Connectivist courses - MOOCs

MOOC? What's that? It's a Massive Open Online Course - and it's different from conventional eLearning in a number of ways. Course materials may be provided by facilitators, but the onus rapidly moves to the participants for content development. The use of web technologies to create, share, aggregate, curate, comment and interact is absolutely central. Essentially, the MOOC is an educational tool which exploits the theory of connectivism and uses an open pedagogy based on networked learning. MOOCs are founded on principle characteristics of autonomy, diversity, openness and interaction.

But what does that mean in practice? Take a look, for example, at the Change MOOC, currently running from Sept 2011 to May 2012 which is a very comprehensive MOOC. In fact, it's got so much going on that it can be pretty daunting, probably particularly for those new to web 2.0 technologies. You need to keep up with the weekly email, read some recommended texts, document your responses, share and discuss these with others, perhaps engage in other activities. And you want to keep up with the blogs of your colleagues - they have a lot to say which is very interesting, and you wouldn't want to miss it, or their Twitter comments... and very quickly it's become unmanageable! Well, it doesn't have to be overwhelming, and perhaps part of the secret in this is knowing from the start that the course is Massive. You won't be able to keep up with all that's interesting that happens. That might be disappointing, but you can bet that as long as you are engaging somewhere and somehow with other participants you will be right there at the heart of the juicy stuff.

To get a better idea of how it works, the Change MOOC's facilitators, George Siemens, Stephen Downes, and Dave Cormier describe it as follows...

"This is an unusual course. It does not consist of a body of content you are supposed to remember. Rather, the learning in the course results from the activities you undertake, and will be different for each person.

In addition, this course is not conducted in a single place or environment. It is distributed across the web. We will provide some facilities. But we expect your activities to take place all over the internet. We will ask you to visit other people's web pages, and even to create some of your own."

There's also a good video introduction to what a MOOC is here:

http://youtu.be/eW3gMGqcZQc.

So, a MOOC is a 'connectivist' course, which involves learners in four major types of activity:

1. Aggregation
You read, watch or play with content, selecting what is interesting and appropriate to you individually. It's fine (and expected) that you you won't read it all. You can ignore things if they are too hard or don't interest you. Some courses might provide more tasks or instructions, others might point to existing web content, yet others may produce content specially for the purpose, for example the daily email delivered to participants of the Change MOC.

2. Remixing
You need to keep track of the content you've seen or used. Participants are encouraged to record this online in a way which can be shared, for example by blogging, using del.icio.us, joining in discussion groups, commenting on Twitter, or indeed any other Internet tool of choice, from photo and video sharing, to virual worlds or social network sites.

3. Repurposing
This is where participants create something of their own, based on the materials they've engaged with. This can be daunting, but the Change MOOC facilitators remind us that you are repurposing - not starting from scratch. Participating in a MOOC is very much not just about absorbing the content you're presented with. It's about engaging with the content and with others, and your learning emerges from this. The course is more like a toolbox, giving you the context in which to develop your skills. It's acknowledged that producing content for themselves, and more importantly sharing it, can be nervewracking for learners. In my own experiences of the OU's MAODE programme, many people, including myself, were initially nervous about blogging, but as the course developed it soon became clear what a valuable tool it was - a journal, a record of your research, your personalised revision notes, your conduit to contacts, a place to receive feedback, and jumping off point for discussion... more than any of us would have imagined before getting involved. I'm sure MOOCs feel like this tool - frightening and exciting to start, but rapidly proving themselves transformative, and continuing to do so time and time again.

4. Feed Forward
Participants are encouraged, though never compelled, to share what they produce with other course participants. Sharing is scary, but that means you think hard about what you produce, and with that comes greater satisfaction. Sharing might be through using Twitter or del.icio.us hashtags, sharing RSS feeds to your blog.

If you're still with me(!), George Siemens has drawn together an interesting view of the conversations surrounding MOOCs and how they differ from more conventional online courses, in a blog post.

I'll give (almost) the final word to the Change MOOC's facilitators again:

"When a connectivist course is working really well, we see this great cycle of content and creativity begin to feed on itself, people in the course reading, collecting, creating and sharing. It's a wonderful experience you won't want to stop when the course is done.

And – because you can share anywhere – you won't have to. This course can last as long as you want it to."

Now, doesn't that just sound like something you really have to get involved in? I know I'm excited!

Online conferencing tools

Following our forays into Elluminate, we are encouraged to explore the conferencing and VoIP markets a bit further. It was suggested that we take a look at Google Talk, Windows Live or Skype, but I've used all of these for work or leisure quite extensively, so this post is going to be a quick romp through a few other tools I've heard about recently (but not used, so please don't treat these as recommendations!).

Skype in the Classroom, a dedicated teacher network, was launched this week. The aim seems to be to allow teachers to find other teachers using skype, to share their interests and collaborate on teaching and learning projects. More information is available here (where I heard about this), and of course from Skype itself.

VenueGen is an online, 3D virtual meeting and collaboration space. You can set up large and small events, and present content. Participants have an avatar (like Second Life) and can move around the space. As I said, I've not had a chance to try it out yet (though a free trial is available, and it would be fun to try with some other students if anyone is interested).

  

The look of it, and the features, remind me of Teleplace, which I have explored and blogged about before.

Next up is Vyew, which is another online collaboration space. Its feature list looks rather similar to some of Elluminate's offering, including desktop sharing, screen capture tools, white-boarding, built in VoIP, text chat, and shared and break out rooms. Again, I've not had an opportunity to try it, but it has a free version (ad-supported) which can be used by up to 10 people, so there is scope for having a go here.

There is an enormous list of of collaboration tools out there, which are more or less suited to educational purposes. I'd be really interested to hear experiences from others about their place in elearning today.

Conferencing on the net - using Elluminate

Well, I'm back, after a bit of a blogging hiatus. Life, work and study all just combined to get in the way. However, my interview with an innovator is done (and I hope to blog about it sometime, probably after the assignment based on it is out of the way), and assignment one is completed. It was painful, and a big reason why I've not been blogging!

But, now I am, and this week we are looking at conferencing on the net. We were invited to try out Elluminate Live!, a web-based conferencing system which includes audio, text chat, shared applications, private and shared whiteboards, polls, quizzes and more. Quite a number of OU courses now use Elluminate in some way, and some some H807 students already had experience with it. Other had none. And others, like me, have experience with similar technologies, but not this specific tool.

A group of five of us met in an Elluminate room, moderated by Kate, to try out some of the features. Our task was to discuss and collaboratively annotate a diagram uploaded to the shared whiteboard. Immediately this presented us with a difficulty as the diagram provided, once uploaded was of poor quality, difficult to re-size, and most people found it virtually unreadable.

The following are some of my reflections on the activity.

Strengths

• Useful for sharing content
• Good for introducing and describing a task
• Collaboration opportunities are good but this needs preparation by the moderator/leader (obviously collaboration doesn't feel like face-to-face, but assuming that that's not possible, this does have uses)
• Variety of collaboration tools - hopefully this might mean there is something which suits everyone's way of working
• Being able to hear voices of other students was good. It made people feel more 'real' than just another forum/blog poster.

Weaknesses

• Possible audio problems - echo seems to be a well-known issue
• Need for preparation in order to guarantee a successful session - does this reduce spontaneity? (Is this any different to needing to prepare effectively for a classroom anyway)
• Speaking on the audio channel can feel a little like talking to empty space. If no-one responds quickly then you are left wondering whether anyone heard, or whether you were talking nonsense. I suspect use of the gestures and emotions might be more widespread among more experienced users, and might reduce this feeling. Similarly, more use of brief text/audio responses by 'listeners', just so that the speaker knows they were heard might happen more amongst groups who have had experience of being the 'unheard' speaker.
• Possibly more suited to teacher/trainer delivered learning. Students left to their own devices without sufficient guidance might feel lost or uncertain how to collaborate on a task (although again, this can be a problem in a classroom too).

Thoughts

• The task needs to be well specified - this may be a case of getting students to prepare in advance. If students don't know how to use the features of the tool then they may well be distracted and miss the point of the learning activity
• I found multiple talkers confusing - others in the group preferred this to the 'single radio channel' style where one one person could talk at once. I found sound quality problems and difficulties understanding if more than one person spoke simultaneously. People were polite and not deliberately talking over each other, but even small overlaps were tricky for me to deal with. 
• The supplied resources for this activity were poor - or at least we felt they were. We had a number of still images, screenshots taken from an interactive global warming simulation tool. I think we were trying to pretend to use the simulation, which was clearly not possible from a still image. If we had focused on discussing the Elluminate tools which could be used to teach using a still image on the whiteboard then we might have been less frustrated (although in fact, image resolution was also poor, so we would not have been satisfied. This highlighted that there may be a need to prepare (or at least test) resources specifically for this medium.
• I found it very easy and intuitive to use - but not all in the group agreed. I have an IT background and it's part of my job to pick up new tools quickly. I've used similar tools before, and was able to transfer knowledge with no difficulties. While this was nice for me it points out the need to be aware of varied experiences and backgrounds of students participating in a session. Different students can have very different experiences of the same conference 'experience'!
• There are a number of features we didn't experiment with which I would like to try, including polls, quizzes and the web tour feature.
• The number of communication 'channels' (voice, text chat, whiteboard, gestures/emotions etc) can become confusing or even overwhelming. Students may not know where to focus attention. Students may also attribute different value to the various modes, e.g. I preferred text chat to voice and saw it as an equivalent medium, but some people saw the text box as a peripheral channel.

Take-away messages

• Students need training (time and practise) in using the tool's features - otherwise the technology could get in the way of the learning.
• Going back to the theme of affordances - different tools will suit different jobs. Elluminate won't be a panacea for all distance-learning collaborative activities.