[James Little]

Hi Imogen,

A really insightful thought about the badges aspect of ocTEL.  It’s been great being a participant and tutor on this course and hearing your thoughts.

James.

[James Little]

Hi Imogen,

This link to the Elluminate recording playback seem to work ok.

Hope this now works for you.

James.

[James Little]

Hi Imogen,

This link to the Elluminate recording playback seem to work ok.

Hope this now works for you.

James.

[James Little]

Hi All,

Great posts and insights.  Picking up on Phil’s point about embedding resilience about tel going much deeper than just the professional context – i.e. into use of technology in all aspects of lives  and hence why this might be a bigger challenge than just work.

I think there are several approaches which can alleviate some of this anxiety.

But – these rely upon protected time and willingness to set aside some time for learning something new.  This commitment – even if it is very small – is the first psychological step that needs to be taken and enabled.

In terms of connecting up theory such as Edinburgh Napier’s 3E’s to real world examples of enabling and moving forward I agree sometimes it can seem there is gap between the two.  At my last place of work I collaboratively developed  a staff personal development course in order to bridge the gap in online teaching and learning pedagogy for staff at the university. The course aimed to equip academic staff with the knowledge and experience in the use of educational technologies and how to plan and develop an effective online course for their students.

In doing this we tried to underpin the rationale of the course into the 3Es framework – as enabling and enhancing activity (T1 – first 6 session), then leading onto new activity (T2 – online course development).

More thoughts about this here http://www.learningtechnologist.co.uk/2013/05/01/octel-week-2-activities/

However, it seems that whilst some aspects and problems seem universal perhaps some of the ways that they could be tackled are quite specific to both student and academic context (institution/subject).  As Karen Strickland mentioned some of her students don’t event have the internet at home.  A challenge is as much as the diversity of experience rather than just a lack of experience.

 

[James Little]

Hi Megan,

Yes – know what you mean.  Lots of distance learning postgraduate courses I see always have <20 per cohort.  Perhaps one exception and area for investigation is some of the more established Open University DL courses which I’ve heard have much larger intakes (although these may be broken down within the course).

[James Little]

I’d agree – forums are a weak point of WordPress – can’t think of a WordPress integrated solution that works quite well.  Something standalone like https://www.phpbb.com/ may work well – but not sure how easy that would be to connect up to the other activity (WordPress / profiles, etc).

[James Little]

Hi Megan,

Interesting point – I’m certainly experiencing this MOOC as extra-curricular.

The time-zone question is an interesting one.  If you’re running an international distance learning programme it does seem to be the received wisdom that you can’t possibly have live synchronous sessions with cohort.

However, I’ve seen quite a few successful cases where these were held throughout a day at 9am, 1pm and 8pm – which enabled most to join in.  This does raise questions about support and hours required from staff, though.

Before I left Sheffield I was going to introduce more interactive and synchronous elements to two distance learning masters which were only asynchronous – would have loved to see how this changed the nature and experience for the students and staff.

[James Little]

To pick up on a question that seems to be emerging frequently I’m interested in how a MOOC could be the same and/or different from existing distance learning as conceptualised prior to MOOCs?  This is from both a pedagogical and systematic/technological approach… think this might be turning into a big question…

 

 

 

[James Little]

Hi Shuna,

Thanks very much for your reply – good to hear from you.  I guess the other thing about MOOCs is trying to keep up with some of the activity (as you can see from my delayed reply!).

Hope you are getting on well – and have you conisdered keeping a blog or diary of your ocTEL experience?

James.

[James Little]

Great to replies to this thread. May be worth coming back to during our other activities in order to reflect on if/how we’ve moved on since the initial activities.

I’m determined to ‘complete’ this MOOC – as like imogenbertin I’d intended to start the EDC Mooc but other things took over.

Whilst it’s good to start thinking about BIG questions – I’d echo Imogen’s point about wanting to get a  head round the MOOC setup and evolve the questions over time.

[James Little]

At the risk of making this group too large I would like to join this group too.

In my previous role I used to support, design and encourage engagement with three distance-learning Masters courses in nursing and midwifery for over five years – so I’ve seen quite a lot of changes over that time – ultimately resulting in the debate re-igniting with trying to understand how MOOCs may or may not be an enhancement or challenge to ‘traditional’ VLE-based distance learning.

[James Little]

Everyone should be able to learn something new from this experience – ‘newbies’ and more experienced practitioners – and whatever experience or role someone has – we’re all in it to improve and think about improving and providing great education and enabling learning.

One of the benefits of the MOOC format is that, assuming a large number of participants, there will be enough groupings of different ideas, interests and roles so that people can pick and choose how and at what level to engage and learn.

Perhaps it is due to the profession of learning technologists (LTs) being so new or simply varied from role to role – but I do think there is often an assumption that theory and deeper understanding is the realm of academia and that LTs are the ‘do-ers’.  I like to think that just as academics may have their own subject specialism in order to be professional practitioners an understanding of practice, theory and people skills are essential.
My favourite way of externalising this is:

When working at the meeting of education, technology and change it always boils down to fundamental questions about education: for who, why and for what purpose:
Technology can either enhance existing pedagogies and methods or be transformative.
Theory combined with practice is an essential part of a learning technologist role.

[James Little]

What can we tell about the range of experiences and preferences among ocTEL participants?

As with many collaborative cross-education meetups (like conferences) there is a diverse range of background and contexts that participants are working in.  As a generalisation all participants have an interest or are inquisitive about learning, technology and MOOCs.  For some this is their first time participating in a MOOC, others this is their third or more.

I notice there are some established names from the world of learning technology and plenty of people who are just getting started.

Some participants have a specific subject-focus – others are more concerned with some of the wider questions.

What challenges does this present for the course?

I feel the challenge for any diverse range of participants is to enable the individual interests and diversities to be catered for – but this can lead to conflicting priorities and ways of engagement.

In what ways is a MOOC well or poorly suited to these challenges?

A MOOC can enable a large diverse group of people to interact.  The challenge is to both encourage individual responsibility for own learning and outcomes but also provide suitable and diverse facilities for people to contribute (or not) as they wish.

For example, some people don’t like the deluge of e-mails but may prefer to read discussion forums or follow a twitter feed for information – there is no right or wrong method.

Information overload is a definite potential problem from not only a MOOC but keeping up with modern flows of information on any topic.  Activities and tools available provided by the MOOC platform need to work well in order to enable participants to contribute when they want to and to connect with others.

Differnt MOOC platforms that have emeregered have tackled this in different ways.  It would be interesting to compare the ocTEL facilities with those from Coursera and others.

[Author]

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