Multilitteratus Incognitus

With Week 2 of Game MOOC starting up today, I thought it would be worth while to write a couple of observations from the inaugural week of this MOOC. Last week's content was quite interesting. I still see a lot of people still introducing themselves in the "welcome and introduce yourself" forum, so I guess many more people are coming on-board, even at the end of the first week. The video of Jim Gee (reposted here) was quite interesting and engaging, and the games that the Guild Council (MOOC facilitators) had us sample weren't that bad. To be honest, I would not have tried any of these games out if I didn't have to. My time is a bit limited, and these learning games don't generally fit in with me as a learner, and don't fall into the demographic if people who might be in a course of mine. That said, I did enjoy the games (despite some of them being frustrating, but I guess that was the point) and had some interesting discussions with a few participa...

Well, the BonkOpen MOOC is almost over, I earned my badge (seen on the right) and in the process picked up some new knowledge, information, skills, and professional contacts! At the same time I was able to see Blackboard Learn in action as a host for a massive online course. I think, that by and large, the MOOC was a good one, and the organizers and coordinators were responsive to the people who attended the MOOC and modified it, as the MOOC progressed, based on the feedback of the participants. There were a number of good things about the MOOC, but also a few mis-steps.  Here are some lessons I learned about using an LMS for a MOOC. No need for introductions . In a MOOC there are just way too many people to make introductions feasible.  The introduction isn't for the speaker to say who they are, but rather for the hearer to know who the speaker is.  This wasn't accomplished with the introductions in this MOOC.  The introductions were setup like a "normal" 15-...

It's week 2 in FSLT, and the topic of this week is group participation. One of the things mentioned this week by the facilitators are the roles that people take in group work , which was quite interesting, as I could see  people in my past group work experience taking on those roles consciously or subconsciously. In the MOOC forums there is quite a lively discussion this week (as there was last week), which got me thinking. One of the things that I've been pondering is the mode of participation.  In MOOCs like Change11 and CCK11 the main mode of participation seems to have been Blogging, and aggregation of those blog posts through a daily newsletter.  Other modes included tweeting, posting on delicious, and using the basic commenting systems on gRSShopper.  It is true, at least for me, that in these two MOOCs I did not miss the discussion board element and I fully embraced blogging (and commenting on other people's blogs) as a way to participate and follow the lear...

It seems like things have shaken out a bit on #bonkOpen for week 2. There seems to be way fewer threads in Week 2 as compared to Week 1. This isn't a big deal for me, my initial plan of looking for 10 interesting threads and following and replying to them is still intact. Now, if in Week 3 (this week) we have fewer than 10 threads...then I will have to re-think my initial strategy for participation. Week 3, instead of readings, has a number of videos by Curtis Bonk. Each video is about 10 minutes, and there are five or six of them - so you could just seem them all in about an hour. I've gone through half of them thus far. This is making me wonder two things: Were the videos planned as part of Week 3 from the get-go? Or were they a change of strategy once some people complained about the amount of reading that they had to do (by taking part in this voluntary learning opportunity!) The other thing that it makes me wonder is this: In Week 1, the synchronous session seem...

I was reading Lisa's response to #bonkopen the other day. Both the post and the comments were quite interesting. One of the issues is blackboard as a platform. OK, sure, LMS in general stink - regardless of whether it's Moodle, Bb Learn, Bb Vista (formerly WebCT, ANGEL and so on.  Lisa does prefer the distributed mode of communication which is typical in MOOCs like Change and CCK, but despite the fact that Lisa and I prefer blogs to LMS, it doesn't mean that those modes are best for everyone.  One of the big hurdles that many of my acquaintances had with MOOCs as the distributed nature. They didn't have one spot to go to (i.e. the LMS) to check to see what's new. Sure Bb Learn 9.1 is the same ol' blackboard but with better UI...but UI does make a difference! Some things still stink, but on the whole I think that version 9.1 isn't bad.  That being said here are some of my responses to a couple of the comments on the blog (too many comments to go through a...

One of the things that participants need to do in #bonkOpen in order to receive a badge for being part in this MOOC, was to attend (or view the recording of) each weekly live session. I've said it before, and I will say it again: I am not a fan of synchronous conferences; I just don't like sitting there for an hour...or two...or three...listening to people do their thing.  I prefer my visual channel to be better engaged when listening to mostly audio information, and most synchronous conferences are just powerpoint, powerpoint, powerpoint...yawnnnn.  At least in class (face to face) you have body language, movement, people coming and going, neighbors and so on. In any case,  with the help of a piece of software called Elluminate Publish (thank you Blackboard person on Twitter!) I was able to download the recording in video format (just a bit over 130MB if I recall correctly) for the entirety of the two hours.  It was a nice presentation, nothing good, noth...

Well, the Bonk MOOC (Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success) is almost at the end of Week 1.  There certainly is  A LOT of discussion going on, with more than 3000 registered participants; at least that was the number at last count. I honestly would LOVE to see the analytics at the end of the MOOC.  That would certainly be some cool data to crunch (and perhaps write an article about). In any case, both on #bonkopen and in other MOOCs, there has been a sentiment made clear by some participants that they feel like they are drinking from a firehose.  If you are a traditional learner (as in you come from a face to face course environment, or a traditional online course environment) you may feel like there is too much information. Some people want to create smaller cohorts, after all Blackboard Learn supports groups.  I don't mean to be insensitive when I roll my eyes at comments like this; I am sorry if I offend anyone - this is not my inten...

Well, actually, it's the start of two new MOOCs! I know that Change11 and DS106 are still going, but change11 seems to be on life support. It seems to me anyway that the same 4-5 people are posting, and even though there are interesting people in these final weeks, most people have moved on, which is too bad. I still read the daily digest, and those 4-5 people post some thought provoking stuff, but I just have nothing to add to the conversation, so I lurk :-) With DS106 I don't feel that creative (which is a bummer), so I've resolved that once the summer comes and I have more mental bandwidth (too many work projects taking up space now) I plan on doing two challenges every week and work through the assignments in the summer months. I've wanted to get a podcast off the ground for a while, so doing something for DS106 should kill two birds with one stone ;-) Anyone interested in doing a "MOOC Talk Weekly" with me? LOL :-) Anyway, so what are these two ne...