Assessment in MOOCs
I was asked: “I was wondering how they might work with the Humanities, as I teach Seventeenth-Century Literature, Shakespeare and other related subjects, which require research papers and final examinations.…
Stephen Downes
McLuhan – Understanding Media – Summary of Chapters 11-14
My contribution to the Understanding Media Reading Group Chapter 11 McLuhan writes, in Chapter 11 of Understanding Media, that “The mysterious need of crowds to grow and to reach out,…
The Great Rebranding
Responding to Michael Feldstein, who on summarizing the recent EDUCAUSE MOOC conference (see my summaries from this blog) represents MOOCs as yet another form of artifact in support of traditional…
Who is Funding the Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation?
I think it’s time to ask who is funding the self-styled Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation, and what they are funding them to do. A little transparency here would go a long…
Advice to OcTEL
Context: email to David Jennings, on the occasion of the start of the OcTEL MOOC, in which participants have been flooded with introductory emails from the course mailing list. Hi…
The MOOC as a Vehicle for Learning: Observations and Conclusions
Summary with speakers Malcolm Brown, Veronica Diaz, Michael Feldstein, Phil Hill Phil: There has been a very rich discussion about the different reasons for participating in MOOCs, the variety of…
MOOC Provider Panel: Coursera, Academic Partnerships, Instructure, edX
Summary of a panel with Maria H. Andersen (Canvas by Instructure), Relly Brandman (Coursera), Rebecca Petersen (EdX), Barbara E. Truman (Academic Partnerships) Question: How do you think the MOOC will…
International Perspective: The MOOC and Campus-Based Learning
Summary of a presentation by Phillip D. Long, University of Queensland Role of the University: – Drew Faust, Harvard: it’s not really about what’s happening term by term or even…
Assessing the Efficacy of Third-Party MOOCs in Hybrid Instruction
Summary of a presentation by Rebecca Griffiths, ITHAKA Why did we start this study? It’s very difficult to engage students ‘in the wild’. They come in with a great deal…
Digging into MOOC Mania: One Investor’s Key Research Questions and Approach
Summary of a presentation from Stacey L. Clawson, Anh Nguyen, Gates Foundation (Stacey) MOOCs are one of the trends that are top of mind for institutional leaders. Institutions are pursuing…
Multiple Lessons Learned from Implementing MOOC Environments at San Jose State University
Summary of a presentation by speaker Ellen Junn Technically our MOOCs aren’t MOOCs any more, because we’re doing them for college credit, so there’s a fee involved. Also not all…
Backgrounds and Behaviors of MOOC Participants and Implications for Faculty
Summar of a presentation by Lori Breslow (MIT), Jennifer DeBoer (MIT), Andrew Ho (Harvard)(Andrew) Although open sources and online teaching is not new in a passive way, open learning as…
Using an Open Source Platform to Meet Online Learning Goals
Summary of a presentation from Amy Collier (Stanford) and Jane Manning (Stanford) Eventifier tweets: http://www.eventifier.co/event/elifocus/tweets?page=18 (Jane) If you haven’t seen it already, EdX has announced it will be releasing its…
Who Are Our Students? Bridging Local and Global Learning Communities
Summary of a presentation by Derek Bruff, Vanderbilt University, @derekbruff We have had 173,810 students enrolled in VU’s five courses as of March 27, 2013. It doesn’t mean everybody is…
What’s In It for Us?: Benefits to Campus Course of Running a MOOC
Summary of a presentation from Jason Mock http://moxbox.info/presentations/2013/march/whats-it-us-benefits-campus-courses-running-mooc Let’s talk about the reasons institutions and people are getting involved in MOOCs We can look at brand reputation, or just keeping…
MOOCs for Credit: Current State of the Art
Summary of a presentation by Cathy Sandeen, Centre for Education, Attainment and Innovation, ACE I am actually a MOOC completer – I thought it was a good idea to experience…
Designing and Implementing MOOCs that Maximize Student Learning
Summary of a presentation by Seth Anderson (Duke), Amy Collier (Stanford), Cassandra Horlii (California Institute of Technology) Amy: What is unique about online learning in MOOCs? Kurt Vonnegut once said…
Faculty Perspective: Teaching the Humanities to Humanity
Summary of a presentation by Peter Struck I (Peter) am coming from a background as a practitioner, beginning especially with web 2.0 courses. We then offered a course over Coursera,…
Everything You Thought You Knew About MOOCs Could Be Wrong
Summary of a presentation by Phil Hill and Michael Feldstein. Phil – there’s so much hype or madness around MOOCs, and there’s a lot of discussion from people who were…
Future Work
I had a brief chat with Georges Corriveau this morning that got me to thinking about the future of work. Specifically, I was thinking to myself, if I were just…