Author: Stephen Downes

I’ll return to my other flow of posts in a bit, but in the meantime Dron has responded to my last four, and there are some things worth addressing. In particular, he complains about my focusing sometimes on single paragraphs and even sentences – “out of context,” he says. But

Under the heading “A believable theory? Actually, yes it is. But…” Jon Dron offers a longish paragraph in two parts. In the first part, he outlines a view of my theory he thinks is OK, while in the second part he expands on the ‘But…’ On this post I will

As he makes clear in a comment on his recent post, part of Dron’s motivation for depicting connectivism as a ‘family of ideas’ is so that he, too, can be considered a connectivist. In yet another paragraph from that post, he writes, I can come up with a compelling theory

Let’s move up one paragraph in Jon Dron’s post. We’ve seen already Dron’s notion that connectivism should be thought of as a family of ideas. In this paragraph, Dron states more fully what he thinks that family of ideas entails: All of this is nothing more than nit-picking if we

I think it is worth looking at the end of Jon Dron’s long post to get to the heart of what he finds so wrong about my work. I reserve the right to look at the rest of his work in reverse order as well. Let’s move carefully, one sentence

Long story short: I tried to access CTV online. It wouldn’t accept my login and sent me to a password recovery page. But this page rejected by email address because it ended in .ca instead of .com So I contacted their ‘Help’ which was on the page. I ended up

I don’t want to restate the theses of connectivism as I understand it but it may help readers of Jon Dron’s to identify where his exegesis leads him into misunderstanding. Here’s his paper, which you may need to read first. Let me first and foremost be clear about my objectives

I think the students in the Building Online Collaborative Environments Course has an almost impossible task. Here is their effort to prove that connectivism is a learning theory. “Connectivism has a direct impact on education and teaching as it works as a learning theory. Connectivism asserts that learning in the

Still messing around with statistics. Here’s the graph of the production of posts on OLDaily over the years since the first posts in 1995: Until 1999 the only posts produced are my articles. Subsequently, as I began the newsletter, the posts include the now-familiar links to resources in OLDaily. The

Here’s the information I sent Steve Kolowsich for his Chronicle article on the (possible?) decline of MOOC mentions in the media: My data measures news articles from selected (and reasonably representative) sources (including Google News) and counts instances of the term ‘MOOC’ in title or descriptions. It is essentially the

The Challenge of MOOCs Panel Stephen Downes Please see my presentation and audio here: http://www.downes.ca/presentation/339 N.V. Varghese – view from developing countries    – largest expansion of the system in this century    – did not rely on public resources at all – shows willingness to pay    – GER (gross educational? resources)

Welcoming Intro Ezekiel Emmanuel – MOOCs ‘democratizing’ education? (vs? ‘socializing’)    – but – access, language, etc – MOOCs – equalize opportunity for elites in developing countries    – may widen inequality in developing countries – more for elites, nothing for the rest   – issues of quality – eg. issue of keeping

I want to talk about the MOOC of one. What I mean by that is I want to talk about the development of the MOOC or the Massive Open Online Course. I’m one of the people who designed the concept originally in 2008. I want to explain myself so that

I’ve stated this in many times in talks and interviews, but I can’t find it anywhere in my actual text-based materials, so let’s get it on the record so people can have something to cite, should they want to. It has to do with MOOC completion rates, and the oft-cited

C’est avec grand plaisir que je vous annonce l’ouverture des inscriptions à notre cours en ligne ouvert et massif portant sur les ressources éducatives libres.L’inscription est à l’URL http://goo.gl/PeqkU0 Notre communauté Google se trouve ici. Et notre page Facebook ici.Merci de diffuser la nouvelle dans vos réseaux. Merci de nous aimer. Merci

Fred M Beshears writes, “Here’s an upcoming panel discussion that might address some of the issues we’ve been discussing. It will be interesting to see if the idea of ‘Open Education’ becomes linked to the idea of  ‘Free Trade’“. Does he mean the ‘free trade’ where corporations and capital are

Jacky Hood writes, > All government grant money comes from taxpayers. Unless this means, trivially, “all money comes from someone”, then the statement is false. A certain amount of money comes from resource royalties. If the resources are destined for exports (as most are) then taxpayers do not contribute to

Responding to Fred Bershears, who writes: Here are some quotes from Berkeley professor David L. Kirp on the British Open University. They were offering MOOCs long before the term was coined in the US. But for this university, it’s not a sideline – it’s their core competency. http://innovationmemes.blogspot.com/2014/02/david-l-kirp-on-british-open-university.html Since they

Stephen: This is an interview with with Juergen Rudolph. And it’s January 8th, 2014. Juergen: Excellent. Well so so first of all I feel very honoured that you have agreed to to talking to me. I’ve sent you a little bit of my interview guide, but of course we should

I was asked: But i have some questions about my research. First i need ten-year findings of connectionim learning theory, second (Read more…)