Autor: Ingrid Dethloff

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Open Badges MOOC: Start

I am very interested in different kinds of MOOC platforms and MOOC course designs. Right now, I joined a MOOC on Blackboard’s Coursesites platform which goes by the title „Badges: New Currency for Professional Credentials„. For me, there is an obvious link between the topics badges and moocs and voilà, in this MOOC there is one discussion group regarding the aspect „Badges for MOOCs“. Two discussion groups are about Higher Ed and six other discussion groups cover aspects like „Badges in Museums, Galleries and Heritage Centres“, „Badges for Corporate Training and Professional Development“, „Badges AI“, „Badges for Government Entities“, „Badges for Military Use and Veterans“, „Mozilla Open Badges Initiative“ .
Yesterday 8 p.m. local time, there was the first live session with much input from Erin Knight, a very good YouTube video „What is a badge“ and a lot of chat in Blackboard Collaborate and via Twitter. About 270 participants max. were there, which I found to be an impressing number (at the time about 1200 participants had registered in the MOOC).
Some literature tips were already there before yesterday, but I think the course structuring with the weekly topics „Openness, Badge Fundamentals, Employers, Learning Providers, Learners, Opportunites“ was recent as I hadn’t seen it before yesterday evening (but maybe I simply didn’t notice it until then). The 6 topic areas will correspond to the 6 live sessions which will be recorded.
The course activities part I have yet to have a look at, especially the „Badge Challenge Assignments“ and I have further reading to do (some of the links I’ll put on my Delicious-Account). Of course there will be the discussions – I don’t know yet, how much time I’ll have for them. My goals in this MOOC mostly are as the course designers put it in the course description as a possible option number 2 „Those who need to report back to their organizations about what badges are, how they work, and what opportunities they present„.
Hopefully, the platform will be a little faster in the next weeks as the web sites were really slow until yesterday. By the way, there was also a survey „getting to know you“ which I didn’t find really anonymous when you ask the participants for the name of their institution and their role within, but it really is a good idea to ask what their goals are within the course and if there are experiences with badges.

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Moodle MOOC: Final Session

I am glad there is a recording from the final session (it would have been live at 03:00 AM local time) – I just watched it and again learned some interesting things. From sharing to collaboration, socially responsible learning as „sharing and saving“, data about the education triangle „quality, access, cost“ regarding Wikipedia and above all John Graves‘ ideas behind SlideSpeech. I really have to look at SlideSpeech and try it (when I find the time): automatically converting presentations into talking presentations by using the speaker notes of the slides. That they also can be edited and improved afterwards or changed by others is a very interesting concept.

My conclusion: The „Moodle MOOC on WizIQ“ was a great experience, I have learned a lot about Moodle, WizIQ and online learning in a cMOOC. There was so much sharing of ideas, discussions and interesting material and YouTube videos produced by the course participants. The course was also very time consuming – I would have liked to take part in discussions and commenting even more but between the live sessions and tasks that wasn’t possible for me. A little bit of confusion was part of the experience and I think quite normal in a cMOOC. Doing a course in a foreign language was an additional challenge.

Thanks to all of you and especially to Nellie for doing a fantastic job in this MOOC and creating and maintaining such a great atmosphere!

 

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Moodle MOOC: Virtual Classroom in WizIQ

Here is my video for the 4th and final week of the „Moodle MOOC on WizIQ“. In task4 I set up aWizIQ meeting room, prepared some slides and talked about the WizIQ meeting room. I tried to keep it short, make some comparisons with the web conferencing system AdobeConnect (which I know very well) and also test the WizIQ iOS app.

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Moodle MOOC: Session with Bryan Alexander

The session „MOOCs and Ubiquitous Computing“ (June 22nd) was very interesting and informative although unfortunately we had massive sound problems. I already had looked at the slides before the session which was a good thing because I was distracted by a nearby major fire. Thankfully (now we know) the huge black cloud of smoke from 4.800 tons of burning styrofoam granulate wasn’t dangerous, but the fire-fighting operations went on for hours. Back to the session.

Bryan Alexander told about 3 different possible futures and there were many convincing arguments for each: 1. MOOCs exacerbate problems 2. Open world 3. MOOC bubble pops

  • The star cult in MOOCs and the concern about face-to-face education only available for elites
  • More access to information, more creativity, academic content „unleashed“ on the world, information literacy becoming even more important – on the other hand outsourcing, offshoring, less privacy and the problem of unclear authorship
  • There are already many MOOC platforms (mostly xMOOCs), many more are on the way but will they succeed or go bust? At the moment, the media coverage is remarkably positive – what happens if that changes? (and I believe that is likely)

My conclusion: Whatever happens in the future, Universities have to think now about their position regarding MOOCs and how they affect learning.

And therefore it’s good to be informed – there is plenty of  literature regarding the topic MOOCs. I have lots of bookmarks and especially like the MOOC field report from the University of Edinburgh because of the detailed summary of their experiences with Coursera.