Wonder what's in this...It's been a crazy seven days. As part of my narrative inquiry into collaborations that occurred in rhizo14 and rhizo15 (or collaborations that sprung up from the work that started there), I am writing a fictional account of a newbie rhizo-learner (sort of how I was a newbie back in rhizo14) who gets to meet rhizo-alumni from past courses and ask them about their collaborations. 

The other day I had an interesting (but brief exchange) with Kelvin Bentley on twitter about MOOC completion.  This isn't really a topic that I come back to often, given that completion-rates for MOOCs, as a topic, seems to have kind of died down, but it is fun to come back to it. To my knowledge, no one has come up with some sort of taxonomy of the different degrees of completion of a MOOC†.But

I didn't quite expect this, but it seems like everywhere you turn you see "a decade in review" news stories (radio and TV), "the internet" (in general) and blog posts, twitter threads, and Instagram stories (more specifically).  I hadn't really thought about doing one of these posts, but what the hay, why not join in? 😜 . The last decade has certainly been eventful.  I kicked off the

The last week of EL30 was on the topic of Agency.  The video chat was quite interesting to watch but the topic of agency wasn't as big as I thought it would be (maybe time to rewatch? It's been a few weeks since I watched it).  The conversation started off with some interesting examples of community agency, but it seems to have gone beyond that. I have taken some snippets of the conversation

Well, the penultimate topic for EL30 is on the subject of experience.  I wasn't quite sure, when I started watching that week's recorded chat, what I would get from the week, but unsurprisngly I had a few "AHA!!!" moments.From the course page: "It is a truism that we learn from experience, and yet creating a role for experience in learning has been one of the most difficult problems in education.

Continuing on with my quest to experience the remainder of el30 before work begins again, today I'll write a bit about my thoughts about the topic of Week 7 which was community.From the course page for the week:"The traditional concept of community was built on sameness, on collections of people from the same family, speaking the same language, living in the same place, believing the same things.

Time-vortex initiated... loading Week 5 of EL30 ;-)eL30's topic in Week 5 was all about resources, and specifically OER.  This is a fun topic to return to from time to time to discuss, especially now given that my state seems to have taken it a step further by having a Massachusetts Open Education initiative which my university is promoting. There were a few things that came up as interesting

A week or so ago...well...maybe two weeks by now♣, the topic of eLearning 3.0 was identity, and the video guest of the week was Maha Bali.  I finally managed to view all of it, even though it was in 10 minute increments. My Pocket's save-for-later is getting rather lengthy now that I am saving articles on the daily to read at some other future time. This time of the semester is rather busy,

Attempt at witty title probably failed :-)I guess I am a little rusty  with creating meaningful blog titles since I have not been blogging frequently recently.  Oh well. I will get back into the swing of things once I finish my EdD...or not... ;-)In any case, I am catching up with #el30, more specifically last week's guest Ben Werdmuller (see recording here). Interesting fun fact - Ben is

Greetings fellow three-point-oh'ers(or is it just fellow eLearners?)This past week in eLearning 3.0 (Week 2, aka 'the cloud'). This week's guest was Tony Hirsch, and what was discussed was the cloud, and specifically Docker.  Before I get into my (riveting) thoughts on the cloud, let me go back  to Week 0 (two weeks ago) and reflect a little on the thoughts I jotted down on my retrieved post-it

With my dissertation proposal in the hands of my committee and off for review, I thought I'd participate in a MOOC while I wait to hear back.  Yes, I do have some articles that have piled up (which may be of use to my dissertation), but I thought I'd be a little more social (lurk a little, post a little).  The funny thing is that as soon as I lamented the lack of cMOOCs...there it was, eLearning

It's been quite a while since I last shared a few thoughts.  I guess time flies even if you aren't having fun 😆. In the past few weeks I've been contemplating the direction of my dissertation proposal.  I am not changing topics (now THAT would be silly, and an unnecessary amount of work), but I am considering the framing of my argument.  The topic (just to refresh your mind) is "Why

From wikipedia: 1779 illustration of a Catholic Armenian monk of the Order of St Gregory the Illuminator,  Happy New Year! Yeah... it's the fourth of January, but I figure I can get away with it since we're still in the first week of 2018, and this is my first post for the year 😉Things have been a little quiet here on the blog as of late. Not a lot of MOOCing, not a lot of virtual connecting,

Last week (or was it two weeks ago?) I did my rounds on coursera, edx, miriadaX, and futurelearn and I signed up for a few new MOOCs.  I had also signed up for a course that a colleague was promoting on Canvas (innovative collaborative learning with ICT), but I've fallen behind on that one, not making the time commitment to participate.  The list of missed assignments (ones that

I came across an article on Campus Technology last week titled 7 Tips for Listing MOOCs on Your Résumé, and it was citing a CEO of an employer/employee matchmaking firm.  One piece of advice says to create a new section for MOOCs taken to list them there. This is not all that controversial since I do the same.  Not on my resume, but rather on my extended CV (which I don't share anyone),

Εύρηκα! (eureka)There is nothing like a deadline to get you going - that's all I have to say!  A while back, like last January or something, a colleague asked me if I would be interested in presenting at an IALLT webinar on a topic of my choosing - it just had to do with technology and education.  I generally don't have a problem with coming up with topic to talk about, but this particular

I wasn't particularly inspired by week 2 of CLMOOC...at least no muses were speaking to me. So cleared my mind    and went through CLMOOC's timelineon Facebookwith an empty mindand submerged myself in the stream. A posting by Stephanie Loomis popped out  -an articleon Hybrid Pedagogy.I read it. It was interesting. You should read it. I remixed the image.;-)Enjoy.

It feels like forever ago that I actually posted something by text on the blog. This summer has been much more action packed than I had anticipated.  Between teaching, virtually connecting, and taking my own course, MDDE 702, there hasn't been a dull moment!I am actually quite happy that I ended up taking the refresher course on qualitative research methods. While the concepts weren't new to

A long time ago (in technology terms), in an academia very close to us, there were stories of professors who suspended their MOOCs, or decided rant in the class forums and ultimately to walk away because the MOOC wasn't what they expected, and we all (probably) rolled our collective eyes.OK, maybe we didn't all roll our collective eyes, but I remember thinking that the "participate or get the heck

It's been a few weeks since I wrote anything about the NRC01PL cMOOC that was running last month, and that I caught up a bit on and wrote a few posts about.  The final week of the course was labelled applications and extension, but I didn't see any content for the course posted.  Not that one necessarily needs content (I think the Rhizo MOOCs showed that), however you do need something.This

Back at the tail end of 2013 I had written a two part article, which I aimed to pitch to Learning Solutions Magazine. However, if memory serves me correct, the MOOC craze had been waining a bit, and corporate MOOCs weren't really talked much about; even today I would argue that corporate MOOCs are a non-starter - many seem to confuse and conflate a MOOC with self-paced eLearning.In any case, due to

Here is the recording of the live session I was in where Matt Crosslin talked about the dual layer MOOC design.  I still question the notion of assessments in MOOCs :-)

Finally!  I've made it to the end of the book!  It only took me nine months to do so (a couple of chapters each month?) but it's finally done!  This will be my final review of chapters in Macro-Level Learning through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Strategies and Predictions for the Future.  I was going to write two separate blog posts about this, one for each chapter,

Chugging along (hey I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!) with my review of Macro-Level Learning through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Strategies and Predictions for the Future, which started some time last year.  Today under the microscope is chapter 10, which is titled Redefining the Classroom: Integration of Open and Classroom Learning in Higher Education.  The

This morning, while commuting, I was able to read through another chapter in the book titled Macro-Level Learning through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Strategies and Predictions for the Future, which I started back in August of 2015 (or somewhere there about).  This time I am reviewing chapter 9, which is titled Deceptive Promises: The Meaning of MOOCs-Hype for Higher Education.  The

With the semester (almost) over it's the return of the crankypants reviewer (hmmm... maybe I should get that as a badge and use it for all of my article reviews ;-) ).  Anyway, my goal this month is to finish reading the edited collection titled Macro-Level Learning through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Strategies and Predictions for the Future, which I started back in August

Alright, so here it is, week 6 of NRC01PL. Even though I am technically in the same week as everyone I guess I am still marching to the beat of my own drummer.  I wanted to join the live session on Tuesday, but other things intervened.  Oh well.The topic of this week is the personal learning assistant.  Hence my little callout to the four major virtual assistants (Siri for Apple,

What does that spell?  elp-ss-ss ;-) OK...well that sounded more funny in my head...Anyway! Week 5 of NRC01PL (last week! All caught up! yay!) was about Learning Performance Support Systems.  My first introduction to LPSS (a brief one at that) was in an instructional design course almost 10 years ago (if my memory works).  The funny thing is that we did talk about LPSS (without using

Moving right along with #NRC01PL - this is a (hopefully) short post on Personal Learning Environments, which was the topic of week 4 of NRC01PL.  Maybe this week I can actually catch up to this week's discussion (although twitter has been surprisingly quiet in this cMOOC). In any case, I love discussing PLEs because in order to meaningfully discuss PLEs we need to discuss the context in

Moving along in NRC01PL, here are some reflections of what was presented in week 3 of the Personal Learning MOOC.  It's been rather busy at work, and at Athabasca as I am wrapping up my semester, so I haven't really gelled with anyone else in this cMOOC.  I think that the topic would be interesting to discuss in connectivist fashion, but I have not yet (satisfactorily) done any wayfinding.

Hey!  It's week 2 in NRC01PL!  Well... no, it's not, it's probably like week 5 or something, but I am working at catching up ;-)  The second week of this MOOC (which I've only now joined the Google Group) is on the Content/practice dichotomy. It's interesting because this comes up quite a few times in discussions in academia. The pendulum seems to swing from extreme to extreme.  Too

The case of MOOC standards (as well as MOOC sustainability) is something that keeps coming back to me as a topic of pondering.  I read about it in other blogs.  Then, I want to respond to some of these articles, and bounce off some ideas, but I lose motivation and decide "m'eh" - this topics isn't much of interest.  Then, a little while later, my interest on the topic rekindles.  I

In my quest to catch up on Pocket - before the news becomes stale, I came across this post by cogdog on seeking the evidence behind digital badges.The anatomy of the Open Badge include the possibility of including links to evidence for the skill that you are being badged for.    Of course, just because there is an associated metadata field available for people to use,  it doesn't mean

Classroom space, in second lifeA while back I really wanted to develop a course (for the instructional design program I teach in every now and again) on environmental factors of learning.  I know that the topic might seem nebulous but I think that's where the strength of the course would come from†.  We could examine not only technologies which we use to facilitate our learning (and

Some nice artwork, no doubt by @merryspaniel :-)Time just seems to fly by this semester.  I don't know if it's because I am busy, or if (as the old saying goes) time flies when you're having fun!This past week we skipped the usual introductions and check-ins in 806, affectionately known by some as the therapy portion to the live session.  I actually didn't mind it considering that this is

Even though this semester is relatively calm, compared to last semester, I still find myself not writing as much as I think I would like.  I've set aside, temporarily, the book I was meant to have finished reviewing last October, on MOOCs, until the semester ends and I can focus on them a little more. One reason for the refocus of energies is EDDE 804. We are focusing on leadership in education,

In a MOOC a long time ago, in an internet far, far, away, a rag-tag team of starry eyed researchers got together to research about MOOCs (hey, I've got to setup an interesting getting together story, otherwise how are we going to get a movie deal? ;-)  ).All joking aside, back in 2011 the 3rd MOOC I participated in was a MOOC organized by Inge de Waard called mobiMOOC. I participated as a member,

The more I read chapter in Macro-Level Learning through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Strategies and Predictions for the Future, the more I am starting to feel like Anton Ego from the animated movie Ratatouille ;-)  It's not that I am aiming to write harsh reviews of the stuff I read, but I kind of feel like the anticipation I have for reading some published things about MOOCs just

Huzzah!  Half-way through Macro-Level Learning through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Strategies and Predictions for the Future!  This time I am reviewing chapter 6, which is titled Learning Theories: ePedagogical Strategies for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in Higher Education.  The abstract is as follows:This chapter reviews various learning theories about e-pedagogical

Just before my Athabasca semester starts I am trying to make headway in my Pocket 'to read' collection :-).  I had bookmarked this post by David Hopkins a while back where he asks for information about facilitation in MOOCs, and to some extent this runs into sustainability - something we briefly talked about in 2012 at UMass Boston when we hosted the MOOC sustainability symposium.In any case,

Socrates Badge, by @merryspanielIt's a bit hard to believe, but two years ago - around this time of year - I was scurrying to get my application into Athabasca University to have my application considered for Cohort 7.  The deadline for Athabasca's program is at the same time as the deadline for my department (January 15th), so I was trying to make sure that my recommendations were all in order.

Back for another review of a chapter in the book titled Macro-Level Learning through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Strategies and Predictions for the Future (an IGI global title).  This time I am reviewing (a little) chapter 4 and jumping off from there.  The chapter title is "PMOOCs and the Art Studio: A Catalyst for Innovation and Change in eLearning Development and Studio

I've been trying to catch up with things I've saved in my Pocket reading list over the course of this past semester, and one of the articles (or blog posts?) came across was about how MOOCs have failed to democratize education, and given that this was one of the fundamental goals of MOOCs this is a problem.I don't think I know where exactly this goal, or rhetoric, about democratizing education came

Back for another review of a chapter in the book titled Macro-Level Learning through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Strategies and Predictions for the Future (an IGI global title).  This time I am reviewing (a little) chapter 3 and jumping off from there.  The chapter title is "Professional Learning through MOOCs?: A Trans-Disciplinary Framework for Building Knowledge, Inquiry,

Continuing on with the review of articles in the book titled Macro-Level Learning through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Strategies and Predictions for the Future today I have a chapter dealing with quality of MOOCsChapter 2 is titled Quality Assurance for Massive Open Access Online Courses: Building on the Old to Create Something New. The abstract tells us:Institutional

Now that school is over, and grading is almost over for the course I am teaching this semester, I finally have an opportunity to go through and continue my quest to read existing MOOC literature.  I had started this past September reading a collection of articles in an IGI publication titled Macro-Level Learning through Massive Open Online Courses which I got electronically for a limited

Well, semester is almost over!  I think that I only have about 10 more days left in my 3rd EdD semester.  There must be a punchline joke here, but I am not finding it at the moment ;-)  Need some more sleep!That said, for the third assignment I decided to tackle a topic that I was fairly familiar with - connectivism.  My buddy for this assignment and I worked together to put together

For the past semester I've mostly ignored synchronous learning on coursera.  Instead of consuming materials as they are released, I log in once a week, download the videos for the course, and I keep them in my video library.  If there are textual materials available as well, I donwload those, but I tend to focus more on video materials. When inspiration (or curiosity) strikes, I dive into

The other day, while catching up on my (ever growing) pocket reading list, I came across a post from, friend and fellow MobiMOOC colleague, Inge on MOOCs.  It was a rather on-the-nose post about MOOCs, learning, assessment, and the discourse used in MOOCs about learners. Concurrently I am working with a Rhizo team on a social network analysis post where the topic of 'completion' came up, and

I was thinking of CLMOOC, and more specifically my participation in it this past summer.  I still see some posts in the Facebook group for clmooc, which draw my attention to the MOOC that I really didn't participate in, and I have a look at the posting from time to time.CLMOOC (2015) in theory had all the raw ingedients for me to be active in a MOOC.  There were people there I knew

If I think about it long enough...I would say that rubber has met the road, with week 2 of EDDE803 almost over. People have started being active in the course forums, interesting perspectives and illustrative stories are shared and discussed, and projects are in progress! This semester we are joined by two members of Cohort 6, who I think will be added to our cohort, and thus adding to the diversity

"Fractured Spock" - by me and Net Art Generator, for #clmoocOver the past couple of years, since the silly acronym "SPOC" was invented to denote a course that was the antithesis to the MOOC, a Small Private Online Course, I've had issues with the acronym, and took exception to this new discovery on the part of schools that newly invented this form of education, considering that there are

I've been thinking about what the post for the second week of CLMOOC, whose theme this week is re-mediation. I was thinking of several ideas, all of which require media skills beyond what I have (and what I have time to learn at the moment), so it looked like a busted week for me (even though I am quite comfortable being a peripheral member in this community).  Then, cats provided inspiration.Here

I was walking to the train station yesterday, and my eye caught this.  My mobile phone's camera also caught it.  Was pretty pleased about it. Hey CLMOOC!btw - I signed up for the newsletter for CLMOOC 2014. I was wondering why I didn't get anything. Good thing I joined the Fb group and saw all these un-intros, otherwise I'd still be left wondering...

This is my mind at the momentI must admit, my attempt at a witty post title probably fell really flat.  Oh well, that's why I am not a comedian :-).  Out of the fire (EDDE 802) and into the Rhizome! This is technically week 2 (or is it week 3?) of Rhizo15.  Normally a cMOOC (or as others in the Rhizo14 gang have named Rhizo - an rMOOC),  there is a little disorientation to be expected,

Rebecca, the other, posted a question on Twitter on #adjunctchat, and later on wrote a little more in length on her blog about this question: What is the value in affiliation? More specifically:In our new world of adjunctification and alt-metrics, does an affiliation matter? Am I better to declare myself as an itinerant scholar than a scholar associated with a particular university? What is the value

I am starting to feel like Jack Bauer in 24 as EDDE 802 progresses. 60 days down in the semester, and 25 left to go.  I can hear the clock ticking down...Assignment 3 was completed this weekend, a few days before it was actually due (thank you to Lisa for the peer review!).  It's a small assignment describing the conceptual frameworks that we are going to use for researching a specific research

Well, here we are, part II of educational assumptions.  That last blog post was getting long, so here we are! These are still some ideas about things I jotted down in the margins, highlighted, or otherwise reacted to when reading a recent research article on Open Praxis by fellow MOOC researchers France and Jenny. Despite my issues and concerns with the article, it's still worth a read so that

It's been a few days since I started writing about the various reactions I had (and started noting in the margins ;)  ) to a recent article from fellow MOOCers and MOOC researchers Frances and Jenny. I cut my previous post a bit shorter than I intended because it was getting long, and I didn't want it to go on and on. So this is a follow-up blog post to that original post with some reactions,

It is a bit of an odd thing to admit, but ever since I started formal school again in order to pursue a doctorate the amount of pleasure reading has gone down.  Now, this is to be expected, time resources need to be allocated differently in order to meet the rigorous demands of a doctoral program.  That said, my pleasure reading was research articles anyway, so it's kind of hard to out down

It feels a bit like I've had my nose close to the grind stone for the past few weeks.  I looked at my blog to see when was the last time I blogged about class, and it was close to 20 days ago.  In semester-terms I think that counts as "forever-ago".  To some extent it feels like a great weight has been lifted.  The first (of two) major papers is completed and delivered (awaiting

Recently I read an article on Your Training Edge which aims to correct misconceptions surrounding MOOCs. The title of this particular post, and I guess myth that they tried to correct, was "MOOCs Aren’t Interactive, So There’s No Real Learning Taking Place". The basic idea in this misconception is really preposterous.  I don't know when interactive became synonymous with learning, but it is

Week 1 of 15, of semester 2 of 8, of doctoral work is about to end!  The course that my cohort is focusing on this semester is a research methods course. Luckily neither I, nor it seems many of my classmates, are that new to research methods.  It's nice to have the group (or at least quite a few members of the group) exposed to the basics so that we can spend some time in critiquing and going

Alright, being now back from my mini vacation, and back into the regular rhythm of work, reading, and very soon classes, I've caught up with a lot of my saved Pocket articles.  The one thing I saw is, still, the very schizo nature of MOOC reporting and commentary. This reminds me a bit of the headlines, back in the day on Engadget and other tech sites, about studies on cell phones causing/not

It's the final stretch of 2014! This makes it my fourth year in exploring MOOCs - boy does time fly!  When I started off with LAK11 I was really just looking for ways to continue learning for free.  While I do get a tuition benefit at work, this also involves standard semesters of 13 weeks, getting work-release time (since online learning isn't covered by the benefit) and retaining the motivation

Hey!  We've made it! It's the final blog post about #dalmooc... well... the final blog post with regard to the paced course on Edx anyway :)  Since we're now in vacation territory, I've decided to combine Weeks 9 and 10 of DALMOOC into one week.   These last two weeks have been a little light on the DALMOOC side, at least for me.  Work, and other work-related pursuits, made

Hello to fellow #dalmooc participants, and those who are interested in my own explorations of #dalmooc and learning analytics in general.  It's been a crazy week at work with many things coming down all at the same time such as finishing advising, keeping an eye on student course registrations, and new student matriculations, making sure that our December graduates are ready to take the comprehensive

I see a lot of WTF behavior from learners. This is bad... or is it?Oh hey!  It's week 6 in DALMOOC and I am actually "on time" this time!  Even if I weren't it's perfectly OK since there are cohorts starting all throughout the duration of the MOOC (or so I suspect), so whoever is reading this: Hello!This week the topic of DALMOOC is looking at behavior detectors (types of prediction models). 

It's been a while since Rhizo14 ended, but the community is going strong! Facebook may not be as active (or maybe facebook is  hiding most Rhizo posts from my timeline...that could be it...anyway), but we are still chugging along with the collaborative *graphy. I can't call it an ethnography, or autoethnography because variables have changed.  Some of us decided to get together and write

What do you get when you mix connected courses, thinking about academia, and cold medicine?  The answer is a blog post (which I hope makes sense) :-) As I was jotting down my initial thoughts on co-learning in the previous post I completely forgot to address some of the initial thinking questions for this module.  Here are some initial thoughts on co-learning and how I would address these

I took a small hiatus from Connected Courses in the last module because everything sort of piled on at the same time and  I had little space to breathe.  Yes, I've been dalmoocing, so I guess everything is a choice ;-).  I guess that was my jump-out week of connected courses, and now I am dipping in again. I love the language of cMOOCs ;-)  The truth is that I've felt a little fatigued

My Twitter Analytics, 10/2014Another day, another #dalmooc post :)  Don't worry, I won't spam my blog with DALMOOC posts (even if you want me to), I don't have that much time.  I think over the next few days I'll be posting more than usual in order to catch up a bit.   This post reflects a bit of the week 1 (last week's) course content and prodding questions. I am still exploring

Alright, I guess it's time to start really committing some braincells (and time) to DALMOOC, the Data, Analytics, and Learning MOOC that started last week on EdX.  I wasn't going to attend this MOOC, to be honest about it, but seeing that George Siemens was behind this, I knew that there was an experimental aspect to it. Learning analytics is not new to me, my first MOOC (cMOOC) in fact was LAK11

This semester I am helping out a colleague, and current M.Ed. student on the topic of MOOCs. He is taking a few MOOCs as part of his trying to grasp what it means to take a MOOC in order to create a MOOC.  Unsurprisingly, as is the case with most people, he's having some issues with Connected Courses because cMOOCs require the knowledge, and utilization of, certain literacies that we don't necessarily

Here we are, week 2 of module 3 (so week 6) and half-way through the formal run of connected courses.  I spent most of last week catching up with stuff that was piling up in my Pocket account from previous weeks. In all honesty I wasn't quite sure what to make of this module.  Pretty much all of the things that were readings failed to spark my imagination, given that I had either read similar

Είμαστε λοιπόν κοντά στο τέρμα της δεύτερης μονάδας του Connected Courses, ένα ανοιχτό διαδικτυακό μάθημα (OOC) και η θεματολογία αυτής της μονάδας είναι η εμπιστοσύνη στον χώρο του διαδικτύου και η διαδικτυακή ευχέρεια των μαθητών,

Siemens, 2014It seems like Connected Courses is the cMOOC that keeps on adding while we are in the process of conducting the course.  I think, based on my own personal experience, that this (the addition of "features" as the course is in progress) is a hallmark of cMOOCs ;-).Anyway, Discussion forums have been added to  Connected Courses, and a discussion cropped up on whether students can

On the web, not one knows you are a ____________ (fill in the blank).  Connecting with the previous elements of trust, I am continuing my opening exploration of this module's second topic: Network Fluency.  The introductory chat is available as a YouTube video, and the discussion is on the topic of Social Capital and Personal Learning Networks.This subject of Network Fluency (or Network Literacy

Here we are, module 2 of Connected Courses, and the focal topics for these next two weeks are Trust and Network Fluency. This module we have a few webinars to watch, and there are a number of book recommendations. Truthfully I cannot make it through these books, as much as I would love to read some of them at the moment.  Too many other things happening to focus meaningfully on them. I guess I

Good ol' Zoidberg asking WhyBack when I was an MBA student, probably in a project management class, we were told that we should ask "why" five times in order to come to the root cause of the problem (I wonder why this is why kids seem to keep asking "why" incessantly ;-) ). It thus seems quite a propos that the first formal week (two weeks actually!) of Connected Courses are focused on Why we need

This is an eventful week!  Online classes begin at my institution.  This is my first semester not teaching in a few years, so I will be pouring my time into the course I am taking, as well as any MOOCs I have time for. This week #whyopen ends, my course on Negotiation on NovoEd ends, and Connected Courses begins.  I thought I would write a few thoughts on the end of WhyOpen

September is here! New academic year has begun, the campus is again full of life (and lacking parking), and I am back to school as a student, this time at Athabasca University!  I am also looking forward to a number of MOOCs that are beginning this month, among them Connected Courses, which promises to be an interesting cMOOC.  Perhaps I am insulting the course by calling it a MOOC (MOOCs

A while back I came across a post by Martin Weller titled MOOC Completion rates DO matter. Because my Pocket account was overflowing with some great content (including this one), I thought it was high time that I read this article ;-).  In this short post Martin writes that completion rates do matter in MOOCs, taking the opposite view of some cMOOC folks. He goes on to tackle the analogy

With coursera MOOCs kind of slow this time of year, I decided to try out a MOOC on the subject of "Open" on P2PU. After my first P2PU course, #rhizo14, I thought I would flex the mental muscle a bit and get some P2PU experience.  The topic of this week asks us to ponder what Openness means to us as individual participants.  To be honest I haven't really sat down to write up what I think of

This past week on the #rhizo14 facebook group my colleague, and co-author, Rebecca Hogue posted a link to this TED talk by Shai Reshef on the Ultra-Low Cost University. This talk really bugged me for a variety of reasons. On the facebook group I wrote that I was angry when I saw this, but it was really more of a "WTF" reaction to the video.  More disbelief that the incredible amount of BS†,

This past week I was able to attend Campus Technology and AAEEBL 2014 in Boston. I count myself lucky that I have two conferences every year that are pretty close to me (the other one being NERCOMP) that allows me to go and see some interesting presentations, engage with colleagues, and talk to vendors (and let's not forget the cool vendor swag ;-) ). This year, unfortunately, I didn't get an opportunity

A couple of years ago I was working on hashing out this idea of Academic Check-ins.  Think of it as Foursquare meets informal learning meets campus engagement meets alternative credentialing. A paper came out of that brainstorming with a proposal of what such a system might look like.  While working on hashing out some ideas I wanted to dive deeper into this concept of motivation, both internal

It's now the end of Teaching Goes Massive: New Skills Required (aka #massiveteaching) on coursera. Well, almost, we still have a couple of days left. I guess that the lesson here is that we were (the "learners") were punk'd† by Paul-Olivier Dehaye of the Univerisity of Zurich.After that last blog post (and subsequent pickup of the post by George Siemens and others) Inside Higher Education and the

Well, I am not quite sure what to make of this just yet, but I am keeping an eye on the situation to see how it gets resolved.  What situation am I talking about?  The seemingly under-reported (or not reported at all) situation happening in the course Teaching Goes Massive: New Skills Required, which is offered by Paul-Olivier Dehaye of the University of Zurich.  I have to say that initially

View from Itea, Greece Some people bring a book on vacation (which I have) and others immerse themselves in the local culture (which I am also doing to some extent), but since I find myself lucky enough to be vacationing somewhere with fast wifi access I decided to continue to MOOC while I am on vacation from the day job. I honestly don't know how well the experiment will go, but I decided to follow

This spring semester seemed to be the spring semester for experimentation (then again, there is almost no bad time for experimentation).  I decided, among other things, to really give FutureLearn a try.  FutureLearn is still in Beta, so I guess I haven't missed a lot yet, but one of the things that  I think is really important when evaluating a course design, or even a platform, is picking

Well, it's the end of the week (or the beginning if you are following Western conventions with the odd behavior of calling "Sunday" the beginning of the week), grading for my course, for this week, is done, and it's time to see what I missed on Rhizo14 while I was tending to other things. One of the things that we are putting together (in addition to the long autoethnography for #rhizo14) is this

So, the other day I was at the NERCOMP annual conference.  I heard a few people speak (cool stuff), and I also got an opportunity to chat with people, and be a nosy eavesdropper on other people's conversations.   One of the things that came up, as has come up elsewhere in the past three or so years, has been the concept of MOOCs as OER and MOOCs as OCW.  We've actually seen this

Well, It's week 9 of Rhizo14 (or week 3 of the after party of rhizo14, depending on how you look at it.)  Last week we had a discussion on de-mobing teachers (I guess enabling teachers to not teach to the test?). To be honest I lurked a bit last week on facebook since the day job, the other work obligations, the DML conference (which was awesome!) and subsequent weekend food poisoning

The other day I caught a post by Lenandlar on the #Rhizo14 MOOC which is over, but we amazingly are keeping it going.  At the end of his post on motivation that I wanted to address, since they've been on my mind and they've come up a few times in the past week.Are MOOC participants in favor of shorter or longer videos or it doesn’t matter?  I can't speak for all MOOC participants, I can

The end is nigh! The end is nigh! This is the last week of #Rhizo14. Of course, the end is probably just a beginning, but we'll cross that bridge later on.  In any case, the topic for this week is Planned Obsolescence, or as I would frame it: the culminating step of the metamorphosis of our learners from guided to self-guided life-long learners.Dave asks How do we teach ourselves into uselessness?

The medium is the message...The medium is the curriculum... The community is the medium...The community is the curriculum!Well, we've made it to Week 5 of Rhizomatic Learning, and this week's topic shares it's title with the course itself!  The Community is The Curriculum.  Odd, to me this would have made a perfect final week (you know every end is a new beginning, circle of life learning

Note: An MS Word or PDF version of this can be found here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/205135659/What-MOOCs-can-do-for-the-Traditional-Online-Classroom-Part-II Introduction2014 is upon us! We are now a couple of years from the big MOOC “explosion” in the news, and since we’ve gone to both extremes, too much optimism and too much pessimism, about what MOOCs can and can’t do, it’s now time to

Note: An MS Word or PDF version of this can be found here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/205134044 IntroductionIt’s been a few years of extreme sentiments around MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). 2012 was proclaimed the year of the MOOC (Pappano, 2012). 2013 was the year that MOOC criticism was the new trendy or “in” thing (Rees, 2013). Perhaps in 2014 we’ll move away from such dichotomies and

Well, we've made it to Week 4 of #rhizo14, a full two-thirds done with this rhizomatic thing. But wait, if rhizomes are all middle with no beginning and end, what does two-thirds actually mean?I guess the topic of the week is the printed medium, and the overall question of "is Books making us stupid?"  The question brought up immediately the mental image of Homer Simpson, from the show The Simpsons,

So, week 3 is done, week 4 is upon us in #Rhizo14, and the topic for week 4 is undeclared. So, this is a good opportunity to maybe do a summation of last week.  However, as I was thinking about this topic I was a bit uncertain on how to proceed.  There were many things discussed, and many topics approached in facebook, P2PU and the various blogs.  I guess Jenny and I had the same issue

NOTE: this is a report of the post I wrote for Sloan-C back in November of 2013.  I am reposting here as a backup.  The original can be found here http://blog.sloanconsortium.org/2013/11/18/mooc-evaluation-beyond-the-certificate-of-completion/ This coming January will be my third year of involvement in MOOCs. Questions have come up in the last year around the issue of why students “drop

Check, check. Is this thing on?Linguistics isn't generally considered a topic, like one of those sexy STEM courses, that everyone talks about when they talk about degrees and fields to study for job related purposes. For this reason we haven't seen a lot of linguistics related MOOCs.  Last year we had the Virtual Linguistics Campus offer three MOOCs using their own approach to teaching MOOCs which

So, we've entered the half-way point of #rhizo14.  The original  topic title had something to do with Declaring your Learning. This of course brought on memories of jokes of airports and questions like "anything to declare?" and smart-alec responses to this question.  Declaring is also Stage 3 of a success in a MOOC, so I guess it made sense in a way that this was during week 3.  That

Well, this week has been particularly crazy, with a couple of days of snow making things pile up at  work, and with a presentation this past Friday on international education at NERCOMP, it means that I've been behind a bit (compared to where  I thought I would be) on blogging for #rhizo14.  I have been keeping track of the facebook discussions, so I think this week I'm consolidating

The cone of silence ;-)In most cMOOCs I attempt to go back and respond to fellow participant's posts after something has provoked some thoughts.  If I am less busy, I tend to blog more, if I am more busy, I tend to leave more comments.  I guess this semester I am sort of in-between ;-)In any case, from week 1 of the #rhizo14 MOOC here are some things that have piqued my interest:From Jenny

Alone in the Dark (DOS, Mac System 7.5)So I'm back to another cMOOC arena, yay!!! Just by chance I came across a Rhizomatic Learning  course offered by Dave Cormier (of MOOC fame), and the course is called Rhizomatic Learning - The Community is the curriculum. The course spans six weeks and this first week was simply an introduction, but as far as intros go, this has been quite a busy week! 

Back at the end of 2011 I started collecting research on MOOCs, pieces from Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle, "news items" from other popular media outlets (like wired.com and forbes) as well as blog posts from certain notable people who commented a lot on the subject of MOOCs.  The idea was to spend a year (2011 to end of 2012) and see not only what the research says, but also what the sentiment

Just before the spring semester starts and I start getting really busy with the day-job, teaching my class, working on a couple of conference presentations and working on the FutureLearn course on Corpus Linguistcs, and P2PU course with Dave Cormier, I thought I should really jump into a couple of Udacity course offerings to give the platform a real try out. In years past I stayed away, as a learner,

Apple's Clarus the cowdog;and his "moof" 'barkWell, it's the end of 2013 and it's been a MOOC-kinda year, so before I head off for a small break (which is probably going to involve a lot of MOOCing), I thought I should write a summative post for my year's exploits in MOOCs.2013, other than it being the year of the Anti-MOOC (according to some) was really the year of the xMOOC for me.  I participated

Jeeves will point you to the right discussion forumA couple of years ago when I was putting pen to paper and I was working on my Academic Check-ins paper I was doing some more research into recommender systems, you know the systems like the ones that they have on Amazon.com and Netflix whereby if you rate a certain product in a certain way, or if you view certain products, more recommendations come

So, we are at the end of Week 2 of #edcmooc and we are wrapping up the unit on Utopias and Dystopias, and everything in between (because thing is really that black and white). As with the week before there were some videos to watch and think about. I think that the no-lecture-videos format works well.  I like to see what people do with certain conversation starters and where they go with them.

Over the past few weeks I've been dabbling with a course on coursera designed by two professors from UW Wisconsin.  I didn't realize who they were (Squire and Steinkueler) initially, but at the "course" progressed I realized that I had read some of their work before when I was reading about video games and learning.  An added benefit was that there were some guest appearances by Jim Gee,

Take one blog, mix with others, add own thought and see what happensOver the past couple of days I've been reading what fellow participants have contributed to the blogosphere on #edcmooc.  I've watched the week 2 videos (more on that in post during the weekend), and I am slowly reading (or re-reading) some of the food-for-thought articles posted for week two.To keep things manageable, I decided

Seems like Week 1 of #edcmooc is now done, and I've read (or in some cases reviewed) the readings and videos that they had posted as resources for Week 1. During the Week 1 live session recap and discussion there was an indication that there were 20,000 registrants for the MOOC.  I'd be interested in seeing how many of those 20,000 follow through and "complete" the MOOC, whatever "completion"

A while back, when #EDCMOOC was getting setup for the first time, a fellow colleague, co-author, and member of the MobiMOOC research team, recommended the E-Learning and Digital Cultures MOOC offered by the University of Edinburgh. I think the school was his alma matter and he had good words to say about the organizers. This is always a plus.Well, first time around I was too busy - I think I was actually

Quite a few topics have been twirling in my mind these days but nothing was really solidifying until I read the following three blog posts in my pocket account in at the same time:It’s Time to Redirect the Conversation about MOOCs - by David CillayMOOCs make waves in higher education worldwide - by Karen MacGregorMOOCs and Online Learning #wweopen13 - by Rebecca HogueThey are all interesting reads,

With three MOOCs done (only undertaking one now), I have a little more time to go through and read what has been piling up in my Pocket account.  Now, over the past couple of years there have been a number of articles on building your own MOOC, from a variety of people.  Some in publications like Learning Solutions Magazine, some in eBook form, some in in Blog form.One of the blog-form posts

Trust Network BadgeWell, this is it!  We are in the final week of  the #OpenBadgesMOOC, and this is the last post (for badge purposes anyway) from Mozilla's #OpenBadgesMOOC. As with previous blog posts in this series I am brainstorming about including badges in an #ESLMOOC that I am thinking of designing, developing, implementing and them studying for a potential PhD.  With this week's

The real badge?Alright!  The penultimate week in #OpenBadgesMOOC, brought to us by Mozilla and Coursesites.  Continuing this week is the exploration of how badges can be incorporated into this #ESLMOOC that I've been thinking about designing, implementing, and hopefully collecting some data for some interesting analysis.  Dissertation-wise it seems like a good topic, but considering

Value Map BadgeIt's Saturday, so it must be #OpenBadgesMOOC time :)  The thing that I just noticed about these badges on the #OpenBadgesMOOC is that if you look closely enough they look stitched.  Maybe there is an easter egg hidden somewhere, whereby if you earn all #OpenBadgeMOOC badges they send you a sash with all of them stitched on - LOL :)In any case, it's the end of Week 4 on the

**** CALL EXTENDED FOR DEVLEARN & OTHER CONFERENCES ***Call for Chapters & Illustrators: The Great Big MOOC Book (version 1.0)EditorsApostolos Koutropoulos (University of Massachusetts Boston).Call for Chapters & Illustrators Proposals Submission Deadline: November 15th, 2013Full Chapters Due: April 15, 2014Revision Submission Date: August 1st, 2014Introduction This book will

Custom is an odd name of a badge :)Week 3 of the Mozilla Open Badges MOOC on Coursesites (half way through) and we are continuing our exploration of using badges for the #ESLMOOC. As with previous posts, the prompt of the challenge comes first followed by my thoughts on the subject.Prompt:Challenge Assignment 3: Competency Frameworks for a Badge EcosystemAt the next level of complexity, we consider

It's week two (of six) in the #OpenBadgeMOOC and the challenge for this week is to think about and define the Currency of an Ecosystem. As with the first blog post in this series, this thought process relates to the #ESLMOOC that I am thinking of developing as part of a potential dissertation proposal, and the writing instructions for this challenge are posted in the first part of the blog post,

The other day I was reading this blog post on why MOOC forums are counter-productive.  I was really thinking hard about this and my initial inclination is to agree. Forums, in MOOCs, are counter-productive. But, as with most things in life, there is a big asterisk here.If we look at how MOOCs are setup, and by MOOC here I mean xMOOC since that's what most people think of, the discussion board

Who am I?** Updated on 9/19 with more detailed personas** Well, I will try to stay regular with these Mozilla Badge MOOC challenges (goal is it get them our each Saturday so I don't fall behind and other things get in the way).  I've decided that for the Badge Challenge I will start brainstorming on the topic of my ESL MOOC, that topic that's been floating in my mind as a potential PhD Dissertation

A SmockThe other day an article came across my radar with the title "Don't Call it a MOOC." Well, of course, I really had to read it because it kind of sounds like MOOC is an insult, so don't insult a course by calling it a MOOC ;-) As if MOOC isn't a bad enough acronym, UT-Austin somehow found a worse one, SMOC (pronounced "smock").  So, what is this SMOC, other than a poor, and unnecessary acronym?Basically,

Happy Labor Day everyone!The other day I was going through my two Learning Solutions Magazine articles to see if there were any comments (Part 1 and Part 2 here) that I might be able to address.  I think it's great when people engage with the reading material on the web in a constructive way, it helps everyone expand their knowledge a little. That said, the comments weren't that many, and they

The other day, through some source I came across this "4 downsides of MOOCs" from LearnDash. I should have known better than to read a vendor's blog, but then again sometimes they surprise me.  Anyway, the blog post seemed like link-bait because the downsides of MOOCs do not really seem that thought out. They are more reactionary than a deep pondering if the medium. So, here are my 2c on the issues

Image by DawnOfHope2012Over the past few weeks I've been knee deep in an initial literature review. This past summer, while vacationing, I met up with a colleague who teaches for my department as an adjunct, but he's got him own full post in Greece as well.  While having coffee and talking about life in general we spoke about my PhD prospects, and my current feeling on the subject is that I am

Now that my fun (and educational) little excursion to the world of the Ancient Greek Hero is over, I am more energized to go back into the world of the reportage and punditry around MOOCs.  I am not all caught up yet, but I did go through enough articles to have some thoughts on the news that has transpired over the last couple of months in the world of the MOOC. First of all, more Acronyms.

For a while now I've been thinking of having a Weekend Column on here, something to give my blogging a little more regularity now that I am MOOCless (until the fall anyway) and not reflecting as much on the learning experiences in various MOOC setups.  I was going to have a "ID Stuff: Tin Foil Hat edition" (or "Cynic's Corner") column after I read this article (Who is driving the online locomotive)

Since I returned from vacation I've been catching up on news that happened while I was away, and listening to podcasts from May that I had downloaded to take with me to listen to, but due to the hustle and bustle of vacation, I ended up not listening to anything I downloaded.  I was listening to a podcast from NPR's education feed when they were reporting on MOOCs and certain school's apprehension

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

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.

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

Last fall, when I was on an xMOOC-binge, I decided to sign up for a MOOC called Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application (#foemooc). I knew the subject matter, but I decided to participate so I can compare notes. After all, I am teaching what is the same course online this semester in a non-MOOC format. I was also curious how it would be done in a MOOC format because I've been thinking

Wow, this MOOC seems to be going by pretty quickly! We are already at the midpoint!This week I feel my participation in the MOOC was a bit more muted. I did want to participate more in the in the discussions but I got side-lined with start-of-the-semester things I needed for my day-job ;-)  I did get through my stated activities (1, 2, 3, 4,  10) and I did do one of my optional ones (5);

Week 2 of OLDS MOOC done, six more to go - escaped this week relatively unscathed ;-) For a more complete overview of my comings and goings during week 2 of the MOOC check out my cloud (and scroll down).  Cloudworks isn't bad, I actually like it! But I haven't completely pinned down my workflow yet. I think Cloudworks would make a great electronic portfolio platform because I can see how clouds

Happy New Year to all!2012 was, as most people might argue, the year of the MOOC.  While the xMOOC (coursera, udaciy, edX, and Canvas Network) enjoyed most of the limelight, some traditional MOOCs (cMOOC) have also gotten some notice with the publication of research articles. One of the things that really took me by surprise was the massive amount of coverage that MOOCs got from everywhere! It

Just in case you missed it the other day, here is the link for the stream (which was live, but now should be available to stream) for the CIEE and USDLA sponsored event on Sustainability in MOOCs (in which I was a panelist ;-)  ). The event was quite interesting and this was my first panel discussion - where I met quite a few interesting people!In any case, if you see the stream you will see two

Well, another MOOC is now complete!  I still have a few more readings in Pocket to go through, blogs from fellow bloggers.  I have to say that the materials in this MOOC weren't a revelation for me.  I have encountered these topics before in my professional career, especially more recently when topics like MOOCs and alternative credentialing and badges are hot topics. If I already knew

Yesterday, while commuting, I had written a longer post about my MOOC-coverage fatigue.  It seems as though MOOC coverage has gotten out of proportion and it's spilled over to other non educational news outlets that I frequent, where I go for non-educational news. In any case, it seems as though the Google Blogger client of my iPhone ate my post.  Maybe for the best, because I feel like I

**sigh**The mobile client ate my post! I will try to reconstitute as much of it as I remember ;-)In this blog post I am continuing the train of though started by thinking about different levels of participation, and my blog post on MOOC registration.  Since MOOCs are generally not taken for credit, and since they generally don't need to conform to some sort of departmental outcomes standard (i.e.

It seems like Rebecca and I were on the same wavelength yesterday when we were composing our blog posts and reflecting on various aspects of MOOCs.  Rebecca wonders why there is only one level of participation in xMOOCs, and I have to say, having started my 3rd coursera MOOC yesterday (same one as Rebecca, the Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society on coursera), I can see that (from my limited

After a tittle like that, I feel like this blog ought to have a theme song ;-) Is this too dorky? Not dorky enough?  Chime in through the comments :-)In any case, it's Week 2 of #cfhe12 and the topic of the week is New Pedagogies: New models for teaching and learning. I find it interesting (and ironic) that Blended Learning and Online Learning are considered "new pedagogies" and "new models."

Well, yesterday afternoon I got fired up when listening to the final panel discussion of the day at Sloan-C's annual ALN conference. The panel was titled "Evolution or Revolution? What’s Happening with “Traditional” Online Learning?" and I have broken down my thoughts by speaker.Jose Cruz (The Education Trust, US)This was a pretty interesting speaker, and he made a good point about putting "learning"

Well, another 6 week MOOC started this week, CFHE12 (which I keep wanting to spell a CHFE12 for some reason) with George Siemens and company.  This seems quite interesting, and it gives me an opportunity to check out the D2L environment in action, considering that  our campus could have been a D2L campus, but we went with Blackboard instead.In any case, one of the first things for this week

It's quite interesting, but the topic of MOOCs and accreditation keeps coming up :-)The post that prompted this blog post came from a post I saw on MobiMOOC today regarding information assessment and recognition of success.  In MobiMOOC 2012 one of the new things that is baked into the course is the awarding of badges, with an eye toward Mozilla's Open Badges. There are currently three types of