[ScottJohnson]

I’m late in on this discussion too:-) Been able to read a few of the postings here and am attracted to notion of  “distance learning” as a way of avoiding all the hype over e-learning which includes an endless array of gadgets and programs that flow so fast no one could possibly say with certainty that they enhance anything beyond sales figures for their producers.

As a long time MOOC participant and someone living in a remote location distance is really the only education available. That shouldn’t be the case as I actually work at a small college building online trades courses but the fact is quality courses are few and far between and the institution here builds courses but only as copies of already existing f2f material. We try and do what we can to improve the classes though with constant budget cuts and no administration support in the end up with mostly junk.

I believe it’s time to give up on change emerging from within the educational  industry and start working at the fringe. MOOCs may be the place this will happen. Here I’m thinking of connectivist style open MOOCs and not the commercial ones.

My side project is developing strategies for training heavy truck mechanics online that actually connects with their tactile sensibilities. We have worked on power engineering plant operation courses for the petroleum industry and they are simply used to pass certification tests and have nothing to do with learning. As a note, our power engineer students were given laptops loaded with math writing programs and auto cad capable and they all asked to have them replaced with stylus type drawing tablets. These are people who think with their brains distributed throughout their bodies and confining them to their head brains through the intermediary abstraction of the keystroke to character to screen display was as useful as digital finger-painting is to a kid.

[ScottJohnson]

Moodle or Facebook is fine with me–especially for discussions with many tracks. Have tried both in MOOCs and the most heavily used was Moodle which drove the organizers crazy as it dis-anforded (is that a word?) the theoretical premise that if everyone broadcasts from their own platform (tower of babble / self-actualizing-node-in-a-sea-of-noise effect) the interaction will be more meaningful.
If we intend to produce and display objects as part of the process here then we can simply link out to where ever they are. At one point small discussion groups scattered about were likened to individual camp fire gatherings across a large landscape. MOOCs always seem to evolve into smaller groups and in spite of the assumed advantages of many voices contributing to diversity my sense is too many members actually silence the quieter participants.
Anyone have data on optimum discussion group size? Medical schools use groups of 8 and someone at a conference said they were experimenting with 12 or 16. (Having been a patient in a teaching hospital more than 8 interns poking at me seems like too many:-)
Anyway, the physics of MOOCs suggests to me that discussions tend to focus down to smaller groups and as many as necessary to suit group needs. This is all still about the quality of meaning and participation to the individual person’s mind and largeness has no intrinsic value that I can see. Scott

[ScottJohnson]

Hi Trilia, agree with the lack of conversational activity in the group where I work. Our programs resist change more activly than most on the notion that hand-on skills are not subject to virtual presentation. Aside from that not being true the biggest barrier is fear of change. The regulators don’t want it, the trainers don’t want it and tradesmen who don’t think about it don’t want it. All of which is no reason to not keep pushing it at them:-)

My current interest is the relationship of dance and other physical skills that include all the trades. Gets me out of pointless conversations with those stuck in the mud. Have to go now but will be back.

Scott

[ScottJohnson]

Wrote this earlier and want to send it. Sorry if it sounds stuffy–how I feel today.

How far outside the zone of the familiar can we go and still understand each other?

Art school does this by experimenting with other mediums to open other possibilities

for expression but this excursion into the unknown is tempered by being contained

witin the space and supportive presence of fellow students in “art class” and

constrained by an agreement to not make fun of each others’ clumsiness.
The fact that we don’t “know” each other and can still communicate with some ease

(and even admit to doubts) suggests we can work together outside the safety of our

crafted professional selves? Seems to me there is value in developing a literacy

that leaves doors open to the uncomfortable. This would be epecially needed in times

of change when struggling to contain everything within the familiar mutes its

potential and may kill it.
Having been in quite a few Connectivist MOOCs plus experience in my life tells me

that absence of contact with others stunts, delays or prevents understanding. What

we know is a useless absraction if we are unable to give and receive with some

gracefulness.
Can MOOCs build new knowledge? Not sure. Is there value in discussion what you don’t

know and does that make sense? Again not sure. A quote I read from Sigmund Freud

talked of “building out into the unknown” and every time I write it I feel

uncomfortable. We spend a lot of time at the college where I work discussing comfort

as an affordance of learning. Maybe we are misunderstanding learning?

Scott

[ScottJohnson]

Hello Belinda, mongrels being as we are it seems in the absence of the Alpha-Mongrel and by the force of our inclusive nature that 13 mongrels are better than 12 plus one stray. This is a MOOC after all:-)

On a related note, range of experience and its influence on the course is a problem for all institutions declaring themselves to be diverse–like schools. Most sort before they allow in and the notion that they arrive as some optimum balance of difference by choosing is absurd. Limits beget limits and there must be somewhere in the educational universe where the rule of intention is tipped on its head.

[ScottJohnson]

Have to agree with Naill that MOOCs are a different experience and maybe not even “educational” in the sense of having strictly structured outcomes based on simulated activities. In a world where barrirers between fields of study need to come down we need some place to jolt our brains out of habitual expectations and skillfull performance of old tasks not because they are useful anymore, only because are fond of cleverness. The xMOOC brand being created are commodities that may prove useful as we transform HE into ivy clad vending machines but we still need some portion of the environment outside our deliberate control where mutations can flourish or die without being distorted by the economy we’ve made of society. Being reaquainted with the pleasure of thinking together without limits, fees or even direct purpose is enough for me. My image of a MOOC is like a river without a dam on it.

[ScottJohnson]

This sounds very interesting. As someone who worked in the trades for many years training apprentices (while never receiving training myself in how to do this) the idea of folk (or feral as I prefer) educators forming a pack seems very inviting. I’m also facinated with the notion of a Learning Society as in the whole landscape accomodating learning as an entirely normal state of being as opposed to the current norm where simply questioning is apparently a form of subversion (not that it shouldn’t be).

My qualifications are to be currently working on trades courses designed to upgrade mechanics to higher level thinking balanced by being fired from that job on June 30.

[ScottJohnson]

It’s fine with me to stay here. In spite of all the affordances available to enhance what we want to say, I find the medium does really determine (distort, distract) the message. The first consideration is can we exchange ideas and understandings with TEL or are we only concerned with creating entertainment?
As someone who’s naturally disagreeable I’m not convinced that the whole idea of presenting learning opportunities in all sorts of media options actually results in learning. Our whole notion of attention, persuasion and influence is based in media studies the seem to me to speak only of successful transmission and reception of bullshit. What if it was possible to teach things of value rather than amuse and occupy time? Does anyone think it might catch on in education?

[ScottJohnson]

Having all sorts of interests was assessed by a writing teacher once as having a short attention span. That would be me. After 40 years in the building trades I currently work as an assistant instructional designer at a small college where we build vocational programs and am in the process of building a teacher training program that I am without qualification to administer beyond thinking I am.

School is the worst thing to happen to education but I keep coming back anyway just in case I missed something. Have 3 university credits in Connectivism taught in person by George Siemens. Have lost a number of arguments with Stephen Downes and am losing my job as of June 30 to cut-backs here in Alberta Canada.
I offer this picture of Little Red Riding Hood negotiating terms with the wolf over a bit of Frisbee action that may not materialize.

http://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Dore_ridinghood.jpg

Agree that there has been a lot of hand wringing over too many emails and wonder where people picked up the idea that things that don’t work for them are necessarily poorly designed. Can it be possible they are poorly suited to the task and buzz-off with their whining? What’s going to happen when these people are forced to confront change that is neither logical or nice?
If you need more people I’m interested.
Scott

[ScottJohnson]

Hi Alicia,
Still interested in vocational and work based education. (You’ll find sometimes us long-term MOOC’ers break off into conversations anywhere we land so please tell us to shut-up if we are intruding in your discussion space).
My interest in vocational comes from years in the trades before starting work at a college, and for a while yet I have a connection to a project that I find exciting. We are running a test course directed at existing journeymen auto mechanics to upgrade their skills to heavy duty equipment technicians. Our college has a contract with a large sponsor to finance the project which sets it aside from the struggle to maintain any kind of coherent work under public education direction which turns almost daily with the wind.
The focus of the courses (there will be 4 years worth eventually) is to not only train HD techs but to develop diagnostic abilities in order for our eventual graduates to be considered masters of the trade. This goes beyond pulling-a-wrench training into thinking skills to be found in (sometimes) in the liberal arts.
We are in the early days of the program development and this could be a good time and place to set up a conversation around vocational training that extends beyond just one college’s project.

[ScottJohnson]

Hi Rebecca, wine industry sounds interesting and I bet becoming more technical all the time. Our heavy duty technician courses are driven by the need for an interesting mix of people capable going into remote areas to fix hugely expensive machines while delivering precise and accurate diagnosis. These aren’t just wrench monkeys but real professionals and capable thinkers. Prediction for our area in northern Canada is we are already 2,500 mechanics short and at least 10% of them need be true experts. Going to be interesting to how this works out over the next few years.
Another thing is remote sensing for this type of work. Send in a sensing crew to broadcast data back to home base so the right parts go out first time. My cardiologist is talking about this as a way to avoid 10 hour drives in to see her and keep me alive too.

As a boost to the notion that online communities can be useful I’ve been terminated at work as of June 30 as our department “restructures.” But it turns out our brand new director of teaching, unknown to both of us, was lead developer on an experimental online course studying the idea of teaching people hopefulness. I volunteered for the pilot  course and follow-up study while in recovery and it looks like this might help me keep my job possibly moving to research.

I find it interesting that a person can reinvent themselves by being present in such an ethereal world as the internet and have it realize into something in the “real” world. Still snowing here, how are things in Oz?

Scott

[ScottJohnson]

Hi Alicia,
I’m Scott Johnson and interested in vocational education and survival tricks for students who struggle in the academic environment. My career in education started 5 years ago while recovering from an illness that ended my 40 year career in the building trades. As an assistant instructional designer helping build courses to accompany certificate programs in petroleum industry power engineering and heavy equipment technician (HET) upgrading I’m currently up to my ears in vocational training.

Of particular interest is creating learning experiences that include critical and diagnostic systems thinking that single out committed tradespeople. Our office is just starting to build first year HET courses through a commercial sponsor who seems committed to cover a whole program. In addition, they have been fairly specific about our training techs who have thinking skills as well as mechanical aptitudes.

For some reason even though we are technically a polytechnic school there is resistance to the notion of thinking tradespeople and sadly that extends to the trades instructors themselves. So be it, that can change.

As for myself, I’m a big fan of MOOCs from some of the first Connectivist versions. They seem to suit my nature as a construction worker with little expectation of predictability in crew make-up or job-site conditions or classroom chaos. Also interested in vocational as it has fed me most of my life and living with being underestimated by academics who couldn’t visualize the structure of an out-house I’m tired of grand theories that don’t work.

Let me know if you are interested in starting a discussion group? Can I suggest “Shop Class as Soulcraft: an inquiry into the value of work” by Matthew Crawford? Like most motorcycle mechanics Matthew is a bit of a philosopher but worth reading anyway.

Scott

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