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

MOOCS! (Massive Open Online Courses)

-- PLEK12 (an open online course on personal learning environments) by Christopher Davis Sessums and Wendy Drexler  from the University of Florida ended last week. I was able to be lurking in this course and couldn’t be able to participate in all activities.  I couldn’t attend live sessions either because they were running at 2am (my time). Fortunately, all archive of Elluminate recordings are available for further access. 

-- CCK11 also just finished this week. The wrap up session of this 12-weeks course was held on Friday by the facilitators (George Siemens and Stephen Downes).  The discussion was mainly about the current situation and the future of connectivism and MOOCs.  Here is the recording of the session. Siemens created a Google Group to discuss how to plan, deliver, and research open online courses: " MetaMOOC" .

-- Another MOOC started this week about mobile learning: MobiMOOC. It will run from 2 April - 14 May 2011.

 

Open Movement; Openness and Transparency in Education

   Week 9 of CCK11 was about openness and transparency. There are huge discussions and debates nowadays about open movement: open source, open content, open access, open educational resources (OER) and so on and especially what they can bring to our educational and learning practices. How all content and information could be freely accessible to all? Who pays for them? What are the roles of educational institutions in moving towards openness and are there any benefits for them to make contents and materials closed or make them open?

  On Wednesday live session on Elluminate (March 16^th),   Zaid Ali Alsagoff  talked about: Sharing to Connect, Interact and Learn . He was an active participant of MOOCs (PLENK2010, CCK11) whose insightful reflections and perceptions of openness and connectivity were shared in the session with other participants of the course. The discussion was all great and inspired me to ponder more about these issues in my research also.  Here is his presentation on Slideshare and the entire session as Elluminate Recording and as MP3 Audio.

This quote as a conclusion of this discussion makes us think of the value of openness in education:

“Embrace openness because it’s a great way to connect and interact with amazing people and experience awesome learning”!

 

   I think for being open and transparent in learning and collaboration, some tools like blogs, Twitter, Slideshare, YouTube, Google, Bookmarking tools  etc.  can help us for aggregating, organizing, remixing and sharing our content and artifacts. Perhaps Twitter and blogging have more values for openness and visibility and to promote connectivity.

   On Friday, the facilitator’s discussion continued by Siemens and Downes on the history open movement in education. Siemens referred to the first initiatives of open source movement and how they were reacted at the time. It was in 1998 that the ‘Open Content License’ was introduced: http://www.opencontent.org/opl.shtml

Here are some links related to open movement and openness in education:

George Siemens, Free and Open Source Movements

George Siemens, Open Source Content in Education

Stephen Downes, Open Education: Projects and Potentual (slides and audio)

George Siemens & Kathleen Matheos, Open Social Learning in Higher Education: An African Context (video)

Stephen Downes, The Future of Open Educational Resources (video)

Alan Levine, Amazing Stories of Openness

Stephen Downes, Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources

Stephen Downes and David Wiley, Downes-Wiley: A Conversation on Open Educational Resources

Open Education: Moving From Concept to Reality by G. Siemens: http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/OE_presentation.htm

Budapest open access initiative: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml

It was mentioned in the discussion that there are three phases of open learning:

-          Open Content, e.g. open educational resources (OER) , open course ware (OCW)

-          Open Courses, e.g. CCK11, PLENK2010, EC&I831, PLEK12, DS106,  …

-          Open Assessment, which is also very important among topics of openness in education.  What does that really mean? How it can be applied in the context of open education. Who can assess learning? Who are the stakeholders in the process of open assessment?

The Elluminate recording of the session will be soon available.

Interviewing the MOOC's participants

In this spring I conducted some online interviews with the participants of two open online courses as part of my thesis data. The interviewees varied in professional background and their extent of participation in open online courses. While they were all good users of social media and web 2.0 tools, the way and purposes they incorporated those tools in their professional activities and educational and learning practices were different. Most of them have been participating in more than two (M)OOCs with different level of engagement. In each course the level of activities and the requirements for participation however were also varied. In one course, which two interviewees came from, there was a need for more active participation and preparing some reflections and final digital and online projects which required more involvement in use of tools and technology to fulfil the requirement.   
I did interviews on Skype, GTalk and one by phone and I used some online tools like Pamela for recording.

The whole process of interviewing was challenging though; for arranging practical preparation and technical resources but, also inspiring to go through participants’ experiences and perceptions of such open online environments and their interactions with resources and people from different parts of the world, using many forms of technologies and tools in the process of learning and collaboration.

Starting the year with two other MOOCs: CCK11 and LAK11 !

Inspired by positive perceptions from the last fall’s MOOCs,  I decided to participate in two open online courses this spring:

"Connectivism and Connective Knowledge" (CCK11) By George Siemens and Stephen Downes and

"Learning and Knowledge Analytics" (LAK11) by George Siemens and Dave Cormier. 

#CCK11 started last week and will last for 10 more weeks until April 11^th 2011. The weekly topics seem interesting and I would like to learn from them to widen my knowledge of connectivism and connective learning and their applications into practice in the era of digital connectedness. On the other hand, because connectivism is the main underlying theoretical perspective in my research on PLE and open online learning networks, I hope this course will help me better understand what connectivism can bring into educational practices and learning in this connected world.  

#LAK11 began two weeks ago and will be continuing until the mid of February. Although, I am concentrating more on #CCK11 than this one but, I am following the LAK11’s  activities and attending the synchronous sessions as long as my time allow me. 

My motivation for taking part in these two MOOCs was based on my experiences from open online courses I participated in last fall: PLENK2010 and EC&I831. They were extremely inspiring and engaged me in more online networking and connecting with many people from all parts of the world. Another reason for me to attend these courses is to get more understanding of the open education and networked learning and going through different topics related to them during the course period. I am now quite familiar with the structure of MOOCs and I like the way they are being run, especially synchronous sessions which the course facilitators along with some other experts discuss the weekly topics on Elluminate.  

However, in spite of my willingness, I cannot be involved in all activities in a full potential way but, I am trying to be as active as possible and being engaged in different networks to get most out of them. Perhaps, here I should bring this point that my learning journey and experience with social media and digital tools; integrating them into my research activities and professional development, and the social interactions I had with many people during the last two MOOCs were absolutely incredible.  

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. 

A video by Dr. Skip Ward about MOOC and #PLENK2010

Above is a video of one of the #PLENK2010 participants, Dr. Skip Ward, commented on my previous post about MOOC ( Massive Open Online Course).

As he expalins, how such an example of a learning experience is successful because of  forming a huge virtual community of learners. In fact, PLENK2010 brings together a diverse group of people wiht different aspects of expertise, tied together and participants come together to share their experiences and knowledge. It is grounded in Connectivist approach which sees learning as networked and connective.


Skip also created a Ning group " Moving Social Media into the Classroom"  .