Category Archives: Open Education

Getting started with eduMOOC 2011: Into the fray

Leave a reply

I’m participating in the new eduMOOC: Online Learning Today…and Tomorrow,  which started on Monday. This is a Massive Open Online Class (MOOC) sponsored by the Center for Online Learning, Research and Service at the University of Illinois-Springfield (UIS). So far, well… I’m learning, listening, and looking for resources.

There’s a lot to do and read. There are study groups, discussion forums, weekly panel discussions, participant blog posts, Facebook and Moodle groups, and a host of other items to review. It seems with a group this big (2450+ people in 65 countries and counting) you can be a little selective – attend to the parts that make sense for you, seek out the resources that meet your needs and fit your interests.

The other MOOC members represent a wide range of roles in higher education and K-12 – senior leaders, administrators, faculty members, graduate students, tech specialists, advisors and counselors, and librarians. I am going at this from the perspective of an instructional designer and education writer/blogger – How is the MOOC structured and moderated? What technologies are involved? How are the logistics coordinated? What are the most popular topics? Where are people gathering and what are they discussing?

To help focus my efforts, I’m following another participant’s lead and going in search of (my own) learning objectives. Yes, these are loose and more designed to keep me going back to the site than anything else. I suppose a better phrase might be “learning and participation objectives:”

  • Attend the 8 panel discussions. (or review the recordings before the end of each week). These are panel discussions held in Elluminate, but broadcast on a UIS system that also streams the Twitter feed. Slides are provided as a PDF.
  • Try new technologies, tools, and techniques. So far I’ve posted my introduction using Google Sites discussion threads, and added my location to the Google participant map, both new to me. There is also a demo of etherpad going on.
  • Join a study group. With this many people it may make sense to find a sub-group. Hopefully one will center on instructional design…
  • Identify new resources in the form of blogs, twitter accounts, journals, and more. And add these to my PLN and Feedly.
  • Develop a list of specific ideas and concepts for further investigation, reading, and writing.
  • Exchange ideas and perspectives. So far I’ve already connected with another participant in New Zealand (Hello, @VirtualMV!) who has a cool wiki.
  • Add my voice to the mix, where I can and it makes sense to do so – hope to contribute and not just add to the fray. Began with a tweet during today’s panel discussion. Lots of description of the benefits and challenges of for-profit models, but it wasn’t apparent that anyone on the panel had worked at a for-profit. Assumptions, I think, are prevalent on both sides, for-profit and non-profit.
  • Spread the word with re-tweets, blog posts, bookmarks and the like.

Have you considered joining? There’s still time! There are also resources you might want to track, even if you decide not to register:

And in case you are wondering, “What’s a MOOC?” here’s a great explanation from Laura Pasquini.

Image credit: stock.xchng

Finding and Using Online Open Educational Resources

Leave a reply

On June 22nd I’ll present a session titled Finding and Using Online Open Educational Resources (OER) to a group of online instructors as part of a professional development workshop series. The live presentation is to take place via Adobe Connect and the slides (with links to resources) are provided here via Slideshare.

My main objective with this presentation is to encourage faculty to seek out online content that has been made available for use in education and consider the pros/cons of adding OER to an academic course. The presentation introduces a  number of considerations for using this kind of content and I hope to spark some discussion about copyright and fair use.  This presentation also encourages instructors using open content to think about contributing their own content for others to use as well.

Do you have suggestions for sources of OER that you have used? Do you have any considerations regarding the challenges of incorporating OER into courses? Please reply with additional suggestions for us all. Thanks!

Media Literacy – Consumers and Contributors

Leave a reply

This post is my reaction to Alec Couros’ presentation on 11/10 as part of eci831. The main topic was media literacy. Slides are online.

What is Media Literacy?

The world is full of people trying to sell us things – products, destinations, ideas, and messages. Much of it we don’t really need. We are subject to this every time we turn on the TV or radio, pick up a magazine or newspaper. Internet websites are no different. When you visit a website you are a potential consumer of whatever the creator or sponsor is trying to sell. The skill related to being able to decipher the sales pitch and make a decision about its worth is media literacy. Of course the Internet is more about interacting with the media, or can be, and that creates issues related to what you consume and contribute. Learning what you should and should not post and what is appropriate online behavior is also related to media literacy.

Can/Should Media Literacy be taught?

  • Teaching teachers. I worked on a course for pre-service teachers a few years ago and the content expert included a unit dedicated to media literacy. This seemed unusual to me at the time (note: my background is not K-12) but important for teacher candidates who would be moving on to positions of influence with students and reacting to issues related to internet access and censorship in school administrations. In hindsight, the students in that course would have probably been better served with a course that addressed media literacy throughout, not just in a specific unit.
  • My media literacy via TV. Couros’ presentation made me think about how I may/may not have learned media literacy prior to the age of the Internet. I grew up watching television. A lot of television. Not unlike the Internet, television was and is full of “good” and “bad”. Learning media literacy happened though the modeling and control of my parents, what they watched and wouldn’t let me watch. And perhaps also through the comments and lessons provided by my teachers and conversations with my friends and classmates, etc.
  • Knowing how it works. This presentation’s discussion reminded me of a general session with Andrew Keen at a recent conference. His approach was a little controversial with the audience – basically, kids don’t have knowledge or wisdom about the world-at-large. He gave the example of his son doing a Google search before making a purchase. When Keen asked his son which item he purchased and why, the son replied that he purchased the first one that came up on the result page since the one at the top must be the best. Did the son understand that the result page was the result of an algorithm and not a group of people rating the quality of the product? Keen supposed not, another issue of media literacy and the Internet – understanding how search engines work.

  • Online identity. As I watched Couros’ presentation I realized that I may live in an Internet bubble (a similar comment was made by a participant.) I don’t find myself exposed to offensive content, hate, racism, violence, porn, etc. on a regular or even occasional basis. We are all making choices about how we consume and contribute to Internet media. Perhaps this should be taught, or at least modeled in schools: creating, protecting, and maintaining your online identity. As a career counselor I used to encourage clients to consider what a future employer might find online and post accordingly. This might fall into the definition of media literacy. It may also be too conservative, to limiting to potential creativity and expression. Or maybe it depends on your career path. Your thoughts?

Other items to pass along:

photo credit: musha68000,  Flickr