[ejarmstrong]

Thanks Marcus, this is a really useful perspective and has made me do some interesting reflection on the relationship between learning and confidence and the role of practice and reflection

Particularly relevant for me, since as a librarian the skills I teach are not assessed directly

 

[ejarmstrong]

The Mitra clips are interesting – the focus on groupwork seems to parallel what I have seen in my children’s secondary school over the last few years but there it is more formal, with them being expected to pick ‘roles’ e.g. leader, time keeper, observer within the group for each activity. This does seem to work well in terms of fostering collaboration and peer support networks and whilst my child dislike some of the ‘roles’ they enjoy the learning – however now my daughter has reached higher education she struggles with the fact that the learning is mainly individual reading and research with little group interaction.

I think one of the hardest things online is getting the genuine feeling of social interaction – and creating our ‘small groups’. Is the risk with MOOCs you end up being ‘alone in a crowd’?

As GraphDesProject says the lack of assessment in Mitres examples makes it seem different to the ‘real world’ where this is often a key driver – and group assessment is usually very complex and controversial.

 

[ejarmstrong]

I agree with AliSheph – the MOOC model seems only suited to a very particular type of learner – motivated, confident& especially organised – one of the problems with this ‘open-ended’ approach to learning is it can put a lot of pressure on time management skills and create constant expectation that one should be ‘doing more’ which I could see being very difficult for some learners to manage.

If MOOCs become more widely adopted (and there’s a lot of talk about them in the UK Futher Education sector at the moment), there’s the risk that they become seen as a quick/cheap ‘one size fits all’ solution and they actually end up putting a lot of people off online learning because it was not the right sort of learning for them. For our students, building up their study skills and confidence can be as important as teaching the subject.

I think it is Gilly Salmon who talks about the importance of ‘lurking’ in online learning to develop one’s confidence and that seems difficult in a MOOC – just knowing where to lurk for a start …

It may be a sad fact, but for many of our learners, assessment is a key motivator  – not just to demonstrate to others what they have learnt but also to themselves – and for many MOOCs it seems to be more ‘the taking part that counts’.

 

I’m going off to look at the Mitre video yet – from what Jilly says I think it might feel more relevant to me

[ejarmstrong]

Thanks! Emily

[ejarmstrong]

I have added my introduction to my WordPress Blog:

Introdution for #ocTEL

but I can’t see any sign of it being picked up by the Course Reader?

[Author]

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