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paul.mclaughlin posted an update in the group Scientists 10 years, 8 months ago
Hello, I am an academic at School of Biological Sciences, The University of Edinburgh. I am director of the first on-line distance course in College of Science and Engineering , Next Generation Drug Discovery, and we are in our first year. I have authored three of the courses myself and I want to find out more about how to do it better. So far this course has been good for me. The idea of “cognitive dissonance” is something I have heard of. If it means being overwhelmed by too many new ideas and things to do, then this is what I am experiencing. So now I know what our students experience at the start. It is particularly useful that the vle is entirely different – there is no comfort zone. Another thing that has changed my mind is the use of badges. When I first heard of them I poo-poo’ed these as being like stars at Primary School – but they seem now like stepping stones to me that in my confusion give the comfort that I have done something in the right direction and that the direction will become clear even if I can’t see it at the moment.
Hi Paul.
Good to meet you.
Who is your online course aimed at? What level?
This course is very overwhelming. There are so many options! I guess your course is more structured?
Thanks for reply. Yes, it is more structured. It is a Masters level course and is international (we have someone from South Africa and from Russia). I suppose that we have to embrace this overwhelming-ness and believe that we will come through!
In my experience this is pretty much the norm for a cMOOC (as opposed to a talking head xMOOC). My favourite MOOC to date was a project-based pMOOC, basically because it aligned closely with work I had to do anyway. I guess that’s the trick to staying engaged, namely find something you want to follow rather than trying to filter the global stream. At the moment I’m tempted to focus on badges but that might change.
Nice to meet you and thanks for the information. I am learning a lot. Is a “cMOOC” a “collaborative MOOC”? This is my first experience of taking part in a MooC (even though I have delivered a short one) or having been a students on any sort of distance learning. I need to start a blog on all of this because it will be invaluable to capture the experience so that I can improve induction for my own students.
Hi Paul, likewise. A cMOOC is a connectivist MOOC based on the learning theory called connectivism proposed by Stephen Downes and George Seimens. Although the theory remains controversial, the style of MOOC is highly participative and characterised by use of an aggregation strategy and regular plenary sessions. Normally there is also encouragement to do something active — a blog would be one possibility.
I should add that xMOOC/cMOOC dichotomy is probably a little dated. xMOOCs often have cMOOC features these days.
I’ve tried to engage with cMOOCs previously, but have never stuck with them. Whereas I really enjoyed a couple of xMOOCs that I’ve taken.
I think that this may have been because I went into the cMOOCs in an exploratory way – let’s see what this is about – rather than with a learning aim in mind, whereas I joined the xMOOCs because I was interested in the specific content. So this time I will follow the advice “Set your goals, so that they may guide your path” and then try to be more structured in my engagement.
I will be blogging, but I need to set up something new. I was using Posterous before and it has now gone.
I used to use Blogger but haven’t blogged in a long while. If you want to try something new and aren’t paranoid about stuff breaking there’s longposts (http://longposts.com/about) which is an app built on http://app.net/ which I use a little. It uses markdown for formatting so it’s a bit geeky. I might try it myself.
…and here is my first post http://longposts.com/29569100 — it seemed to hang after login but actually you could use the button on the bar at the top left (Compose?) and it worked OK. I’m suspecting the only way to get this into the ocTEL Reader is via RSS from app.net itself which will include the status posts in app.net itself. No harm there.
Sad to report that app.net will continue to run but no longer has employees. I’m sticking with it, being disinclined to go elsewhere. Probably unwise to build a teaching strategy that depends on it although it’s supposed to be able to run indefinitely in its present form and the basic Alpha web app has been open-sourced. Extraordinary day.