Online survey for the participants of MOOCs

After experiencing an overwhelming participation in two Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC); PLENK2010 and EC&I831  from September 2010 to December 2010, and getting more understanding into the nature of open, social and networked learning which helped me make my research focused I conducted an online survey ( and here)to the participants of these two courses.

My intention was to get more insights into the experiences and perceptions of the course participants of such open and unusual courses in terms of using different technologies and digital tools, involving in online learning networks, making their personal learning environments and getting sense of being a connected learner.

However, this survey is not a main data source for my research and nonetheless, not so many people responded to it but, it was useful for obtaining some preliminary information about the topics related to open and networked learning and PLE. It somehow revealed that which technologies and how much they have been using during the course, how they have been engaged in the course activities etc.  

 I used GoogleDocs for making the survey but for some weird reason it didn’t accept the responses and I had to use another online survey maker: www.surveygizmo.com  which was also good. The survey is still underway and participants of MOOCs can respond to it.

In the survey I asked the participant if they are willing to take part in an an online interview for further elaboration on the themes and topics of the survey. I am hoping to have at least 6 people for interviewing. 

What Wordle could say about your writing and thinking?!

I just created a "word cloud" by Wordle from my blog today and found this:



It highlights what I am more thinking and writing about in my blog. Here is a fancy analysis of this Wordle: "Learning" is my big concern as it shows in the picture. Just right underneath it is saying that I am researching and enjoying kind of "Open" ( education & learning ) mediated by  " Technology"  and various "Social" ( media) in a “Networked” way by joining " free education" and focusing on "Informal" (learning). 

That's true; however, there is a big "conference" there as well which, perhaps shouldn't be that big (just because of some posts about different conferences!). The other bigger ones are “social” and “online” which make sense and are my concerns too but, I am wondering how small “theories” or learning theories is! Maybe the smallest one!  It makes me a bit more think about it.

The highlighted terms show my focus and the scope of my dissertation research somehow. 

This post was just for fun but, it is also worth mentioning that even a fun tool like Wordle can tell us something about our thinking and its directions. I think it is useful sometimes we put our text into Wordle to get some ideas.