MOOCs in Scandinavia Conference at Karolinska Institute

The international conference on MOOCs in Scandinavia organized by Karolinska Institute, Chalmers University of Technology, Lund University, Uppsala University and Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS) took place from 11 to 12 June 2015 at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. I presented a poster about my PhD research on learning ecology in connectivist MOOCs.

It was great to meet some old friends there, also make new friends for future research collaboration. As we had already planned, I met with #ONL151 course team (https://opennetworkedlearning.wordpress.com/ ) and discussed our possible research collaboration. M. Kvarnström, M. Hedberg, E. Ossiannilsson, L. Åbjörnsson, A. Creelman & L. Uhlin presented their work on ONL course:  From awareness to participation - student engagement in an online environmen.

Gerhard Fischer and George Siemens were two keynote speakers from outside Scandinavia who discussed the past, current and future of MOOCs. Here is Siemens' presentation slides: MOOCs & Learning Sciences: Where we were. Where we are going?

I had a chance to talk with George Siemens about my research and he kindly provided some useful comments and issues in research on MOOCs especially connectivist MOOCs. One of the relevant theoretical framework in research on online learning environments that George mentioned  is "Community of Inquiry" developed by Garrison, Anderson and Archer. I knew about it but didn't pay too much attention to use it in my research on connectivist MOOCs. Now, after reviewing more thoroughly the literature and research on CoI, I am very interested in applying this framework to my research on community engagement in cMOOCs.

Conference twitter hashtag: #ScMc15

Refreshing MOOC learning in this spring!

This spring in April and May, I jumped on and spent a bit of my time in two #MOOCs: open networked learning #ONL151, and #rhizo15. These two courses were somehow different in terms of structure, the level of engagement and the way of participation.

#ONL151 was like more of a community-based course centered in Google+ community consisted of small problem-based learning groups (BPL) with weekly topics. Like any other MOOC, it uses many other tools such as Twitter, Diigo, Google hangout, and weekly online webinars. 
 
On the other hand, #rhizo15 as assumed from its name, was more of a network-based and rhizomatically-structured #MOOC built upon rhizomatic learning (community as curriculum) by Dave Cormier. #rhizo15 course activities were mainly centered on Facebook, Twitter (see all tweets here), and participants’ blogs talking about their experiences, challenges and understanding of rhizomatic learning. 

Although, I was mainly lurking around #rhizo15 and following Facebook activities and tweets but, I was more active in #ONL151 especially in PBL group where we were working on scenarios related to the weekly topics. Collaborating in such communities was a bit challenging while entails more time and commitment to work on topics and prepare something to be shared with the bigger ONL151 community.  Nonetheless, it was both challenging and fun having a lot of learning encounters. I always enjoy both active participation and lurking in MOOCs where I interact, learn, and collaborate with a range of professionals with diverse backgrounds. This has helped me a lot in my research and to develop my professional network in the past five years. 

Now, both of the courses coming to an end but, learning and networking still continue with MOOCs. 

Below, I share a diagram as an example of our PBL group work on Open educational resources (OER) and MOOCs.