#CFHE12 #Oped12 What is critical in MOOC I have a dream. (Dr. Martin Luther King) My dream: “Education as a means to fulfill the needs and expectations of the people, to become who they want to become, and so they could make responsible decisions that could contribute to their own growth, their fellow citizens, the community and society at large. We all need to take responsibility for our own learning, and that is also a way to self-educate, under the education system.” What is then critical in MOOC is the educational values and perception the learners and educators could derive from, in their journeys of learning through the networks and systems of MOOCs. Alan shares his views and experience of xMOOCs and concludes: Let me repeat, 98% of the people who signed up for this course did not get the certificate, or 60,059 people. Steve Ediger comments: That said, I believe that there were SIGNIFICANT differences in the two MOOC styles. Do you need massive numbers of agents (participants of xMOOC or cMOOCs) for the emergence of networks?
khan How would you respond to adverse condition What could an educator or learner do in respond to adverse working or learning condition? My response is: that is the challenge we all need to take up and respond to throughout our study and career. How about the following strategies? 1. Be an adaptive and agile learner. 2. 3. It is hard to overcome all the difficulties if we were to tackle the problems alone. Dave Snowden shares his belief here about engagement and enlightenment. The evangelicals were concerned with personal salvation, by coming to know the Lord Jesus as your personal saviour you were redeemed and your task was to bring others to the same enlightened state. My question is: “What is the world?” What is the purpose of engagement? Enlightenment often associates how we establish our inner values of life, through a search for truth, likely through religion, or a reflection of our experiences. I think what we are missing is a sense of value within ourselves, when we neglect the needs of others. What the world needs is love.
#CFHE12 #Oped12 Fractals, Community and Openness in Education How would communities develop? It looks like fractals development on an ongoing basis. Keith says in his post: an alert to Michael Rose’s explainer about fractals in The Conversation.In the explainer, Michael quotes Benoit Mandelbrot “Bottomless wonders spring from simple rules which are repeated without end“. It seems to me that open education has this potential. Like fractals I do think open courses are scalable. Is openness spreading like fractals? I have shared the concept of fractal formation, development in my past posts here and here. I am re-posting part of them here: Let me put all these into a social context. (a) Social interaction When a person A interacts with a person B, within a social media (e.g. a blog, Twitter, Facebook, or Quora), which is denoted by c, then the emergent learning (or knowledge) that may result from such interaction is z = z*2 + c The development of this fractal into different fractal patterns would depend on (a) the z (ideas, information, knowledge) themselves
#CFHE12 #Oped12 Emergence of MOOCs Final Part 5 xMOOCs meeting the cMOOCs In this post, I would continue to reflect on xMOOCs and cMOOCs. Could free online courses (MOOCs - xMOOCs in this context) change engineering education? Why not? Kathy says: they also present a host of challenges. I have mentioned in my post of What is the value and purpose of MOOC? I reckon MOOC offered by George and Stephen would be more suitable for lifelong learners (especially for the adults learners, though there are some young learners who may be interested) and experienced educators, whilst AI, Machine Learning courses are more suitable for those young students – university or college students, or those adults who would like to pursue college education, and those who are lifelong learners, but are just interested in learning about the content, rather than the social learning associated with MOOC. I know it is difficult to compare and contrast xMOOCs and cMOOCs in terms of effectiveness and efficiency, in education and learning. Here Ryan says: Are MOOCs for the people? Like this:
#CFHE12 #Oped12 A reflection on the cMOOCs and xMOOCs and their future When I reflect upon the two MOOCs – xMOOCs and cMOOCs in terms of how the courses are structured, I come to a conclusion that: In xMOOCs, the professors plan out everything for the participants, the video lectures, the artifacts & resources, the forum and discussion boards, the assignments, the quizzes, the examination, the assessment rubrics, and even the “recommendations and referencing link” to potential employer. Every learning is under a prescriptive regime, that if the participants follow the instruction, study the learning materials, watch the video lectures, then they could be able to master the content, and thus get a certificate if they satisfy the minimum requirements for the course. Dave Cormier explains how a MOOC works here: There are more than two millions Courserians in Coursera, there would be another few millions joining these MOOCs soon, as the competitions go on. George remarks here: Would MOOCs become a fad? Am I optimistic about MOOCs? Postscript: In this post:
MOOCs for K-12 – Are you ready Are we ready to adopt MOOC in K-12 education? No, I don’t think we are ready yet. I have posted here in 2008 on the application of Connectivism in K-12 and Higher Education, based on an institutional approach. Surely with the CCK08, if 2 “teachers” could serve 2000 plus learners, do you think there is a need to employ more teachers/moderators in mass open on-line courses? Chester asks if MOOC be adopted in k-12 education: Which got me thinking: Why not MOOCs in K–12 education, too—for the kids, not just their teachers? I posted on FB, and Mary Rearick and Ana Cristina Pratas also made their comments. My comments here: I think small scale of OOC structured with a “duty of care” is important if it is to be designed for k-12, and must be exercised with more cautions, due to the huge risks involved. The challenges are just too much for individual educators to take up, and so strong leadership and sound support are required to ensure it would be run smoothly. Like this: Like Loading...
#CFHE12 #Oped12 The emergence of MOOCs part 4 Assessment, Certification and Accreditation Are MOOCs suitable for all disciplines? What are some of the disciplines or domains which could be difficult for institutions to adopt an MOOC approach? What about education and training of doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.? In this post Online learning glitch: MOOC flaws will be hard to resolve by Ed Byrne: The other major problem the MOOCs haven’t solved is assessment. MOOCs covering subject areas of politics, philosophy and social sciences based on a xMOOC approach would be really difficult to be assessed as there is no objectively right and wrong answers. In this post on MOOC, the connectivist approach towards MOOCs is revealed: MOOCs, after all, were originally intended to provide for engagement and collaboration. May I quote a few of my previous posts in response to these? In my post: “In networked learning, “it is not just what we learn, but how we feel about what we learn, which counts in the long term.” It would be important to reflect on assumptions behind connectivist learning.
Connections: Deconstruction and Connectivism I haven’t really spent much time with modern French philosophers. They vex me and use many words to say few, but ambiguous, things. However, I’ll spend time revisiting Derrida and others (notably Latour, but he is a sociologist, so I have more tolerance), especially after a student in the MDDE622 course that Rory McGreal and I taught at Athabasca University, posted an interesting learning module on Deconstruction and Connectivism. Stella Bastone agreed to share the module. According to Derrida, all Western thought is based on the idea of a center…Deconstruction challenges this. Stella obviously reviewed a significan amount of online resources and includes extracted audio/video clips from various discussions and presentations on connectivism. Does creativity come with a price? Part 2 This is part 2 on creativity. In this creativity closely entwined with mental illness: As a group, those in the creative professions were no more likely to suffer from psychiatric disorders than other people.But they were more likely to have a close relative with a disorder, including anorexia and, to some extent, autism, the Journal of Psychiatric Research reports. There has been studies about creativity and mental illness. I have copied them here as reference: Creativity is known to be associated with an increased risk of depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The thalamus channels thoughtsSimilarly, people who have mental illness in their family have a higher chance of being creative. Creative people, like those with psychotic illnesses, tend to see the world differently to most. In an earlier review on Creativity and mental illness, however the Conclusions: There is limited scientific evidence to associate creativity with mental illness. I found these findings fascinating.
#CFHE12 #Oped12 A reflection of MOOCs Part 4:The number one challenge in education – Cheating I was appalled by what this post tells us about – stories of cheating. Test taking by others is a cheating scandal that would damage education’s reputation. Cheating in research is also on the rise. In this post on MOOC cheating: Frankly, why anyone who do this in a course that focuses on learning and offers no credentials, beats me. Students who cheat are really cheating themselves. Cheating could be the number one biggest problem for MOOCs as I have shared in my posts here and here. I reckon there aren’t many formal researches (at or above PhD level) done on this cheating and plagiarism as yet, as it could be both sensitive and overly “destructive” for educators and institutions to realize. However, if this cheating is allowed in MOOCs, then how could we be confident in giving credits to those who have done the MOOCs? Isn’t cheating and plagiarism a WICKED PROBLEM? What do you think about cheating and plagiarism? What are some of your suggestions and solutions to these problems? Like this: