In case you haven’t heard enough about MOOCs

There is so much buzz about MOOCs these days. I’ve often said that I’m not a fan of MOOCs….but despite that, I’m have recently written an article about MOOCs and am currently enrolled in two myself.

So I thought it was time to write a post about what I see as the good and the bad, the bright spots and the shortcomings, in MOOCs.

First, there are many kinds of MOOCs, and applying the term to such a broad spectrum is confusing. <Insert rant about imprecise use of language.> The earliest cMOOCs were smaller, connectivist, personal. The newer xMOOCs are truly massive, often impersonal and focused on knowledge transmission.

This brings up the connections (or lack of) between MOOCs and peer learning (about which I am wildly enthusiastic!). I love the model of peer learning and community that exists in places like P2PU. For many pursuits and inquiries, I think there is not better way to learn than as a part of a community.

For some MOOCs, peer learning is a strong part. For many, it is not. My own personal opinion is that it is very hard to foster community in a short-term and “massive” situation, which is the realm of most MOOCs. Community building takes time and care. Further, I believe that active facilitation is a strong predictor of good peer learning experiences. Most MOOCs, by virtue of the fact that they are “massive” and that they are free and/or being done on a shoestring budget, lack good facilitation . (I have done some thinking about how strong facilitation can be done at minimal expense, but I’ll save that for another time.)

So, to the extent that MOOCs can involve peer learning and community, I am excited about them. To the extent that they are just massive content delivery mechanisms with little built-in opportunity to interact and personalize, I’m less excited.

Here are reservations I have about MOOCs:

  • The trendiness – Education seems ruled by trends. We have all seen many come and go, leaving tired teachers and learners in their wake. MOOCs are the latest of these.
  • Nothing new – To the extent that some MOOCs are just a new name for transmitting online course content, they don’t add much to learning.
  • Massive is overrated – I’m not sure that “massive” is the best way to facilitate learning. Many MOOCs seem focused on how many enrollments they generate, rather than whether learner goals are being met. (See “Opportunity” below for a counterpoint.)
  • Missing the big opportunity – There are so many exciting things about using online technologies for learning. Many MOOCs seem to be missing these and  instead are just delivering more boring video lectures and multiple choice quizzes.

Some have pointed to the corporatization of MOOCs as another negative. I don’t necessarily identify this as a negative. As Bonnie Stewart points out, there is always room for subversion. The co-opting influence of educational-industrial complex on instructional materials and ultimately learning is as prevalent now in digital media as it has been in print. It’s nothing new, but it is incumbent on us as teachers and learners to make the best choices for learning.

And here are the places where I can feel some excitement about MOOCs:

  • Openness – MOOCs are providing more access to more open licensed content. That is a good thing. (Important note: Open means different things to different people — open-licensed; openly viewable and transparent; open to enrollment by anyone, anytime. Some “MOOCs” offer none of these things.)
  • Opportunity and (more) equity – MOOCs unquestionably provide more access and opportunity to more people to engage in learning.
  • Decentralized community learning – In some cases, MOOCs are challenging the top-down knowledge transmission model of school and offering a decentralized, leaner-centered model instead. This is a clear benefit. (Again, not all MOOCs offer this, but where it’s happening, it’s a good thing.)

I’ll save my reflections on the two MOOCs I am in for another post. In the meantime, what do you think about MOOCs? Where are the potentials, and where are the pitfalls?

What are your personal experiences?

The evolution of the P2PU School of Ed

It’s hard to believe that it’s been two years since the idea for the P2PU School of Ed entered my mind.

We’ve accomplished a lot in that time (roughly 35 courses/groups, lots of learning, great connections and conversations with both teachers and students, the beginnings of a community), and it seems like a good time to think about what we’ve done and learned and where we might go from here.

Here are some things I’ve learned:

  • Learning is social. Community is everything. (And the NWP community is awesome.)
  • Peer learning works best when it is designed by the group, not instituted from the top down.
  • Some topics lend themselves more to peer learning than others.
  • A defined start and end time seems to encourage participation, and shorter courses that can then spin off into more in-depth explorations work well.
  • Diverse groups are richer.
  • Groups with teachers and students are powerful. (And as in my f2f experiences, students often drive the innovation in formal educational environments.)

Here are some things I still don’t know:

  • How do you encourage self-direction and agency in professionals who don’t feel that currently? (We had a whole group just to explore this.)
  • Is formal credit/recognition (whether stipends, graduate credit, CEUs, etc.) of this professional learning necessary or desirable?
  • What can be done to begin to move this into more formal environments? (I love the energy of all “opt in” self-directed learners, but it would be a big win to get some schools to think about adopting this as a model for professional learning.)
  • How do you sustain this (both in terms of participants and in terms of facilitation)?
  • How do you measure success?
  • How big is big enough?

And so from all that, here are some thoughts about future directions. First, I don’t want to compromise the core values of openness, authenticity, learner-centeredness by anything we do. Second, I want to continue to build the rich community we’ve started and to expand and involve others. In order to be authentic and learner-centric, having community members set the learning agenda seems critical.

On the sustainability front, I believe that we need some amount of funding to provide continued facilitation and infrastructure for this work, especially if it is to grow. I also know that K-12 schools spend a lot of money on professional development (not all of it resulting in high yields). Perhaps there is a creative way to bridge these two things for everyone’s benefit.

At any rate, if you have thoughts or ideas about the future of the School of Ed, let me know. We’re always open to new course/group ideas, new participants, new facilitators, etc. And especially, we’re on look out for a couple schools who might be interested in trying this model of professional learning with their teachers.

 

Open means never having to say “pay up”

One of the benefits of open licensed materials that I often cite is that they will always be free (unlike the other free stuff on the Internet…Many of us have experienced the unfortunate consequences of great content and tools that were once free becoming available only on a pay basis. And while it every publisher’s right to make that decision, a shift in strategy often poses big problems for educators.).

A great case in point is Flat World Knowledge’s open licensed textbooks. The company recently decided to no longer provide open, free access to the many textbooks they offer.

However, these textbooks had already been published under a non-revocable Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license.

So now the good folks at the Saylor Foundation have made these textbooks available for use, modification, and distribution.

And this site makes these books available in easily editable doc formats, even better than what Flat World Knowledge had ever done! Thank you to everyone who made this possible.

Open Learning – new models of PD

Last week, I had the privilege of facilitating a panel at NCTE called “Open Learning: Empowering Teachers Through Professional Development.”

Anyone who knows me knows that I have become a big believer in open models of professional learning through spaces like Twitter, P2PU, TTT, Digital Is, and others. This session was all about that. (Slides below. Also, we live streamed the session, thanks to Paul Allison, and the video is here.)

To me, these new models of professional learning are all about value, openness, self-direction, agency, and authenticity. It’s time to reject PD that doesn’t achieve these goals.

At the end of the session, we asked everyone to choose a few words that summarized what they thought the future of professional learning should be. Here they are.

 

Please add a comment with your own thoughts on this and join us in one of the many online spaces to explore this further.


Remix this story

I was in a cool workshop today with Chad Sansing and Andrea Zellner about remixing, play, and creativity.

At the start of the workshop, each group was given a bag of random materials (legos, pipe cleaners, playdoh, tape, beads, etc.) that we were to remix to create a story.

This was a prelude to a discussion about openness and agency in a make/hack/play context.

This made me think about a couple activities that might be used to launch our online maker space.  Here is one.

Hack a digital story – Here you’ll find a collection of digital parts (characters, photos, music clips, settings, etc.). Make a story from it. Here’s an example of one that you can do. Have fun, and let me know what you think. Also, feel free to create your own remixable story set.