I have registered, and have been attempting to make sense of a new educational class offering called a "MOOC," which stands for Massive Open On-Line Course (or Massive On-Line Open Course…not sure which order the 'O'S go).
The details are relatively easy to recount:
- There are over 500 people in the course, from all over the planet
- The course is free
- The subject of the course is educational analytics (more in the next post)
- The syllabus is somewhat vague, as befits a class that seems to define itself thru the interests of its students
- The course is conducted on-line, using discussion lists, Moodle and recorded sessions (among others).
Beyond this, it is not quite as easy to document, and I am trying to make sense of the experience. As someone who has spent an inordinate amount of his life in formal educational settings, I am not quite sure what to make of this, whether in terms of syllabus (and the definitions given there) or how I should structure the content in my own head. I know the theory of constructivism, and I have monitored myself constructing various knowledges in the past, but I find it somewhat tiresome.
(I am looking at that last word and feel I should explain a bit. I find constructing knowledge literally tiring – the mental exercise of trying to simultaneously learn the limits of a subject while at the same time ordering it in a way I can remember and remembering the details of the content hurts my head. As a learner I want to get the core knowledge of a subject organized by an expert in that subject, and then, after I have the basics, I can then expand it on my own and along my own pathways. This is a learning style I have come to recognize and enjoy. I also realize that I am not prone to enjoy the alternative, going all the way back to high school. The first time I got to experience the alternative was in a language class when I was forced to suffer through tapes of someone babbling in a Russian while the teacher told us that eventually we would come to understand the language just by listening to it – yeah right. That worked for "where's the bathroom," and other caveman utterances, but was less effective for topics subtle or philosophic)
So, at the moment I am struggling to order the experience. I am still following the old paths – I got the readings and I read them all, now I am in search of a group to discuss them with. This post is one attempt to connect with those who might be in the same boat as me (or at least in the same learning style), which may be one way of connecting with other people and getting to the core of the content.
I suspect that there will be much more over the next few weeks.
R
I've been struggling, too. But I have decided that I will try to get what I can
ReplyDeleteCheck this post http://beespace.net/ I found it really interesting how she managed to do her own analytics :)
I've done both kinds of learning, or rather mixed them up. Order and ration depends a lot on the subject. As for how that will play out here, I have no idea. Your thoughts here tell I need to think more about how I learn, identify patterns. I wonder if learning styles and MI (Gardner's Multiple Intelligences) might be a useful (or at least usable) lens.
ReplyDeleteKami,
ReplyDeleteI have been working thru the materials at what is unfortunately going to be described as "my pace" (or not at dilligently as I would like, but life has a way of demanding things of us, even if our interests might lie elsewhere ;-).
It is interesting to see the makeup of the course. I would also be interested in seeing the engagment level of people in the course, i.e. in another window I am watching John Fritz's presentation. The question that forms from that is an analog/digital version: in "real" classrooms where people sit is always of interest - why does someone sit in the back of the room, or the first row. Is there a correlation between how often people engage in the discussions? Is there any kind of correlation there?
Richard
Vanessa,
ReplyDeleteGardner is one lens and it may present some broad strokes for self evaluation, but I have some hesitation which derives from my confusion about what Gardner means (fueled in part by some follow-up writing by Gardner about what he meant ;-)
I did my dissertation research in on-line classes in part by using two personality instruments - the Gregorc, which indicates how people like their information to be presented, and the PET, which indicates how they process that information. One of the interesting things I found was that in addition to the preferences of the students, the preferences of the teachers also came into play, as well as some internal requirements (not a perfect word for this, but I will live with it for now) of the subject matter itself (i.e. think of the differences in presentation between a statistics class and one in history or literature).
Richard