Thank you, Brainpickings for posting this video on productivity. I did wake up with a to-do list for today, but it has been hard going. So I am going to post this video, then get back to it, using some of the tips here. Then I can take a break before making more progress.

 

Helping Learners Cite for Different Contexts

Here's to another term and working with adult learners in an academic setting. In addition a papers, these classes prepare PPT presentations delivered in Adobe Connect. There is great emphasis on documentation as an intellectual property-right issue with both images and text sources. We go to links to determine ways to properly attribute and then work with the academic style requirement. I want the process to be clearer and simpler and less stress-producing. I would like the writing center to prepare a guide to citing for presentation purposes.

Apparently I'm not alone. I so appreciate Dr. Liz Kleinfeld's presentation here that calls for writing centers to help learners with models that are context appropriate--a provision for understanding when academic style might work, and when another is more appropriate.

 

From Citation Consumer to Citation Producer: Working with Students on Source Citation in Multiple Genres in the Writing Center from Elizabeth Kleinfeld

Study finds some groups fare worse than others in online courses | Inside Higher Ed

I was glad to see this item from Inside Higher Ed this morning, but it contained few surprises for me--students of  all groups fared quite equally in face-to-face and hybrid deliveries, but sectors fared noticeably worse in online courses.

Study finds some groups fare worse than others in online courses | Inside Higher Ed

The article calls for increased examination of how student services fit in and also questions quality of the course experience itself. It does give pause for Bill Gates; funding for Dev Ed MOOCs which would include a number of at-risk learning groups. As long-time online faculty member and a researcher in a study of online algebra, (Shorter-Term Success: Learner Characteristics, Preparedness, and Performance in Ten- and Fifteen-Week Online College Algebra. October 2006), here are some areas that continue to stand out:

1) Preparation for learning in an online environment: Have students been oriented to the environment and expectations like time-investment, participation, why some subjects are a better match for the delivery? For institutions that offer student orientations/academic success, learning in different environments be part of such a course. Students who have taken courses with different deliveries
could be great resources.

Can students view sample courses?

2) Preparation of those supporting students and faculty: Have administration, advising, and staff taken any online, graded learning? Have they seen what the online courses from their institutions look like? Is
there training for advisers? (Badrul Khan's e-learning model continues to provide a systems approach to e-learning additions: http://asianvu.com/bk/evaluation.htm)

3) Is there training and design support for faculty? Is there an budgetary investment in the design of courses?

5) What type of quality review is in place regarding design, access, and various opportunities for engagement. While Web2.0, simulations, and live-conferencing tools are more readily available, are courses still heavily dependent on text-based interaction and demonstrations of learning? (See opportunities provided by Churches' "Digital Taxonomy:
http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+Digital+Taxonomy)

6) What type of academic and technical support are available for students and faculty?

7) Is there a communication protocol among the various college departments that serve online students? (A prime example is students with declared needs for accommodation.)

There is great deal of work yet to be done, and there is great opportunity to learn from colleagues and
institutions who are supporting rigor, persistence and learning success. The article concludes with the call for evaluation and improvement, not mere labeling of deliveries as good or bad. I agree. Which brings me back to Dev Ed MOOCs. Could one answer to improved content, support and persistence be  MOOC plus model--quality curriculum and activities at no cost, with added on-the-ground support, required or not?

Gardner's Five Minds for the Future--Bridges Between Emotional IQ and Cognitive Science

Aa I consider the last few topics for a course this term, I am reminded of Gardner's Five Minds for the Future. As learners are reading about emotional resiliency for this week, I would recommend viewing minutes 18 - 22 (approximately).

MOOC Credentials You Can Earn and A Learner Review Site

Open Culture is such a fabulous source for free diversion and learning—films, interviews, reads. And courses.

In addition to the 650 free courses listed there, on Friday they shared a list of 200 more courses known as as MOOCS, with information about types of credentials offered as part of the learning experience: http://www.openculture.com/free_certificate_courses:

Free Courses Credential Key


CC = Certificate of Completion


SA  = Statement of Accomplishment


CM = Certificate of Mastery


C-VA = Certificate, with Varied Levels of Accomplishment


NI – No Information About Certificate Available


NC = No Certificate

Also helpful was the list of course that have start dates, and those that don’t. So the list can be viewed 

by month, with ongoing enrollments to the “evergreen” courses appearing at the bottom. While these completion credentials are not college credits, such credentials may offer a bridge for those evaluating courses for the assignment of college credit.

After looking at the Open Culture list, I went off in search of MOOC review sites and found http://coursetalk.org. Platform, number of reviews, ratings, and individual remarks about the course experience are included. In testing the site, I took a title on statistics from the Open Culture list and popped it into the search window of coursetalk—here are the results for this course to date: http://coursetalk.org/intro-to-statistics-st101-udacity. I also looked at one on business operations from the business category of courstalk; this one had 73 very-satisfied reviewers: http://coursetalk.org/an-introduction-to-operations-management-penn

In looking at ratings in the review site, we see the value of the courses for learners in the workplace as well as learners who might have a more academic reason for enrolling in the courses.

Responding to Another Article About MOOCS

My Friend and Colleague Bob Cartelli sent this item about MOOCS over this morning from the Harvard Business Review: "Eight Brilliant Minds on the Future of Online Education"

 We are just discussing commenting on blogs in one of the online courses I teach this term. Though I tend to stay on the low-profile side, today I stepped into the comment area of that particular blog. I keep looking for some key questions to surface in the discussion about who will accept successful MOOC completion as course credit, what will be the cost of higher level assessment activities, and how students will be oriented and supported for MOOC success.

Probably what I might have established was how long I've been in online education and that some of these questions are certainly not new, they just haven't been addressed with MOOCS yet.
And if I'm uninformed, I hope to hear differently :).

 Cross-Posted Comment:

People attend higher ed for the sake of learning, to acquire social networks, and to gain employment skills. Self-directed learners have had mechanisms available to them under Credit for Prior Learning Assessments that translate the learning to credits at a given institution: Standardized tests like CLEP, challenge exams, and portfolio documentation.

 With MOOC as a viable addition, it remains to be seen which institutions will take a successful MOOC completion in transfer. Yes, I could gain the knowledge from MOOC and use that with one of the other PLA mechanisms, but the outright acceptance for credit is a different question. So beyond the learning, transfer, transcripts and credentialing are important issues. Additionally, some learning outcomes need more sophisticated assessment measures--who will provide that service at an institution and at what cost? Yes, we have TA's and yes, we have graders, and MOOC may well need those too.

 I understand that some higher models are currently in play and under study. I hope they will also look at who is successful, and how students are oriented and supported with such a model.

 PS. I have participated in two MOOCs and was mildly successful in one one them :).

Conference Proposals: Curation or Personal Learning Environment

As we think about conferences we plan to attend, it's not uncommon to think about what you will propose based on the themes listed in the call.

I'm looking at my favorite E-Learning conference right now and thinking about two topics, constructing personal learning environments and tools for curation.  Tools for the pedagogy is the emphasis at the ELCC conference.

I think a session on Personal Learning Environments would be a lot of fun and have significance because metacognition continues to be so important.I am thinking I could define PLE's formal and informal elements, mention how a particular learning goal defines the PLE, give examples and let participants create his or her own PLE diagram in the session. I recently created this as an assignment for a course and created a rubric as well, so I've done some of the background work already.

As for curation, I'm interested in the tools but also the best practices for curation. This stems from my long engagement with teaching academic citation skills and citation for presentations. So my own question is how do we teach students about attribution with the new curation tools.

Sharing with peers is the opportunity to learn more about the topic you're picking. As I think about my ideas about curation, I did a search on the terms "best apps for curation in higher ed" and found this very nice presentation--so, for starters, I'm sharing that here, and want to say thanks to Dr. Amy Antonio, Neil Martin, and Adrian Stagg who presented this at an Australian conference:

Engaging higher education tools via digital curation from ADFI_USQ