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