MOOC Fellowship
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been recently gaining a lot of attention and publicity. We have seen different MOOC models evolve based on different underpinnings and motivations (e.g. cMOOC vs.xMOOC) and different stakeholders earmarking their positions in the MOOC universe (e.g. higher education, non profit, for profit and venture capital). The MOOC idea seems to be becoming part of the new global learning culture with pioneer projects from Canada & USA spurring related initiatives in other parts of the world (e.g. #OPCO12 or #MMC13 in Germany). The MOOC Production Fellowship contest initiated in Berlin (Germany), follows this international trend:
“The contest seeks to identify ten innovative concepts for massive open online courses (MOOCs). Fellows will receive funding as well as assistance with course production. Stifterverband and iversity hope to raise awareness for the tremendous potential of digital technology in education and seek to activate a process of creative adaptation within the academic community.”
To me this seems be a great opportunity to embed the MOOC idea in existing university structures, at the same time opening doors to participants from around the world and bringing together students, practitioners and experts. I have invited colleagues from Sweden - Rick Middel (University of Gothenburg) and Bert-Ola Bergstrand (Socialt Capital Forum NGO) to join forces in a cross-national collaboration dedicated to Digital Economy and Social Innovation, in this way combining expertise to create a transdisciplinary MOOC.
The “Digital Economy and Social Innovation” MOOC addresses several topics, among others:
- Defining digital economy, social innovation, social entrepreneurship and sustainability.
- Understanding new models of digital economy and sustainable social change.
- Building capacity and social relations for social innovation in the digital economy.
- Organizing and funding social innovation, measuring social impact.
- Growth and scaling social ventures, bottom of the pyramid.
- Current research on digital economy and social innovation.
Our collaboration is based on the “bridging concept”, i.e. bridging between (i) learning contexts (especially between formal learning in higher education and informal learning in global networks); (ii) learning input (especially between theoretical input coming from university professors and input from the field coming from social innovation practitioners); (iii) course participants (enhancing interaction between higher education professors and students and practitioners to get involved in social innovation in digital economy).
You can find out more about our MOOC idea on the submission page. If you like it, give us your “vote”. As the contest is based on the public voting, the courses with most votes “win”. Thank you for supporting us!
Here is our intro video:
Wikipedia-Diversity
Wikipedia-Diversity is a new collaboration between Wikimedia Germany and Gender & Technology Center at Beuth University, dedicated to promoting diversity in Wikipedia. We have just started in February and are starting off with an interdisciplinary research team bringing in expertise from pedagogy, psychology, sociology and culture studies. The topic is super interesting and the team truly dedicated so I am really glad to lead this project. Our first common paper describing the approach was accepted for the eSociety Conference 2013 and I enjoyed presenting and discussing with the eSociety community in March (presentation below). Our approach is based on transdisciplinary principles (as we intend to utilise approaches from various disciplines to find best possible solutions) and on the principles of open innovation (as we intend to support the sharing of ideas, skills and resources from inside-out and outside-in). We are now prioritising the common goals for the overall strategy and the milestones for the first year of the project. This summer semester I will be also working with my students in the course “Media Didactics and Learning Design” at Beuth University on designing digital learning materials addressing specific aspects related to fostering diversity. It is a very exciting phase and I just can’t stop thinking about solutions and ideas.
- If you know of some inspiring approaches that may be relevant for our project, please let me know!
- If you are interested to find out more, I am curating resources on ScoopIt: Wikipedia-Diversity on Scoop it
- If you want to read in German, here is the project website (under construction): WiDi project website
Personal Learning Environments – measuring the impact
Just recently a Tweet by @mkalz appeared in the #PLECONF Twitter stream:
The PLE idea will die without impact studies. #pleconf
As much as I agree that we need impact studies, we all know that measuring impact in general is all but straightforward: How do measure the impact of PLEs? And the impact on what/who – the learner? the learning process? the learning outcomes? the peers? the teachers? the system the learner operates in? What dimensions and criteria are appropriate? Certainly, we have to start with the goals we want to reach when designing and implementing PLEs or supporting others in doing so in our roles as educators.
A framework that may be useful when designing an impact study, especially when defining and interrelating various dimensions and possible impacts, may be the activity theory triangle that we proposed here:
Buchem, Ilona; Attwell, Graham; Torres, Ricardo (2011). Understanding Personal Learning Environments: Literature review and synthesis through the Activity Theory lens. pp. 1-33. Proceedings of the The PLE Conference 2011, 10th – 12th July 2011, Southampton, UK
The triangle defines the main dimensions of a PLE (subject, object, tools, rules, community and division of labour) and the core attributes of elements in each dimension, which can be contrasted with attributes of other activity systems to reveal potential points for conflicts and clashes.
In an impact study we can focus on all or selected dimensions and apply research methods in order to collect empirical evidence about the attributes of the learning environments as object of our study. For example we could ask questions like:
- Does the learning environment we study promote the feeling of ownership and grants control over its various elements (subject)?
- Does the learning environment promote learning that is based on interest and participation (object)?
- Does the learning environment utilize tools that can be customised by learners to facilitate their individual learning (tools)?
- Does the learning environment employ principles of openness and decentralised distribution of resources (rules)?
- Does the learning environment enable boundary crossing and social support (community)?
- Does the learning environment enable learners to pursue self-directed learning and teachers to facilitate this process (division of labour)?
If we could empirically prove in a study, that a learning environment we are researching does just that, we would have some evidence on possible impact.
Another idea may be to start from the point of view of a “perfect” personal learning environment and take all these attributes from the triangle for granted and so focus on collecting empirical evidence on learning processes and outcomes in such an environment. Maybe we could contrast it with learning in other settings, e.g. in a learning environment, which has different attributes in all or some of the six dimensions in the triangle.
In a research study me and colleagues from different countries are recently preparing and which we are submitting for the PLE Conference 2013: http://pleconf.org/ (BTW: Call for Abstracts is running until 25th March), we combine both perspectives. Based on the survey on the role of ownership and control in context of PLEs which was conducted in 2012 at two universities in Germany (see reference below), we collect empirical evidence on the impact of ownership and control as one of the key elements of a Personal Learning Environment on learning. The original study:
Buchem, Ilona (2012). Psychological Ownership and Personal Learning Environments. Do possession and control really matter? Proceedings of the PLE Conference 2012, 12 July 2012, Aveiro, Portugal. LINK
was rooted in the theory of psychological ownership by Pierce et al. (2001, 2003). The results indicated that control of intangible ePortfolio elements, such as control of content or personal data, is strongly related to the feeling of ownership of one’s own ePortfolio as opposed to the control of tangible elements, such as technical tools. This may mean that learners feel that a learning environment is their own (belongs to them), even if they do not have the full control over technical tools and do not in fact own them. With ownership and control being critical issues in PLEs, the new study will focus on the following question:
What are the effects of the feeling of ownership and control of a learning environment on learning, such as time invested in creating an own PLE, creative uses of media, applying a PLE beyond the boundaries of the original context in which it was created/used. At this time we are collecting survey items with which we could collect evidence on learning effects. We are open to collaboration, so if you would like to join us in this, just let me know!
Personal Learning Environments: Diversity and Divide
This year I am going to attend the Alpine Rendez‐Vous 2013 for the first time. The ARV13 takes place from January, 28 till February, 1st in Villard‐de‐Lans, Vercors, in the French Alps. As the ARVR13 homepage says:
The Alpine Rendez‐Vous (ARV) is a now well established atypical scientific event focused on Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL). (…) One main goal of the Alpine Rendez‐Vous is to bring together researchers from the different scientific communities doing research on Technology‐Enhanced Learning, in a largely informal setting, away from their workplace routines.
This is what I am really looking for – getting away for some time from the daily work and be able to discuss a myriad of fascinating topics with great researchers!
During the first three days I am going to participate in two workshops:
Here is just an abstract of the position paper Graham Attwell and me submitted for Workshop 5: TEL, the Crisis and the Response, which is hosted by Prof. John Traxler.
危机 – wēijī is the Chinese word for “crisis”. It comprises the symbols 危 wēi (danger) and 机 jī (opportunity)
Abstract
In this position paper, we discuss whether current TEL promotes diversity or divide and the current barriers in promoting diversity in TEL. We discuss these issues based on the example of Personal Learning Environments (PLE), which is as an approach to TEL aiming at empowering learners to use diverse technological tools suited to their own needs and connecting with other learners through building Personal Learning Networks. We argue that this approach to TEL promotes diversity through boundary-crossing and responding to the diverse needs and prerequisites that each individual learner brings in. At the same time we discuss how the PLE approach challenges current educational practices and what tensions arise when Personal Learning Environments are implemented in educational institutions.
You can read more here:
Diversity and Divide in TEL: The case for Personal Learning Environments.
Enacting digital identity
When we ask our students to share online -- in a discussion forum within an LMS; in a wiki, course blog, Google Doc or Facebook group; on Twitter or anywhere on the open web -- we are inviting not just online interaction but an enactment of each student's digital identity. Involvement in or resistance to online interaction is largely rooted in ideas and beliefs about identity, privacy, voice, authenticity and power.
MOOC: "Educación Digital del Futuro"
I'm glad you inform you that you can now register to the Massive Open Online Course "Educación Digital del Futuro" that we are preparing at the MiriadaX platform.
In this course we will discuss about the most hottest topics in the field of Technology Enhanced Learning: Human Computer Interaction in digital learning environments, the future of online learning - from Learning Management Systems to MOOCs - and the last advances in…
My blog: 2012 in review
You probably got yours too already. Here is an excerpt from the WordPress.com 2012 annual report for my blog (interesting idea to put it this way):
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 9,900 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 17 years to get that many views.
Click here to see the complete report.
