Initiate! What is learning design?

Finally, a literature review.

Also see the @pbsloep's commentary on his original scoop.

Need a long rainy day to read all this great stuff.  So wave of the future or tsunami ready to hit and hurt and then leave?

A insightful and thorough critique of why peer grading in the humanities won't work. Jonathan Rees is a professor of history himself who uses peer assessment in this classes a lot certainly is the right person to pass judgement (note the difference between assessment and grading, the former is formative, the latter summative). And it is negative. Indeed, he argues that if this practice were to catch on, it suggests grading (in the humanities) is easy, while in actual fact it is through careful comments and not the grades per se that people learn. Actuallly, I think this applies quite generallly. It is through reflection that you learn deeply, good feedback helps you reflect more deeply and a grade isn't good feedback. (@pbsloep)

And this is the blog post that took the lead in going public about the disastrous Coursera course (referred to in Inside Higher Ed, next to this scoop). Make sure you read the discussion too! (@pbsloep)

An eloquent but ruthless account of why community colleges (in the US) should shun MOOCs. At the heart of it lies a clash of philosophies, between those who see education as a way to make money and those who see it as our chosen instrument to enculturate the new generation. 

The final part of their argument, which I quoted in full, is wholly in line with Michael Sandel's ideas, about the relevance of which for MOOCs I wrote a blog post the other day (http://tiny.cc/ljq0qw). (@pbsloep)

comprehensive indeed - author has participated in a lot of moocs. Very readable intro for those who have never heard of moocs

Interesting and detailed personal insight into cMOOCs and xMOOCs from a participant. I sincerely hope more learners take the time to reflect and share the experiences they have with this kind of learning context. I find as an educator that the student voice is important and assuming that the developers of MOOCs are prepared to listen to critique, both postive and negative, then this is a valuable factor which can lead to improvements which hopefully will have a positive effect on the learner experience and quality of learning.

MOOCs are not going away!

Reading this helped me remember that I haven't done the first assignments for the Mooc I'm enrolled in.  Sigh....

Such a toolkit would indeed be very useful, not necessarily for MOOCs only, but more for networked learning in general. The tools that Martin discusses - e.g.  Wordpress for blog aggregation, Twitter, Google Plus - certainly suggest a wider applicability. 

From my point of view, the interesting thing about such toolkits is that they support a view of learning that embraces the idea of personal learning networks (PLNs), yet allows one to organise learning in courses. The course sets the topic, time period as well as interaction and communication structures, the tools used to make the course happen are a selection of the tools that people already use anyway to sustain their PLNs. To the extent that students do not use any such tools already or a limited subset of them only, the course also introduces them to their use and in doing so helps them to start building their own PLNs. This kind of course set-up amounts to a view of education that not only seeks to enlighten students on the course topic, but also prepares them for a career as a lifelong learner (or helps them sustain that career). It amounts to a shift from an institution-centric view to a genuinely student-centric one. This is good news for students, now we only need to convince educational institutions that it is also good news for them.

With the exception of the drop-ins--because universities control access to content pretty well--these numbers mirror many of the patterns I see with standard education models in large classrooms. Now, in class settings where there is less than 15 students, the lurker becomes more visible and a professor can tease the passive students into being more active.  

 From a blog about MOOCS ...

I would be quite interested in some research about the learning effect of MOOCs

Blog post of mine about unhelpful arguments in favour of or against #MOOCs (@pbsloep)

Bernard Bull (@bdean1000) then discusses six reasons for why MOOCs have arisen. They go from wanting to do research on them (edX, see my blogpost in October 2011: http://pbsloep.blogspot.nl/2012/10/how-to-improve-teaching-with.html) via scaling education, open education, marketing, college readiness to digital citizenship. The last is the vision that the work of a university should be of service to the people and communities. What is conspicuously missing is 'making money', although that may be implicit in scaling education. But obviously, venture capitalists have invested twenties of millions to make a good return on it. Nevertheless, the list is useful as an overview.

Another why-list I would be interested in doesn't inquire after intentions but looks for causes. How come that MOOCs rose to prominence so fast, unpredicted by anyone (certainly not the Horizon reports)? What mix of economic, societal, ideological, and what-have-you factors made their rapid advance possible? Such an analysis would be useful in order to allow us better to predict and plan the future of online education. (@pbsloep)

Comment: 6 good reasons to start a MOOC