This presentation will be presented at the STC 2013 Technical Communication Summit. The purpose is to provide an overview of MOOCs and garner interest in the upcoming STC Tech Comm MOOC.
1. What’s a
MOOC?
Exploring the Possibilities of Massive Open Online Learning
Phylise Banner . Society for Technical Communication . May 2013
2. Explorations
• The MOOC concept, origins and maturity
stages
• Underlying learning theories and
practices
• Applications for tech comm professionals
• Educational opportunities for STC
3. What’s a MOOC?
• Massive Open Online Course
• Guided open learning opportunity
within a semi-structured framework
• Structure within which to serve free,
open-access education
• Modeled from social networks and
collaborative media sites
4. The Historical Perspective
• 2002: MIT Open Courseware
• 2006: Khan Academy
• 2008: Connectivism and Connective
Knowledge at the University of
Manitoba
• 2011: Artificial Intelligence course
at Stanford
5. The Evolution of Theory
• Behaviorism
–Classical conditioning (Pavlov)
–Operant conditioning (Skinner)
• Cognitivism (Piaget)
6. The Evolution of Theory
• Constructivism (Dewey)
• Social Learning Theories
–Socio-Constructivism
–Connectivism
7. Principles of Connectivism
(Siemens, 2004)
• Learning and knowledge rests in diversity
of opinions.
• Learning is a process of connecting specialized
nodes or information sources.
• Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
• Capacity to know more is more critical than
what is currently known.
• Nurturing and maintaining connections is
needed to facilitate continual learning.
8. Principles of Connectivism
(Siemens, 2004)
• Ability to see connections between fields, ideas,
and concepts is a core skill.
• Currency (up to date knowledge) is the intent
of all connectivist learning activities.
• Decision-making is itself a learning process.
Choosing what to learn and the meaning of
incoming information is seen through the lens
of a shifting reality. While there is a right
answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to
alterations in the information climate affecting
the decision.
9. A Teaching and Learning Generation
• According to Downes, knowledge
is distributed, interconnected,
personal, and a recognition of a
pattern in a set of introspective
or behavioral events. (2006)
10. A Teaching and Learning Generation
We have become accustomed
to learning on our own within
self selected groups.
So, what do those groups
look like?
11. Massive Communities of Learners
• What does a MOOC look like?
• What are the core components?
• What differentiates one from another?
• What does it mean to be a participant?
• How is my learning progress measured?
• Where can I find a MOOC for me?
14. What’s the Difference?
• Is this knowledge exploration
or education?
• Is this just the digital version of
a correspondence course?
• Are the new MOOC platforms just
another LMS?
15. Assessment Strategies
• Most are not credit awarding, but
assessment of learning has been done
for certification and small cohorts.
• Many have embraced badges for
credentialing.
16. Time to Learn!
“A course is a learning journey,
led by an expert, and taken in the
company of fellow travelers on a
common quest for knowledge”
Ann Kirschner, 2012
17. Seek and You Shall Find
• The big players in MOOC offerings:
Udacity (Thrun)
http://www.udacity.com/
Coursera (33 Universities)
https://www.coursera.org/
EdX (Harvard, MIT, etc.)
https://www.edx.org/
22. MOOC Directories/Search Portals
Course Buffet
http://www.coursebuffet.com/
Class Central
http://www.class-central.com/
Knollop
http://www.knollop.com/
CourseTalk (ratings)
http://coursetalk.org/
23. Benefits
• Open (and free) access for all
• Connectivist exploration of knowledge
• Flexibility in time/place
• Networking and community cultivation
• Lifelong learning opportunities
• Large-scale professional development
possibilities
24. Challenges
• Retention and completion rates
• Assessment and validity
• Self regulation
• Organic network management
• Chaos
25. New Roles and Opportunities
• Exploration of a new instructional
design paradigm
• Content development, curation,
and delivery
• Community formation, coordination
and facilitation
• Lifelong learning!
26. The STC Tech Comm MOOC
Topics of interest (22 SIGs):
Tech Comm basics
Usability
Content Strategy
Information Design & Architecture
Instructional Design & Learning
Information Visualization
Policies and Procedures
Technical Editing
And more …
27. The STC Tech Comm MOOC
Featured content developers/presenters:
Mollye Barrett
Kai Weber
Dana West
Bernard Aschwanden
Phylise Banner
28. The STC Tech Comm MOOC Team
For more information about MOOCs,
or to join the STC Tech Comm MOOC
team, please contact us via email:
lloyd.tucker@stc.org
pbanner@gmail.com
29. Resources
The MOOC Model for Digital Practice
http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/MOOC_Final.pdf
Connectivism and Collective Knowledge 2011
http://cck11.mooc.ca/
MOOC Guide Wiki
http://moocguide.wikispaces.com
The Must-Have EdTech Cheat Sheet
http://edudemic.com/2012/07/edtech-cheat-sheet/
Editor's Notes
MOOCs are based on several principles stemming from connectivist pedagogy.[14][15][16][17] The principles include:Aggregation. The whole point of a connectivist MOOC is to provide a starting point for a massive amount of content to be produced in different places online, which is later aggregated as a newsletter or a web page accessible to participants on a regular basis. This is in contrast to traditional courses, where the content is prepared ahead of time.The second principle is remixing, that is, associating materials created within the course with each other and with materials elsewhere.Re-purposing of aggregated and remixed materials to suit the goals of each participant.Feeding forward, sharing of re-purposed ideas and content with other participants and the rest of the world.
The term MOOC was coined in 2008 by Dave Cormier, Manager of Web Communication and Innovations at the University of Prince Edward Island, and Senior Research Fellow Bryan Alexander NITLE in response to an open online course designed and led by George Siemens, at Athabasca University and Stephen Downes, Senior Researcher at The National Research Council (Canada). The course was called "Connectivism and Connective Knowledge" and was presented to 25 tuition-paying students in Extended Education at the University of Manitoba in addition to 2,300 other students from the general public who took the online class free of charge. All course content was available through RSS feeds, and learners could participate with their choice of tools: threaded discussions in Moodle, blog posts, Second Life, and synchronous online meetings.Recent developmentsA major breakthrough came in Fall 2011 when over 160,000[9] people signed up for a course in artificial intelligence offered by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig through Thrun's start-up Know Labs (now Udacity).The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever
In other words, the animal in the experiment learns to associate the bell with the opportunity to eat and begins to salivate to the bell in the absence of food. It is as though the animal came to think of the bell as "mouthwatering," although behaviorists never would have used terms like think of, because thinking is not a directly observable behavior.B. F. Skinner (1904 - 1990) is credited with the development of the operant-conditioning paradigm. Similar to instrumental conditioning, operant conditioning requires that an organism operate on the environment to achieve a goal. A behavior is learned as a function of the consequences of the behavior, according to a schedule of reinforcement or punishment. Skinner emphasized the influence of reinforcers. Reinforcers are events that follow a response and increase the likelihood that the response will be repeated, but they do not suggest the operation of a cognitive component such as reward (or pleasure). Cognitivism is the theory that humans generate knowledge and meaning through sequential development of an individual’s cognitive abilities, such as the mental processes of recognize, recall, analyze, reflect, apply, create, understand, and evaluate.Learning involves more than stimulus and response events; it involves the development of an organized body of knowledge or expectations about a given situation. Think of it ias the sequential development of mental processes.
Simply stated, it is a learning process which allows a student to experience an environment first-hand, thereby giving the student reliable, trust-worthy knowledge. The student is required to act upon the environment to both acquire and test new knowledge. The responsibility of the learning relies completely on the learner. The type of learner is self-directed, creative, and innovative. The purpose in education is to become creative and innovative through analysis, conceptualizations, and synthesis of prior experience to create new knowledge. The educator’s role is to mentor the learner during heuristic problem solving of ill-defined problems by enabling quested learning that may modify existing knowledge and allow for creation of new knowledge. The learning goal is the highest order of learning: heuristic problem solving, metacognitive knowledge, creativity, and originality.Socio ConstructivismThis also stresses the importance of the nature of the learner's social interaction with knowledgeable members of the society. Without the social interaction with other more knowledgeable people, it is impossible to acquire social meaning of important symbol systems and learn how to utilize them. The instructor becomes the Guide on the Side, not the Sage on the Stage. Teaching becomes facilitation!
As an evolution of online courses, early MOOCs departed from formats that rely on posted resources, learning management systems, and structures that mix the learning management system with more open web resources.[7] MOOCs from private, non-profit institutions[8] emphasized prominent faculty members and have expanded open offerings to existing subscribers (e.g., podcast listeners) into free and open online courses.
1. Aggregate: Every day you will receive an edition of ‘The Daily', which will highlight some of this content. Normally it will arrive first thing in the morning (if you are in North or South America), but not always. The Daily is created fresh each day – it is not prepared content. So delivery may varyYou are NOT expected to read and watch everything. Even we, the facilitators, cannot do that. Instead, what you should do is PICK AND CHOOSE content that looks interesting to you and is appropriate for you. If it looks too complicated, don't read it. If it looks boring, move on to the next item.2. Remix: Once you've read or watched or listened to some content, your next step is to keep track of that somewhere. How you do this will be up to you.You can keep a document on your own computer listing all the things you've accessed. Or, better yet, you can keep a record online somewhere. That way you will be able to share your content with other people.3. Repurpose: We don't want you simply to repeat what other people have said. We want you to create something of your own. This is probably the hardest part of the process.Remember that you are not starting from scratch. Nobody every creates something from nothing. Think of every bit of content you create not simply as content, but as practice using the tool. The content almost doesn't even matter – what matters is that you apply the tool.This will seem awkward at first, as any tool does. But with practice you'll become an accomplished creator and critic of ideas and knowledge. And that is the purpose of this course!4. Feed Forward: We want you to share your work with other people in the course, and with the world at large.First, use the change11 tag in anything you create. Our course tag is: #change11It is especially important to use this tag in del.icio.us and in Twitter. That is how we will recognize content related to this course.. But if you know how, please tell us your feed address.You can use the form here:
MOOCs are based on several principles stemming from connectivist pedagogy.Aggregation. The whole point of a connectivist MOOC is to provide a starting point for a massive amount of content to be produced in different places online, which is later aggregated as a newsletter or a web page accessible to participants on a regular basis. This is in contrast to traditional courses, where the content is prepared ahead of time.The second principle is remixing, that is, associating materials created within the course with each other and with materials elsewhere.Re-purposing of aggregated and remixed materials to suit the goals of each participant.Feeding forward, sharing of re-purposed ideas and content with other participants and the rest of the world.
How much time does it really take?How many participants are really learning?What can this mean for large scale professional development
, by Alexander McAuley, Bonnie Stewart, George Siemens and Dave Cormier (PDF in Adobe Connect File Pod)
