Multilitteratus Incognitus
Traversing the path of the doctoral degree
eLearning 3.0: How do I show my expertise?
26-10-2018, 16:57 #el30, Badges, cMOOC, credentials, expertise, learning, MOOC, xAPI Permalink 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 3.0 popped up on my twitter feed...and a few Greek colleagues invited me to one in a Moodle. I guess the universe provided for me.
Anyway - I had listened to both the intro video (week 0?) as well at the Downes & Siemens chat (Week 1 & 2) and I had jotted down a few things that piqued my interest...but of course I left them in the office. I guess I'll be blogging about those next week. The freshest thing in my mind is the chat about xAPI and the LRS (Learning Records Store). In all honesty this went a little over my head. I think I need to read a little more about the xAPI and this whole ecosystem, but the LRS is described as enabling "modern tracking of a wide variety of learning experiences, which might include capturing real world activities, actions completed in mobile apps or even job performance. Data from these experiences is stored in the LRS and can be shared with other systems that offer advanced reporting or support adaptive learning experiences"
This got me thinking about the onus (read: hassle) of tracking down your learning experiences as a learner. I also credit a tweet I read this morning about credentialing, by Donna Lanclos, that really connects well with this. As a learner I don't really care about tracking my own learning experiences. I participate in a learning experience, be it a workshop, a webinar, a course of study, doing research on a paper to be published or presented, or even sustained interaction in a common topic across my PLN. I enter the learner experience because there is something I want to learn. It can be a simple thing (e.g., how to unscrew the case to my PC tower to install more RAM), or something more complicated (e.g., getting prepared for a social media strategy for your organization). Few people enter a learning experience just to get a credential†. However, it's the credential that opens doors, be they doors to a promotion, to a new job, or even an opportunity to be part of an exciting new project. So, it seems necessary that we, as learners and professionals, document all this in a way. The problem is that it's a hassle. There are two big issues here:
(1) What to track (i.e., what's relevant)
(2) Where to track it?
Both issues, very predictably, are answered with "it depends". What to track depends on the context. You can track everything, but not everything tracked is used in all potential instances where credentialing information is needed. For example, most common things tracked are your college degrees. This is fairly easy to track because most of us have a small countable number of them (1-3 I'd estimate). However this doesn't necessarily show growth and increasing expertise as a professional. So we delve deeper. Just taking myself as an example here are some learning opportunities that I have been part of over the past few years (some offer certificates or badges, some do not): MOOCs, week-long workshops, day long workshops, conferences, professional development webinars, self-paced elearning, required workshops on campus (e.g., campus compliance, purchasing, etc.), masters and doctoral degree programs, virtually connecting sessions, and so on. Each format is different. Some have assessments, some do not. Some are mandatory, some are not. They all contribute to my knowledge of my field.
Tracking is another issue. Where do I track things? There are many places. I have a resume - which is out of date, and I can't even find the word document any longer... I have a CV in Word format which I created this year for work purposes, there is LinkedIn, there is ORCID, and there are document repository networks like Mendeley, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Scribd, and SlideShare; in addition to places where you can help folks with their questions, like Quora for instance. There is goodreads to track what you read. There are places to also track your digital badges, like the Open Badge backpack. I had once actually joined a free service, whose name escapes me at the moment, that was so granular that it could track articles you read - you tagged them with specifics (e.g., elearning, instructional design, online learning), and the service would add 'credit' to your profile for those things★.
So as to not belabor the point, over the years I've come across a variety of learning situations where I've had learning experiences. Some with a nice shiny certificate at the end, others with just warm fuzzy feelings of accomplishment. How do we automate this multiple-in, multiple-out process so that we can actually track things with more precision, but also have the ability to spit out as many customizable reports as we can for credentialing purposes? I don't know about you, but I find myself not having enough time to document everything, and I certainly don't keep things like CVs, resumes, and my LinkedIn profile updated frequently. I think this will be one key challenge in eLearning 3.0.
Thoughts?
Marginalia:
† well, it's my hypothesis that most people enter a learning experience for the learning and not just the certificate/diploma/badge that comes at the end. I do know that there are people like that around, but I think they are not the majority.
★ Tracking every Chronicle and IHE article I read got tired pretty quick - I read too many articles in a day to really make manual input a feasible thing. I dis-enrolled from that social service within a few days ;-)
This got me thinking about the onus (read: hassle) of tracking down your learning experiences as a learner. I also credit a tweet I read this morning about credentialing, by Donna Lanclos, that really connects well with this. As a learner I don't really care about tracking my own learning experiences. I participate in a learning experience, be it a workshop, a webinar, a course of study, doing research on a paper to be published or presented, or even sustained interaction in a common topic across my PLN. I enter the learner experience because there is something I want to learn. It can be a simple thing (e.g., how to unscrew the case to my PC tower to install more RAM), or something more complicated (e.g., getting prepared for a social media strategy for your organization). Few people enter a learning experience just to get a credential†. However, it's the credential that opens doors, be they doors to a promotion, to a new job, or even an opportunity to be part of an exciting new project. So, it seems necessary that we, as learners and professionals, document all this in a way. The problem is that it's a hassle. There are two big issues here:
(1) What to track (i.e., what's relevant)
(2) Where to track it?
Both issues, very predictably, are answered with "it depends". What to track depends on the context. You can track everything, but not everything tracked is used in all potential instances where credentialing information is needed. For example, most common things tracked are your college degrees. This is fairly easy to track because most of us have a small countable number of them (1-3 I'd estimate). However this doesn't necessarily show growth and increasing expertise as a professional. So we delve deeper. Just taking myself as an example here are some learning opportunities that I have been part of over the past few years (some offer certificates or badges, some do not): MOOCs, week-long workshops, day long workshops, conferences, professional development webinars, self-paced elearning, required workshops on campus (e.g., campus compliance, purchasing, etc.), masters and doctoral degree programs, virtually connecting sessions, and so on. Each format is different. Some have assessments, some do not. Some are mandatory, some are not. They all contribute to my knowledge of my field.
Tracking is another issue. Where do I track things? There are many places. I have a resume - which is out of date, and I can't even find the word document any longer... I have a CV in Word format which I created this year for work purposes, there is LinkedIn, there is ORCID, and there are document repository networks like Mendeley, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Scribd, and SlideShare; in addition to places where you can help folks with their questions, like Quora for instance. There is goodreads to track what you read. There are places to also track your digital badges, like the Open Badge backpack. I had once actually joined a free service, whose name escapes me at the moment, that was so granular that it could track articles you read - you tagged them with specifics (e.g., elearning, instructional design, online learning), and the service would add 'credit' to your profile for those things★.
So as to not belabor the point, over the years I've come across a variety of learning situations where I've had learning experiences. Some with a nice shiny certificate at the end, others with just warm fuzzy feelings of accomplishment. How do we automate this multiple-in, multiple-out process so that we can actually track things with more precision, but also have the ability to spit out as many customizable reports as we can for credentialing purposes? I don't know about you, but I find myself not having enough time to document everything, and I certainly don't keep things like CVs, resumes, and my LinkedIn profile updated frequently. I think this will be one key challenge in eLearning 3.0.
Thoughts?
Marginalia:
† well, it's my hypothesis that most people enter a learning experience for the learning and not just the certificate/diploma/badge that comes at the end. I do know that there are people like that around, but I think they are not the majority.
★ Tracking every Chronicle and IHE article I read got tired pretty quick - I read too many articles in a day to really make manual input a feasible thing. I dis-enrolled from that social service within a few days ;-)
Comments
Bat-signal for an External Committee Member!
22-10-2018, 10:06 education, MOOC, PhD, proposal, school PermalinkWell, my proposal (basically half my dissertation) is off to the internal members of my committee. Many thanks go to the help of my doctoral supervisors who've asked a lot of questions of my previous drafts and helped me refine my writing :-)
Now the next step (assuming the committee likes my submitted draft) is to both find an external reviewer for this, and also defend it so that I can move onto the next phase: data collection and analysis.
Where do you come in? I need recommendations for an external member to my committee :-) If we've worked together in the past 5 years you would not be eligible to be on the committee, but if you know people who might be good, let me know :-)
Also committee member criteria: http://fgs.athabascau.ca/handbook/doctoral/supervisors_and_committee_members.php
Title: Factors influencing the initiation and sustained engagement in collaboratives working outside MOOC parameters: an exploratory mixed methods case study
Abstract: This dissertation research will explore the factors for which individuals in an open educational environment choose to create, or join, collaboratives that produce certain mutually agreed-upon deliverables, and the factors that sustain individuals’s through this collaborative endeavor. As such, some of these factors may deal with characteristics and experiences that define such collaboratives, and what members of these collaboratives perceive as a gain from their involvement from such collaborative endeavors. The approach to research this topic will be an explanatory parallel mixed methods case study design that will initially explore quantitative results from the Community of Inquiry instrument as well as qualitative results gathered from an open-ended survey. Survey participants will be invited to participate in subsequent interviews in order to explore the question in more depth. A better understanding of why such collaboratives form, and what sustains them, might provide clues as to how such collaborative formations may encouraged, or nurtured, in online learning.
Thank you in advance for your help in identifying potential externals :-)
Now the next step (assuming the committee likes my submitted draft) is to both find an external reviewer for this, and also defend it so that I can move onto the next phase: data collection and analysis.
Where do you come in? I need recommendations for an external member to my committee :-) If we've worked together in the past 5 years you would not be eligible to be on the committee, but if you know people who might be good, let me know :-)
Requirements for external committee member
Retrieved from: http://fgs.athabascau.ca/handbook/doctoral/candidacy.phpAlso committee member criteria: http://fgs.athabascau.ca/handbook/doctoral/supervisors_and_committee_members.php
- At least one of the new members must be at arm’s length from the student and the proposal development <-- external="" li="">-->
- be active in the general area of the student's research
- have a tenured (or tenure track) faculty appointment
- If no tenure track person is identified, there is an 'other' category that the Faculty of Graduate Studies could approve. See the link for details.
- hold a degree equivalent to or higher than that for which the student is a candidate (
- demonstrate continuing scholarly or creative activity of an original nature as defined in item 3.7.3.b. of the AUFA Collective Agreement.
- The proposed examination committee members must meet the eligibility criteria, and must not be in a position of conflict of interest (direct link to AU policy: http://ous.athabascau.ca/policy/humanresources/150_002.pdf
My proposal details
(to better inform any recommendations you might have :) )Title: Factors influencing the initiation and sustained engagement in collaboratives working outside MOOC parameters: an exploratory mixed methods case study
Abstract: This dissertation research will explore the factors for which individuals in an open educational environment choose to create, or join, collaboratives that produce certain mutually agreed-upon deliverables, and the factors that sustain individuals’s through this collaborative endeavor. As such, some of these factors may deal with characteristics and experiences that define such collaboratives, and what members of these collaboratives perceive as a gain from their involvement from such collaborative endeavors. The approach to research this topic will be an explanatory parallel mixed methods case study design that will initially explore quantitative results from the Community of Inquiry instrument as well as qualitative results gathered from an open-ended survey. Survey participants will be invited to participate in subsequent interviews in order to explore the question in more depth. A better understanding of why such collaboratives form, and what sustains them, might provide clues as to how such collaborative formations may encouraged, or nurtured, in online learning.
Thank you in advance for your help in identifying potential externals :-)
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