational body left behind!?), two glaring questions rise to the fore in many articles about these massive open online courses.

These are:

  • How do institutions make money from them?
  • Will MOOC students be able to gain credits for offline courses?

The answer to both these questions, in my view, ultimately rests on how the courses are evaluated. Continue reading →

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PERSONAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS : ONLY CONNECT

Filed under: Blogging — 6 Comments
April 15, 2013

OPEN EDUCATION :  REFLECTIONS ON LEARNING NETWORKS

"I never teach my pupils: I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn" - Albert Einstein.
My Wordle for Personal Learning Networks

Wordle for Personal Learning Networks

One of the effects of the abundance of online learning resources is the trend of coming up with new terms to define what we mean by education and even to question what its purpose is.

There are still relics of the Dickensian notion that students are vessels to be filled facts but, thankfully, this is a pedagogy that by and large belongs to the past.

Yet, although we like to think we live in a more enlightened age, the rapid nature of the change over the past two decades continues to be hard to assimilate.

Openness implies accessibility and an accommodating attitude so, all things being equal, these should be good times for teachers and students, life-long or otherwise.

So why do I feel so much doubt and uncertainty? Shouldn’t my mood be more celebratory? 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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#EDCMOOC: ADDING TO THE MASSIVE ONLINE ARTEFACT RESOURCE

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February 24, 2013
artefact

The title of my first ever digital artefact on Pinterest

I’ve done it! Today I submitted my ‘digital artefact’ for assessment at the end of my first MOOC – the  E-Leaning & Digital Cultures course with Edinburgh University. Continue reading →

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