Leigh Blackall: MOOCs are a Manufactured Consent

…in its own way, a companion piece to Audrey Watters’ [Expletive Deleted]…and a worthy one. I was somewhat conflicted about whether to post here or on As the Adjunctiverse Turns in response to yet another uninformed judgment based on flawed, incomplete higher ed media coverage, minus any shred of primary research or first hand research. 

I can’t take it any more. All this talk about MOOCs (the simple corporate variety), iTunesU, and the glaring and obvious ignorance of robust and sustainable commons-based projects like Wikipedia, Wikibooks and Wikiversity.

The Conversation seems to have captured a very large audience in Australia. Their bi line is “academic rigor, journalistic flare”. I see a lot of “flare” to be sure. Rigor and journalism though. Well, they were made extinct in Australia through the 1990s, clinched in 2003.

Dilan Thampapillai has offered his insights on the flaws in copyright governance in the major Corporate MOOCs. It had to be said, I agree. But Dilan makes no mention of the platforms that manage commons-based copyright, and manage it well. He stays with the manufactured consent that MOOCs are a recent phenomenon and that the idea of open education is held to the corporate platforms that have popped up to capitalise.

via Leigh Blackall: MOOCs are a Manufactured Consent.

Laptop U Has the future of college moved online?

I can’t remember where all I shared this already but the article, more than a little unnerving, made quite an impression on me…the way a well told cautionary tale might.

Don’t miss this exploration of MOOCs and elite schools. But note well, this (and not education) is what the elite universities sell: “At twenty, at Dartmouth, maybe, you’ re sitting in a dormitory room at 1 A.M. sharing Chinese food with two kids wearing flip-flops and Target jeans; twenty-five years later, one of those kids is running a multi-billion dollar tech company and the other is chairing a Senate subcommittee. Access to ‘élite education’ may be more about access to the élites than about access to the classroom teaching.” So why are they offering MOOCs? To make sure nobody else sells what they’re selling. And – perhaps – to prevent the wave of open learning reform from striking their sacred shores and breaching their hallowed halls.

Link & commentary via Stephen’s Web ~ OLDaily

 

via Laptop U Has the future of college moved online? in the New Yorker

The Future of Digital Identity

Reblogged from Technology, Innovation, Education:

Just now I attended an event organized by the Club of Amsterdam ("Shaping Your Future in the Knowledge Society") about the Future of Digital Identity at Info.nl. After getting a badge and being photographed without my consent I could enter.

There were three speakers, below my notes.

Can you be in control of your online identity?

Michael Hagen talked to us about…

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I never did get to that #Change11 post on digital identity...still thinking about and trying to understand what mine is or are. Whenever I come across a good post on the topic, I read, share and save it, reminded too about my own.

Speaking of MOOCs & Museums

…at Connection not Content, Gordon Lockhart looks at the “essence” of what MOOCs are, who they are for ~ a consideration often overlooked in hype overload ~ and compares the experience to various ways of spending time in museums. Gordon writes,

Essence of MOOC – I’ve been trying to filter out from all the hype and controversy, the essential and distinguishing features of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) – as they are right now, out there in the field.

They are: about learning, popular, accessible,  inhabit a massive space (the web), attract  a extraordinarily diverse range of participants, require facilitation (but never a one size fits all model), and are both made possible and limited by technology (“clunky communications, scrappy aggregation, sub-standard videos, less than synchronous sessions, crude monitoring and assessment techniques”).

After listing and, succinctly, expanding on features, Gordon develops a MOOCs – museums analogy. Looking back on my own experience visiting diverse museums and mooc-ing with no interest in either credits or certificates, I agree with his analysis and particularly like his comment, “your learning is entirely your own business.”

Closing, he connects “essences” list and museum, “Why shouldn’t a MOOC be like a good museum and actually try to be all things to all people?”

So go read the whole post, Essence of MOOC and the Museum Analogy

Good MOOC Conference, Bad MOOC Legislation ~ Remaking the University

Chris Newfield on proposed California e-learning legislation: recapping the current flurry of online legislation in Sacramento (h/t Berkeley Faculty Association)

~ followed by Jenna Joo on a recent conference:

The conference held a total of six panel discussions where speakers from a variety of backgrounds.  Scholars, educational media developers, students, and commercial employers came together to discuss the pros and cons of online education and to raise important questions and concerns.

…the rest at Good MOOC Conference, Bad MOOC Legislation ~ Remaking the University.

A language teaching MOOC

…starting April 15. Information below is from the LT MOOC website (link below). Presumably the hashtag will be #ltmooc. There’s more (but not that much more) about Instreamia, http://about.instreamia.com. In addition to the platform, the course will utilize Google groups and Hangouts and have videos on YouTube. So far this is not sounding all that “connectivist” ~ but still worth checking out… first hand is still the best way to know for sure. The project is a work in progress.

LTMOOC is a collaborative course for language teachers of all levels to discuss and gain a deeper understanding of emerging trends in blended teaching and learning of world languages, including the methodology, best practices, and practical application of the blended and online classroom. The course will facilitate discussion and development of ideas in a connectivist-style MOOC, inviting all course participants to contribute.

Instreamia founders Ryan and Scott Rapp have organized this course in response to the hundreds of inquiries and requests received regarding the Instreamia adaptive learning platform and its popular flagship course SpanishMOOC, which is known as one of the first MOOCs for teaching a foreign language.

Blended Teaching of World Languages http://ltmooc.com

All #MOOC/s & No Play Makes University Dull

…an antidote to and reflection on the madness…h/t Jim Groom, Digital Storytelling

All MOOCs and No Play Makes University Dull.

Tech training for K-12 admin

Although K-12 is not my primary, secondary or even tertiary teaching area, I follow it because a) all public education is connected, b) the word ‘public’ means it is everyone’s concern, whether employed in it, direct stakeholders as students or parents, c) concerned educators or e) members of the local community. I do stay informed, follow a number of K-12 education sources, and have been researching MOOC for several years.

Note: shared with superintendent of local school district in addition to blogging here on MOOC Madness. As a digital artifact/project for DIY PD, I’m curating online and MOOC resources for K-12 and GED. Recommendations invited….

A new, free online course is aimed at giving thousands of district administrators around the country help in using technology to meet their schools’ needs.

The project, which is being dubbed a “MOOC-Ed,” or a massively open online course for educators, is the work of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington-based advocacy organization that has been heavily involved in promoting digital education, and the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, at North Carolina State University’s College of Education.

The course is to be the first of several massive, open, online courses focused on education organized by the Friday Institute. It’s a seven-week class that will run from April 8 through May 24 and is specifically designed for school and district leaders, including superintendents, principals, curriculum directors, tech directors, finance officials, lead teachers, and others responsible for planning the use of technology in K-12.

Read the rest of Tech training for K-12 administrators

SIGCSE 2013: The Revolution Will Be Televised, Perspectives on MOOC Education

Reblogged from Nick Falkner:

Long time between posts, I realise, but I got really, really unwell in Colorado and am still recovering from it. I attended a lot of interesting sessions at SIGCSE 2013, and hopefully gave at least one of them, but the first I wanted to comment on was a panel with Mehram Sahami, Nick Parlante, Fred Martin and Mark Guzdial, entitled "The Revolution Will Be Televised, Perspectives on MOOC Education".

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Good, balanced discussion of MOOCs in education and recap of SIGCSE 2013 (http://www.sigcse.org/sigcse2013/) panel of the same name, although (obviously) such a panel at a computing conference will tend to self-select for supporters and against critics. By contrast, UMW's 21st Century Studies' "What's the Matter with MOOCs? A Critical Conversation" seems to have self-selected the other direction. Dialogue, anyone?

MOOCS: A Cautionary Note

[Gregory Jay presented this paper as part of C21's "What's the Matter with MOOCs?"even on March 12, 2013]

MOOCS:Cautionary Note | Center for 21st Century Studies.