Theory-informed TEL and Connectivism

This week I met Seb Schmoller  who recommended that I have a look at the ocTEL MOOC , a 10 week open course in technology enhanced learning which is being run by ALT (Association for Learning Technology) here in the UK.

Seb is a former Chief Executive of ALT. I was vaguely aware of this MOOC, but had put it to the back of my mind, because for me there are just too many MOOCs about at the moment – it’s difficult to know where to focus.

But Seb’s prompt made me have another look and ‘Yes’ ocTEL does seem well organized with some interesting discussions and useful resources. However, I don’t think I will be getting fully engaged as I am already committed in part to FSLT13  due to start on May 8^th 2013 – and Growing Old Around the Globe   due to start on June 10^th 2013.  More of them later in other posts.

So far in the ocTEL MOOC I have checked out the Week 1 resources and listened to the recorded presentations .  One slide from Liz Masterman’s presentation has stuck in my mind.

Liz Masterman interviewed academics in Higher Ed and asked them which theories informed their use of technology in their teaching. This Wordle is the result. The two tiny words are ‘constructionism’ and ‘behaviourism’. This slide resonates with me because I was recently asked to create a presentation about learning theories for Lisa Lane’s Pedagogy First Online Teaching course. Whilst I am familiar with everything that is on Liz Masterman’s slide (although there are some models in there as well as theories), I only mentioned a few of these in my own presentation. Maybe I should have tried to take a broader brush, but at the time less seemed more.

For me an omission from Liz’s slide and therefore from the interviewees’ thinking and experience of technology enhanced learning in Higher Ed is ‘Connectivism’ or anything to do with networked learning – although communities of practice can be thought of in terms of networked learning.

In terms of the slide I don’t think it matters whether or not we think of Connectivism as a theory, since some of the other items listed on the slide are not theories – but could its omission be a ‘telling’ statement on where academics are in Higher Education in relation to their understanding of learning in new landscapes of practice?

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The MOOC Bandwagon

As others have noted – most recently Bon Stewart in her Inside Higher Ed article  – everyone seems to be jumping on the MOOC bandwagon at an alarming rate.

This week the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee, UK ) has jumped on it with a webinar entitled

What is a MOOC – JISC Webinar 11-07-12

Four speakers were invited. Here is the programme and here is the recording
12.00 Definitions of MOOCs (Martin Weller)
12.10 Tutor perspective (Jonathan Worth)
12.20 Learner perspective (Lou McGill)
12.30 MOOCs and online learning (David White)
12.40 Q&A

Martin Weller presented a useful overview of the history of MOOCs and some thoughtful ideas about the benefits of MOOCs and the associated concerns in relation to Higher Education.

Jonathan Worth told us about his ‘open’ photography course in which he uses Twitter with his students to reach a wider network of experts. I was not sure that this is a MOOC in my terms, although it was clearly an ‘open’ course. It got me thinking about whether using different technologies necessarily means that the course is distributed across different platforms, which according to Stephen Downes is a necessary condition for a MOOC (at least a connectivist MOOC).

Lou McGill is a staunch advocate of the DS106 MOOC, in which she has been a learner and she shared her experience of authentic learning in this MOOC. She is also working with Strathclyde University to research learner experiences in the Change11 MOOC.  I was a participant in Change 11 and was also interviewed by Lou McGill for the research – an interesting experience in which I realized that my understanding of ‘What is a MOOC?’ stems from CCK08, but many, many people who are discussing MOOCs today were not in that MOOC and appear to be coming from a different place.

Dave White pondered on why the Stanford MOOC attracted such large numbers and thought it must be to do with their credibility and brand name. He raised the question of the role of the teacher/facilitator in MOOCs and suggested that this is important if MOOCs are to be inclusive. This is a topic we have been discussing in our review the FSLT MOOC.

These are my reflections as a result of attending this webinar.

There are still plenty of people who have technical difficulties accessing a site like Blackboard Collaborate. We cannot make assumptions that people have the technical equipment or skills to engage in MOOCs.

Whilst MOOCs might be the new buzzword in Higher Education, there are still plenty of people who have never heard of them, only just heard of them, have no idea what they are, or who completely misunderstand what they are.

The original connectivist principles of MOOCs are getting lost in the plethora of offerings which now bear the name MOOC, e.g.

• CCK08 (the original MOOC) was an experiment in getting people to think about learning differently;

• the idea was that learners could be in control of their learning and meet in learning spaces of their own choice  according to the principle of distributed environments (see slide 33 in this presentation by Stephen Downes) and see his LMS vs PLE video

• learners would experience learning in the massiveness of the network – so they would not be able to rely on the tutor/convener/facilitator – instead they would need to make connections and seek peer support. In the light of this our understanding of the relationship between teacher and learner would need to change

• the purpose of learning in a MOOC would be to create knowledge and artefacts through exposure to a diverse network, rather than have it centrally provided. This would, through the aggregation, remixing, repurposing and feeding forward of resources shared and created, enrich the learning experience

• MOOCs were never intended – despite the name – to be ‘courses’ ( see this blog post  and this response from Stephen Downes ); they were intended to be a challenge to the traditional notion of a course – in the form of learning events. If they don’t do this then they are ‘open courses’ (with some of the attributes of MOOCs), but not MOOCs in the terms of how they were originally conceived.

This is my understanding of what is meant by MOOC – now renamed (in the light of different interpretations) a connectivist MOOC. Many of the most recent courses which have been called MOOCs are not MOOCs in these terms, but fall somewhere along the continuum from connectivist MOOCs with these principles, to the Stanford AI type of centrally located MOOC (see Stephen Downes’ LMS vs PLE video for an explanation)

It is evident that there is room for all these different types of MOOCs or ‘open courses’.   But I hope we will not lose the principles of the CCK08 type of connectivist MOOC, as it is the connectivist MOOCs that are really pushing against the boundaries and challenging traditional ways of thinking about teaching and learning, which is of course why many people feel uncomfortable with them and why we are now seeing efforts to somehow tie them down and bring them into line.

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#fslt12 Week 0 – starts tomorrow – Monday 14 May

 

 

The run up to the First Steps in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education Mooc is well under way. The course officially starts on 21^st May (and will run for 5 weeks until 22^nd June), so next week is a good time for anyone who is interested in following the course to have a look round our WordPress and Moodle sites and spend a bit of time setting yourself up and deciding where and how you want to participate. These sites are still being developed, so there may be some last minute changes next week.

Designing this course has been more complex than I anticipated and I think this is because the course is neither a fully connectivist course of the type conceived by Downes, Siemens, Cormier and Groom, nor an institutional or commercial type of Mooc (Stanford, MIT, Curtis Bonk). It is somewhere in between and is aligned at least to some extent to Oxford Brookes University’s and funders’ expectations. So we do have an LMS element (Moodle), which feels more like a traditional course, but also the course is open – we will aggregate blogs, and we are expecting people to interact in spaces of their own choosing.

Lisa Lane has written a very interesting (and for me – timely) blog post this week – Where’s your class? musings on course location   in which she describes the type of MOOC we have been developing as a ‘pseudo’ Mooc. A Mooc that perpetuates the idea that ‘class is here’.  She describes the model we have decided on as being the ‘middle ground’.

I recognise our Mooc in what she is saying. Like Lisa, my own preference is for Moocs to be open, distributed and aggregated, but as she has pointed out:

The WordPress Multi-User site, or the LMS that’s open to all, or the main blog where all blog within it but can have their content exported to save (which is what Dave is doing) may then be the preferred models for balancing these issues with those of exploration and innovation. They are being chosen because they take into account concerns of pedagogy and comfort, not because they can handle 1,000 students and use their content and personal information for other ends, but because they work.

Certainly for the #fslt12 MOOC, which is targeted at new lecturers in HE and PhD students who want to teach (although we welcome experienced practitioners as well), we hope to be able to provide a comfortable and safe learning environment for those who need it, for whatever reason.

The proof of the pudding will be in the eating Whatever happens it has been, and will continue to be, a great learning experience!

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Is ChangeMooc some sort of test?

I think I am missing something somewhere – but where? I am missing Weeks 26, 27 and 28 of ChangeMooc.

According to the schedule this is what should have happened.

Week 26- Mar 5-Mar 11 – Grainne Conole  was supposed to speak.

Nothing happened that week. We were told that ‘the gang’ would be travelling to the EdgeX conference in India which was due to begin on March 12th – Week 27.

Now Week 27 according to the schedule was supposed to be Alejandro Piscitelli from the  University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. I wonder what happened to him? I hope somebody told him that he wouldn’t be speaking in Week 27, because we – as MOOC participants – were  not told, although such is the nature of distributed information and conversation that I might have missed it. We were told though that we could listen to Grainne’s presentation to EdgeX, even though it was a week out of synch. I didn’t get to hear Grainne, but I did get to hear Stephen which was a bonus

Up to this point I felt reasonably OK about it all. Like others I have found a new speaker each week too much, so a break was a relief.

But what about this week – Week 28. The schedule tells us that the invited speaker is Rosa A. Ojeda Ayala from the University of the Sacred Heart, Puerto Rico. And there has been no word of her that I have seen- but again I stand corrected if I have missed it anywhere – but there has been no post on the ChangeMooc site that I have seen, which still shows Week 25, and no mention on Twitter that I have seen. I also wonder if she was told – or was it her decision not to present this week?

Is this the ultimate test of a connectivist course? Were we supposed to take over and organise it for ourselves? Realistically I don’t think that was possible.

Could either Stephen, George or Dave (‘the gang’ as I have called them with much respect), please explain what is going on.

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The philosophy of MOOCs

There are currently lots of blog posts around, asking yet again ‘What is a MOOC?’ and about the different types of MOOCs  –  see for example

Osvaldo Rodriguez blog

George Siemens’ Elearnspace blog

Stephen Downes’ Half and Hour site

John Mak’s Blog

MOOCs are even being discussed on a German blog which I could only access through a translation. Unfortunately since I do not speak German,  I was not able to participate in the discussion in the comments.

All these discussions are very relevant to my current situation in which I am working with George Roberts and Marion Waite of Oxford Brookes University to plan a new MOOC for May/June – First Steps into Learning and Teaching in Higher Education.

The first question in my recent post about planning MOOCs – was ‘What is a MOOC’? and there was another question for planning a MOOC (Slide 7) about deciding on ‘What kind of MOOC”? They sound such simple questions, but the discussions on the web have shown that they are not easy to answer.

I am clear in my own mind what a MOOC is for me – but I also know that others interpret it differently. I tend to agree with Matthias Melcher that the original idea of MOOC is becoming watered down and now MOOCs seem to be all things to all people. Even those who have never participated in a MOOC feel qualified to comment (just as those who have never qualified as teachers feel qualified to comment on how to teach). Stephen Downes has ‘shrugged’ his shoulders and said this is inevitable.

For me a MOOC is what CCK08 offered and succeeding MOOCs designed on similar principles offer.  Yes it was a massive, open, online course – but it was also more than that. It offered a new and explicit perspective on learning in the 21^st century.  The other day I found myself saying a MOOC is one thing but the Stanford AI course  is just a massive open online course. Wow – how bizarre does that sound, but maybe people who recognize the CCK08 philosophy understand what I mean.

For me a MOOC is not simply a massive, open, online, course – it is based on the explicit principles of connectivism – the principles of autonomy, diversity, openness and interactivity – which we have shown through research  are not easy principles to aspire to or achieve. It is also based on the activities of aggregation, remixing, repurposing and feeding forward the resources  and learning that are part of the MOOC experience.  A MOOC design, in the terms that I am describing it, also takes a specific stance on the relationship between teacher and learner – a stance in which the word ‘teacher’ might be considered redundant.

In a way it’s a shame that the term ‘MOOC’ was coined.  On the one hand it is good that it is a term that has attracted a lot of attention (both negative and positive), which at least means that educators are beginning to think about the extent to which traditional approaches to teaching and learning might need to change.   On the other hand, all the MOOC variations that are being spawned may have resulted in a blurring of the original intention and meaning. That’s not to say that other open online courses, even other massive open online courses don’t have value. If the success (in terms of numbers attending and completing the course) of the Stanford AI course is anything to go by then they obviously do. But the original MOOC had a clear well defined philosophy, which was a break from traditional ways of working and was designed to address the issues that anyone working in education has to deal with in relation to the global changes in connectivity, information sharing and knowledge creation that we are seeing in current times. I hope the principles on which CCK08 was founded will not get lost in this variation.

What new term could we come up with which would keep the original MOOC philosophy intact and distinct from the many variations of MOOCs that are now being created, if indeed it is important to do this?

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IRRODL – A new edition has been published

The first edition of IRRODL for 2012 is now out, and one of the 15 articles is the one I spent a lot of last year working on with Carmen Tschofen

Tschofen, C. & Mackness, J. (2011) Connectivism and Dimensions of Individual Experience. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning.
http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl

Having both been participants of the first MOOC (CCK08), we have observed and reflected on developments over the past four years. This paper is a result of those observations, discussions, reflections – namely around our perceptions of

a growing tension between the elements of connectivity believed to be necessary for effective learning and the variety of individual perspectives both revealed and concealed during interactions with these elements.

The Research Process

We didn’t start with the intention of writing a paper and our original discussions, which also included Matthias Melcher, were all related to learner autonomy. In fact I signed up for CCK11 with the specific intention of focusing on gaining a better understanding of the meaning of learner autonomy and set up a wiki to gather my thoughts and then invited Matthias and Carmen to join me. Discussions were deep and intense, often highly convoluted and we produced pages and pages of wiki script, so much so that ultimately when we did decide to write a paper, it was difficult to see the wood for the trees.

Our first submission to IRRODL was not accepted. It wasn’t rejected as such – we were told that it wouldn’t fit with the special issue we submitted it for (and to be honest we had tried to ‘make it fit’) and were invited to rewrite it and resubmit. But by this time the conversations in the blogosphere had moved on and so had our thinking, so we ended up submitting a completely new paper, although it does still include reference to learner autonomy.

The Peer Review Process

Our paper was reviewed by three people – I assume blind reviewed.   The outcome was a bit bizarre. Reviewer A’s feedback included many ‘Excellents’ and ‘Satisfactorys’, Reviewer B thought the paper ‘Unsatisfactory’ and needing major rewriting and gave us very comprehensive feedback as to why. Reviewer C’s feedback included many ‘Satisfactorys’ . We didn’t receive any guidance from the Editor as to which Reviewer to believe.  So we didn’t do a major rewrite , but we did make quite a number of more manageable changes.

Reviewer B strongly objected to our use of blog posts as sources of information, and I have to say that we rather strongly objected to his/her objection.  There were at least two reasons why we thought reference to blog posts was legitimate for this paper.

First, most of the conversations about connectivism and MOOCs happen in blogs – published research is as yet quite limited. We do not believe, as Reviewer B appears to, that all blog posts are inferior to published journal articles, nor that a writer can only be quoted from a peer-reviewed publication.

Second, we were quite often writing our paper in response to the changing conversations that were happening in the blogosphere at the time. In fact we were worried that our paper was going to be out of date before it was even published, and even on the very final submission added a last reference, which we had just come across.

Finally (and very pertinent to us) is the fact that neither of us works for an academic institution, nor do we live within easy access of a university library. By force of circumstance, the Web is our main source of information, papers, articles etc. and there is no convenient catalogue to tell you where to look. I think, in the years to come, there will be more and more people like me who start doing research as self-employed people, or post retirement and who will be looking to the Web for their sources of information.

Frustrations

• We wanted to publish the paper in its submission form (i.e. before peer review) on our blogs. We could see that some MOOC participants were discussing the very issues we were writing about and it would have been great to discuss them with a wider group – but despite three requests to IRRODL for permission to do this, we didn’t receive a response to our request. Even a ‘No’ would have been better than nothing. As it was, we didn’t know whether posting to our blogs would count as pre-publication and therefore jeopardize our chances of having the paper accepted – so we didn’t. Perhaps we should have been braver!

• Despite the fact that IRRODL’s turn around time is fast compared to other journals, it still feels slow in terms of the potential for discussion and how fast everything moves on the Web.  We submitted the paper in October, which is not that long ago in terms of actual days, but it is in terms of my thinking. I doubt that IRRODL could have published any quicker, so I’m not sure how this mismatch between author and publisher could be resolved.  One of our purposes in writing the paper was to generate discussion, but things have moved on.

The pleasures

A while back I wrote a post with the title Pas de Deux Online Partnerships ; I feel this is exactly what happens for me when working on these papers. I get to work with people who can raise my thinking and understanding to levels that I would not be able to reach alone. The discussions we have on the wiki are highly stimulating and ‘out of the glare’ of public blogs, we can really dig deep, reflect, get to know each other and challenge each other.

We have discussed whether we need to publish. Could we just publish on our blogs and leave it at that? Matthias and I tried this (See
http://jennymackness.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/the-riddle-of-online-resonance/
), and I now feel that our work is more likely to be read if it is published in a journal, especially an open journal. I also feel that after spending almost a year intensely working, reading, thinking, discussing, disagreeing, challenging, compromising and finally agreeing, it feels right to publish and celebrate ‘the fruits of our labour.

A big thank you Carmen – and also thanks to Matthias for your valuable contributions in the early stages.

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Autonomy, assessment and guiding forces

Lisa Lane has written a blog post  - The Guiding  Force -  that has captured my interest. In her post, she asks us to identify  our ‘guiding forces’ in planning our work as teachers – or as she calls them – instructors.  (As an aside, I find the use of language here an interesting cultural (?) difference – I assume it is a cultural difference – because I interpret ‘instruct ‘differently to ‘teach’).

For me my guiding forces (as they stand now – but this has not always been the case) are informed by my involvement with MOOCs and connectivism. I cannot think of better guiding forces than autonomy, diversity, openness and connectedness – the four principles of learning in Moocs  (described by Stephen Downes ) – with for me an emphasis on autonomy. If we understand what we mean by autonomy (which Carmen Tschofen and I have discussed as ‘psychological autonomy’ – autonomy as an expression of the self – in a paper we have had accepted by IRRODL – but not yet published), then diversity, openness and connectedness all fall into place.

I think assessment would also fall into place – because it would mean that the control of assessment would be in the hands of the autonomous learners – but as yet I can’t see clearly how this would work – other than it would need to be negotiated. So, if autonomy is the ‘guiding force’  and part of that autonomy is that students want their efforts to be validated and accredited – then students will need to have much more control over their assessment. But where does this leave ‘the expert’ and will students have the skills to take control of their assessment?

I think Lisa’s question about guiding principles, highlights the changing role of the ‘teacher’, ‘educator’ ‘instructor’ in relation to their students. Lots to think about in this – thanks Lisa

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#Change11- Half way point reflections

Well it’s time to take stock a bit – not the ideal time – with Xmas looming and everything that entails and needs thinking about  – mostly food. Every year I cannot believe how much food is consumed

But how much of Change MOOC have I consumed and what are my tentative and first reflections at this point.

There have been 14 weeks of presentations and activities and I managed to keep up with all of them but two (and I may yet get to the two I missed – that is the beauty of this type of course) :

Week 01 : Orientation
Week 02: Zoraini Wati Abas
Week 03: Martin Weller
Week 04: Allison Littlejohn
Week 05: David Wiley
Week 06: Tony Bates
Week 07: Rory McGreal
Week 08: Nancy White
Week 09: Dave Cormier
Week 10: Eric Duval
Week 11: Jon Dron
Week 12: Clark Aldrich
Week 13: Clark Quinn
Week 14: Jan Herrington

I have found it fascinating  and very enjoyable on a number of levels.

• I have been intrigued by which elements of the MOOC have been changed and which have been kept the same as previous CCK type MOOCs and have noted that this MOOC has had more of a conference style than previous MOOCs.

• I have really enjoyed the range of different presenters, with their different styles and the different tasks they have set. Although not many people, including myself, have responded to the tasks, I still think these are a very valuable part of the course, as they help us to understand what is important to the presenters.

• Some of the MOOC presentations have fed directly into research I am doing to the point where I have been anxious about whether we (my colleagues and I) can get our research out in time, before it has all been said and discussed already. There has been the element of trying to keep up with the ongoing conversations and work out how they relate to our research – and consider whether our research is going out of date as we do it!

• The MOOC topics have helped me to feel more abreast of current discussions and issues in relation to learning, networked learning and e-learning. Some of what I have learned in the past 12 weeks that I have attended has already fed into a research paper that has been submitted and accepted, and into a forthcoming project.

What have I found difficult or what would I change?

Despite my blog post ‘Doubts about slow learning’ there is no doubt that I am a slow thinker, reader and learner – not by choice, but simply by capability – so I have found the weekly change of topic very difficult to keep up with.  For most weeks I have managed to find the time – but for a couple of weeks, I gave in and recognized that other priorities were higher on my list.

On the other hand – you can’t get bored when the topic changes weekly – so there is a fine balance to be maintained here and I suppose everyone’s personal balance point will depend on his or her personal context.

What have I done differently this time?

I have now participated in 6 MOOCs and written 5 research papers as a result – either loosely or closely related. I realize that I am all the time slowly learning more about how to participate in MOOCs and each time I approach it a bit differently. This time, I wanted to make more of an effort to make connections across the MOOC network. I have not been brilliant at this, as I still haven’t spent enough time reading other people’s blog or Twitter posts, but I have tried to respond to anyone who has commented on my blog. If I’ve missed anyone it is because of lack of skills, organization etc. rather than intent.

Initial reflections

I am all the time reflecting on what it means to learn and participate in MOOCs and why I find this way of learning so intriguing. I notice that Heli (who I met in CCK08) is also thinking about this. What is interesting for me, is that in my ‘day job’, i.e. the job that earns the money – only a few have so far been interested in MOOC pedagogy as Heli calls it. But I sense that this is changing. I remember talking about CCK08 to a group of academics in 2009 and being met by a wall of blank faces. That group is now hoping to design a course on MOOC principles. Exciting times!

I think participation in Change11 has not been that high – but personally I don’t see that as a problem. As I have mentioned before in a post – a colleague once said to me that however small the numbers, those who are at the table are those who are meant to be there.  I always find that very helpful.

There have also been those who have missed having a central discussion forum, e.g. a Moodle forum as we had in CCK08 – but personally I am OK with no central forum – in fact I sincerely hope that Stephen, George and Dave stick to their principles of how they think learning in MOOCs should be modeled, demonstrated and exemplified and don’t get swayed by low engagement figures to cave in and provide more structured courses. For me – the whole point is to recognize that we need to learn in distributed open spaces and educators need to help learners to develop the skills to do this.

20-12-11 Postscript

Evidently I was wrong about the low engagement – which is good to hear. Here are the figures that Stephen has posted on his blog today -

 

it’s not really that low, in my view: in addition to the more than 2000 people receiving the daily newsletter, we’ve had 38,000 visits and 135,000 pages read during the 14 weeks of the course – and that’s just on the main site, not counting all the Twitter and blog posts read on other sites. And the have been 1300 blog posts harvested and almost 2500 tweets – you can read 766 blog posts online.

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Constraints and Change in ChangeMooc

Thanks to Jon Dron for a fascinating week in Changemooc, which started with discussions about the need to balance hard and soft technologies in learning environments and ended with discussion and reflection on whether MOOCs need to integrate more constraints to allow for greater emergent learning, engagement and creativity.  Here is a link to the recordings of the live sessions.

The MOOC design philosophy is based on the principles of autonomy, diversity, openness and connectedness and on four types of activity – aggregate, remix, repurpose and feed forward. Participants self-select and typically large numbers sign up and very much smaller numbers remain active to the end of the course. What could be the reasons for this?

• An imbalance between soft and hard technologies. Are MOOCs too open/too soft? According to Jon Dron, the ‘sweet spot’ in networks, sets and groups is the balance point between the hard and soft technologies where emergent things happen. Do some of the soft technologies in ChangeMooc need to be replaced with hard technologies?

• The structure is not quite right. There is a structure in MOOCs – in Changemooc this is the Daily Newsletter, the weekly synchronous session, the schedule and so on. If ‘We shape our dwellings and our dwellings shape our lives’ as claimed by Winston Churchill, then structure shapes our behaviour. People cannot be creative in a vacuum. They need some structure to kick against. Does Changemooc need more structure and if so in what format? There needs to be a balance between the Red Queen Regime, where there is not enough structure, people are always running to stay in the same place, everything happens too fast, there is no creativity or emergence – and the Stalinist Regime where nothing changes because there is too much structure. The structure of the MOOC needs to be based on the behaviour of the people using it.

• There is too much going on in Changemooc – so that it is hard for participants to see the shape of their own and others’ developing learning. This inhibits stigmergy which creates necessary constraints. Stigmergy is the signs left in the environment as a result of people’s activity just as ants leave a trail of pheromones when they’ve found food; this trail is followed by other ants and the trail gets stronger and influences how following ants behave. But whilst there is security and productivity in this kind of behaviour, there is also the risk of stupidity, blindly following the flow, rather than harnessing the wisdom of crowds.

• There is too much choice, which can lead to paralysis rather than liberation, opportunity costs (imagining that other choices would have been better), escalation of expectation and self-blame when a wrong choice is made. (See Barry Swartz’ entertaining TED video – The Paradox of Choice – in the reference list below).

• The MOOC is too large – which has the effect of slowing things down in the system and has more effect on the system as a whole than smaller faster aspects. The system is too spread out, too diverse and only works for a few people. Things evolve faster in smaller spaces where niches develop. Jon Dron referred us to the work of Stewart Brand.

• There is too little choice – too little opportunity to move into smaller, safer groups and sets. Too much landscape of mountains and trees and not enough of shrubs, flowers and insects.

Possible solutions?

Jon Dron suggestions revolved around parcellation and tagging. The system (course) needs to be structured to allow smaller spaces to emerge according to participant need. Tagging could be one answer. Tags can separate out spaces, so for example a ‘good for beginners’ tagged space could emerge. There has been a little of this tagging ‘emerging’ in this Mooc – not in relation to participants, but in relation to invited speakers, some of whom have provide their own unique tags for the activities they have suggested. But as Jon Dron said, we then need bridges to connect those tagged spaces and this has not happened. Tags allow people to choose the spaces they interact with, reduce feelings of exposure and increase feelings of trust and safety. Tags are also a way of enabling the management of groups at scale.

Would tags and parcellation help to increase the level of engagement in Changemooc?

27-11-11 Postscript

Jon Dron’s final reflections help to answer the questions about engagement in MOOCs - 
https://landing.athabascau.ca/pg/blog/read/91481/and-so-it-ends

Stephen Downes’ thoughts –
http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2011/11/right-mix.html

Alternative persepctives from Matthias Melcher –
http://x28newblog.blog.uni-heidelberg.de/2011/11/27/change11-decreasing-engagement-in-moocs/

References

Judith Donath (2010) – Design for Privacy and Public Space Online –
http://nmd.arkena.tv/012900007101810/design-for-privacy-and-public-space-online

http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/index.html

Stephen Downes (2011)  – Engagement and Motivation in Moocs –
http://www.downes.ca/presentation/288

Jon Dron (2007) – Control and constraint in e-learning: choosing when to choose
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QmTngzNe2mUC&pg=PT272&lpg=PT272&dq=stewart+brand+jon+dron&source=bl&ots=4cD6QaYyeC&sig=ZD15X6FsnwdZdWsSCt6L6raQG4Y&hl=en&ei=–LQTu6YK8S08QPSgvD3Dw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Jon Dron (2009) Ten Design Principles – Slide 23

Replacing Teachers with Crowds from jondron

Rafe Furst (2010) The Emergent Fool – http://emergentfool.com/2010/03/11/the-adjacent-possible/

Ursula Goodenough (2010) Emergence into the Adjacent Possible –
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2010/01/emergence_into_the_adjacent_po_2.html

Stewart Kauffman –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Kauffman

Barry Schwartz (2005) The Paradox of Choice – http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html

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IRRODL Special Issue: Emergent Learning, Connections, Design for Learning

A special issue of IRRODL – The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning -has just been published.

Vol 12, No 7 (2011): Special Issue – Emergent Learning, Connections, Design for Learning

This is a refereed open e-journal which you can access here:
http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/index

It is great to see recognised names amongst the contributing authors and particularly of Sui Fai John Mak – who I have worked with on research in the past -
http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1041

Congratulations John, Rita and Helene. I’m looking forward to reading your paper and all the others; emergent learning is a topic that really interests me.

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