Call for Submissions – MOOCs and Beyond: eLearning Papers Issue 33
http://elearningeuropa.info/en/news/call-submissions-moocs-and-beyond-elearning-papers-issue-33
eLearning Papers is currently welcoming submissions which address the challenges and future of Massive Open Online Courses, a trend in education that has skyrocketed since 2008. Issue 33, MOOCs and Beyond, seeks to both generate debate, and coalesce a variety of critical perspectives into a fruitful body of research.
Educators today are confronted with several questions regarding MOOCs. These include:What role do they play in the undergraduate degree system? In particular, what threat do they pose to higher education as it currently operates? Also, what does the path towards proper accreditation for these classes look like?
On a broader level, MOOCs offer another site from which to explore the intersection between technology and pedagogy, in the effort to improve our understanding of how to support learning. How do MOOCs differ from face-to-face, or even on-line closed courses? What is particular about the MOOC learning experience, and what does that teach us?
Contributors are invited to present theoretical or empirical research, specifically regarding the following topics:
- Experiences speaking to the design, implementation or assessment of a MOOC.
- The impact of MOOCs within Higher Education.
- Learning analytics and MOOCs.
- Peer-to-peer learning and MOOCs.
- Analyses of the impact and reach of MOOCs – considering course completion, global recognition.
The guest editor for this edition is Yishay Mor.
Deadline: March 25th, 2013.
Click here to read the complete Call for Papers.
My Phd, made practical: “SNaP! Re-using, sharing and communicating designs and design knowledge using scenarios, narratives and patterns”
Mor, Yishay (2013). SNaP! Re-using, sharing and communicating designs and design knowledge using scenarios, narratives and patterns. In: Luckin, Rose; Goodyear, Peter; Grabowski, Barbara and Winters, Niall eds. Handbook of Design in Educational Technology. London: Routledge, (In press).
In order to enable a culture of critical, informed and reflective design practice we need a linguistic framework for communicating design knowledge: the knowledge of the characteristic features of a domain of practice, the challenges which inhabit it, and the established methods of resolving them. Such an infrastructure must “serve two masters”; on one hand, it should adhere to the requirements of scientific rigor, ensuring that the proposed conditions and challenges are genuine and the solutions effective. On the other hand, it should maintain pragmatic adequacy, ensuring that the insights it encapsulates are readily available for practitioners to implement in real-world situations. Several representations have been proposed to this effect: design narratives (Mor, 2011; Barab et al, 2008; Bell, Hoadley and Linn, 2004; Hoadley, 2002; Linn & Hsi, 2000), design principles (Kali, 2006, 2008; Linn, Bell, & Davis, 2004; Merrill, 2002; Quintana et al., 2004; van den Akker, 1999), and design patterns (Derntl & Motschnig-Pitrik, 2005; Goodyear, 2005; Mor & Winters, 2007; Retalis et al, 2006), to name a few. The aim of this chapter is to characterise two of these forms – design narratives and design patterns, and propose a third form – design scenarios, and suggest how these could be embedded in a cycle of reflective learning design.
Innovating Pedagogy 2012
The OU’s Innovating Pedagogy report seems to be generating a lot of interest.
In case you haven’t seen it yet:
The series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation.
The first report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education:
Aggregation rumination
Cross posted from http://www.olds.ac.uk/development-blog/aggregationrumination:
I’ve been thinking about Martin Hawksey’s excellent post “Show me your aggregation architecture and I’ll show you mine“. Martin surveys some 14 MOOCs (or, to be precise, cMOOCs) and compares their aggregation mechanisms. Theoretically, MOOCs are about making connections between learners’ independent journeys, and synergising the resources and insights they bring. If you have hundreds of participants or more – that needs some machinery to make it happen.
There’s a wide range of social technologies in the bag (flickr, twitter, facebook, lots of google groups) but only two RSS aggregators stand out: FeedWordPress and gRSShopper. The first is a wordpress plugin, so obviously only works if you choose wordpress as your platform (and have your own installation, rather than a wordpress.com or institutional one). The second requires root access to a web server. The sourceforge page cites 4 downloads, so I suspect its used mainly by its creators.Martin seems to suggests we need a robust aggregation technology for MOOCs, and I agree. I’d also like to suggest the kind of activity it needs to support:Nomination: you run a MOOC, I participate. I want to propose a feed for you to aggregate. you can accept the feed automatically, manually, or by public vote (e.g. it has 3 people to speak for it).Aggregation: harvest the posts from a large group of feeds and display them in a way that I can easily sift through and find the stuff I’m interested. e.g., let me navigate by tags / keywords / most liked.Curation: I want to select items from aggregator brought in, and compose a new item from them. Storify style.Correlation: I want to find and display links between items. “Joe says A, Ann says B. But Ali links the two in a surprising way.”And – I want it all with zero install. Ideally, as a platform independent embeddable component.
ARV GCP4: Supporting an Open Culture of Design for TEL
I’ve been asked to revise the Grand Challenge Problem I proposed at the STELLAR Alpine Rendez-vous. At this point, I’ve been asked to provide a new summary. So here is what I produced:
Current technology offers us access to rapidly expanding riches of high-quality, low-cost learning resources in any topic we wish to engage with. This calls for a shift in the role of educators: from providers of knowledge to designers of learning experiences. Design, in this context, should be seen as a grounded rigorous creative process of perpetual educational innovation: grounded in a well-defined concrete context of practice, rigorous in its attention to scientific evidence and pedagogical theory, and creative in its approach to generating new solutions to educational challenges. A design attitude should be reflected in the production of new resources, as well as in effective configuration and customisation of existing ones. The call for such a repositioning of educators is heard from leaders in the field of TEL and resonates well with the growing culture of design-based research in education. Yet, it is still struggling to find a foothold in educational practice.
To address this discrepancy, we need to establish an open culture of Learning Design in TEL. Such a culture requires a set of common practices, supported by appropriate representations of design knowledge in education, and the tools to manipulate such representations. It needs the capacity to develop a common language and make this language accessible to the widest possible audience. Such a language, and the related media of interaction, should allow experts and novices to extract design knowledge from experience, articulate it in a coherent manner, connect, combine and manipulate it, and use it to resolve new challenges. This language should be supported by appropriate tools and community spaces, which will streamline the process of constructing, validating and utilising design knowledge, making it open, accessible and transparent. It cannot be a uniform, centralised entity – but needs to allow for a diversity of discourse by establishing a set of open protocols and standards over which an open process of massively collaborative knowledge building can thrive. This process needs to be embedded in the culture of the professional community.
Thus, we pose the following grand challenge: how do we create a platform for open, live, malleable, dynamic representation of design knowledge in TEL, supporting collaborative processes of design for learning, learning to design, and learning by design. Such a platform could promote the emergence of a new culture of educational practice, in which expertise is rapidly and effectively shared, critiqued and aggregated. It will provide for the wide proliferation of cost-effective and robust educational practices, making effective use of technological advances as they appear. However, such a culture will not be instigated simply by the existence of the right tools and representations. The existing learning design community needs to engage in a massive project of professional development, driving a new perception of educational profession, as a rigorous creative practice of perpetual innovation. The principles underlying the learning design approach, the practices reifying those principles, and the methodological framework binding those together need to be made explicit and communicated to the widest audience possible.
mLearn 2012: Call for Workshops and Tutorials
Together with Christian Glahn and Gill Clough, I’m co-chairing the workshops & tutorials at mLearn 2012. Looking forward to your proposals!
http://portal.ou.nl/en/web/mlearn-2012/call-for-workshops-and-tutorials
Call for Workshops and Tutorials
Mobile technologies are a vibrantly developing and constantly create new challenges for education and learning in a wide range of contexts and settings. In conjunction with the 11th International Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning (mLearn 2012) in Helsinki, Finland we are delighted to announce the unique opportunity for holding a limited number of scientific workshops and practice-oriented tutorials on mobile and contextual learning. This provides a forum for special interest groups to exchange experiences and for experts disseminate best practices in the community of mobile and contextual learning.
Parties interested to organize a workshop are asked to submit a proposal of max. 3 pages outlining the theme of the workshop, workshop format, expected participants and domains addressed, dissemination activities, programme committee, and organizational requirements.
Parties interested to organize a tutorial are asked to submit a 2-page proposal that outlines the tutorial’s objectives, the target audience, and the format.
Both workshops and tutorials are organized as half- or full-day events on the day before the conference. Submissions for workshops and tutorials need to indicate if they are planned for a half or a full-day time-slot.
All submissions will be evaluated and selected based on their quality and the relation to the overall conference theme.
Workshop and tutorial organizers and participants are expected to register with the mLearn 2012 conference. No extra charges will be applied for the workshops.
The mLearn 2012 Workshop and Tutorial Chairs
- Christian Glahn (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Switzerland)
- Yishay Mor (The Open University, UK)
- Gill Clough (The Open University, UK)
Submission briefing
- Workshop Proposals: Max. 3 Pages
- Tutorial Proposals: Max. 2 Pages
- Full Call for Papers available for download
- Submission template available for download
Important Dates
- Deadline for Submissions: 30 April 2012
- Notification of acceptance: 14 May 2012
- Last date of early-bird registration: 26 July 2012
- Workshop and Tutorials day: 16 October 2012
- Main Conference: 17-18 October 2012
Join the open and free course on mobile learning: #MobiMOOC
from @IGNATIA WEBS:
Mobile learning (mLearning) is all the rage at the moment, but how do you get started and how do you maximize the mLearning plans you have? Simple, follow this free online course facilitated by 7 mobile experts and turn your mLearning knowledge into a practical project. Interested? Join the online google group, the course wiki and enter the mLearning conversation with other peers.
Grab your mobile and optimize its use
The MobiMOOC course will run for 6 weeks (2 April – 14 May). The target group for this course is … anyone interested in mLearning. Although the course is open to all, it is useful if you have some experience with social media. If you have a mobile phone or device, than grab it or go and buy one, it will make your learning much more authentic.
The MobiMOOC course will start with an introduction to mLearning, getting everyone comfortable with some of its key features, and gradually moving into the more complex technical, project planning and philosophical topics. The course will feature mLearning examples from the academic, corporate and non-profit world, and look at both simple and on the edge projects from both the North and South, as the South has been an inspiration for mLearning.
The MOOC format
MobiMOOC is a fully online course, which follows the MOOC (Massive, Open, Online Course) format. This format uses a lot of social media to enable all the participants and the facilitators to stay connected, build a network, exchange experiences. As the course is focusing on mobile learning, it is calledMobiMOOC. As much of a MOOC is about exchanging notes with peers, and constructing knowledge collaboratively, so responsibility of the learning is with you, the participants and as such you need to self-regulate your learning. To optimize your learning it is important to plan your learning actions. However, we are all in this together! You can be sure that with the mLearning expert facilitators of the course and your peers, you will get your hands on great resources, inspiring discussions and all of our minds will be challenged and inspired.
If you do not like e-mails, you can also add the discussion threads to a RSS feed.
The main course sites are accessible for a lot of mobile devices (e.g. google groups for discussing which uses e-mails, twitter, facebook…).
Interested? The when and where
The course will be running: from 2nd April 2011 until 14 May 2011. Every week focuses on a new topic.
Join the MobiMOOC google group (this will be the primary site for discussions) in order to get into the course and be kept up-to-date. You need to sign in with a google account. Important: once you have joined the MobiMOOC google-group, make sure you choose how you want to be kept up to date: recommended choices either an abridged e-mail (= you get a summary of the new activities each day) or digest e-mail (you get all the new messages bundled into one single mail per day). Google groups works like a listserv, so you can reply to a message send from the group via your e-mail, the google group mail: mobimooc (at) googlegroups (dot) com . After joining the group, please add a bit of information about yourself via the profile of your google group account, that way we all get to know one another a bit better.
Check out the course wiki (still a work in process, but already loaded with information)
http://mobimooc.wikispaces.com/
Get connected to the MobiMOOC twitter and Facebook account.
Facebook account: some informal learning or chatting
http://facebook.com/mobimooc
Twitter: mobiMOOC: tweetering thoughts and ideas and for speedy connections (hashtag #mobiMOOC)
http://twitter.com/mobiMOOC
Topics and facilitators?
Week 1: Saturday 2 April – 8 April 2011: Introduction to mLearning;
Facilitator: Inge ‘Ignatia’ de Waard
Week 2: Saturday 9 April – 15 April 2011: Planning an mLearning project;
Facilitator: Judy Brown
Week 3: Saturday 16 April – 22 April 2011: Mobile for development (m4D);
Facilitators: Niall Winters and Yishay Mor
Week 4: Saturday 23 – 29 April 2011: Leading edge innovations in mLearning;
Facilitator: David Metcalf
Week 5: Saturday 30 – 6 May 2011: Interaction between mobile learning and a mobile connected society;
Facilitator: John Traxler
Week 6: Saturday 7 – 13 May 2011: mLearning in k12;
Facilitator: Andy Black
So if you are interested, keep your agenda (a bit) free from 2 April – 14 May 2011 and join us.
Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.Recent Comments
twot?- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- iLook
- iRead
- Phenomenography: Describing Conceptions of the World around Us
- Analyzing multimodal interaction: A methodological framework
- Conjecture Mapping: An Approach to Systematic Educational Design Research
- Heuristic Evaluation Instrument and Protocol for E-Learning Programs
- The Pedagogy of Things: Emerging Models of Experiential Learning
- Pedagogical Patterns: Advice For Educators
- Learning from watching others learn
- iWrite
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- slideshare
- OLDS MOOC Week 7: Formative evaluation paper February 17, 2013
- Design narratives February 13, 2013
- Week7 intro evaluate January 7, 2013
- The Pedagogical Patterns Collector User Guide November 23, 2012
