“The augmented learner, sporting a MOOC helmet” (Sara Roegiers CC-BY-SA)

News and opinion pieces about MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) continue to fuel an ongoing discussion with a group of colleagues who have been following the development of these innovative courses. Two recent articles that have attracted attention and comments are “Massive (But Not Open)” (Ry Rivard, Inside Higher Education, May 14, 2013) and “Laptop U: Has the future of college moved online?” (Nathan Heller, The New Yorker, May 20 2013).

“Massive (But Not Open)” reports on the Georgia Institute of Technology’s plan to offer a $7,000 Masters degree in Computer Science to 10,000 students. Working in collaboration with Sebastian Thrun’s Udacity MOOC platform Georgia Tech hopes to teach these fee-paying students by adding only a handful of additional academics, demonstrating the impressive economies of scale of that are possible with this approach. Up until recently, MOOCs have been both open access and free of charge and have not been seen as a threat to the bottom line of traditional institutions of higher education. Initiatives like this that experiment with new business models might cause some concern for university administrators who believed they could afford to ignore the MOOC phenomenon.

Sebastian Thrun’s comment, that  ”Udacity was nothing more than a “megaphone” for Georgia Tech” says a lot about Udacity’s version of the MOOC, and it reminded me of William W. Fisher III’s critique in the “Laptop U” article:

Two features that can be found in most of this recent wave of online courses are: first, what could be described variously as the ‘guru on the mountaintop,’ or the ‘broadcast model,’ or the ‘one-to-many model,’ or the ‘TV model,’ ” he said. . . . “The basic idea here is that an expert in the field speaks to the masses, who absorb his or her wisdom. The second feature is that, to the extent that learning requires some degree of interactivity, that interactivity is channelled into formats that require automated or right-and-wrong answers.

Although a bigger megaphone allows for larger scale and reach, we are still stuck in the broadcast model here. Other areas of activity are undergoing a paradigm shift from Push (broadcast) to Pull (accessing an archive) to Co-create (collaborative production). This arrises from changing ideas about knowledge and value creation and the advantages of open practices as much as from digital technologies and networks. We have yet to explore what this could mean for higher education.

Fisher’s hybrid CopyrightX course, described at the end of the “Laptop U“ article, looks like a more interesting model that mixes online and offline activity and involves interactivity with a “live” element. Peter K. Bol’s “Chinese History 185: Creating ChinaX” looks like another worthwhile experiment. In this course, students are involved in building a MOOC. The author refers to Bol’s interest in “open-access scholarship”.

As in publishing, we need to pay close attention to the use of terms like “Open” and “Open-Access” in teaching. What does “Open Scholarship” mean? What values and goals might inform the work of an “Open Scholar”? Why would an academic choose Open approaches to teaching, research and publishing? Are we ready for a paradigm shift in higher education?

In “The Digital Scholar: How Technology Is Transforming Scholarly Practice“, Martin Weller devotes a chapter to “Openness in Education” and provides a helpful overview of how digital technology is enabling the practice of “Open Scholarship” in research, teaching, and publishing (the book is covered by a CC-BY-NC licence and can be read for free online). I came across his work in Change11, a Connectivist MOOC run by Stephen Downes and George Siemens in 2011.

I attended a screening of the “Design & Thinking” documentary (2012) at the Otago Museum yesterday evening. The free screening was organised and supported by the Otago Polytechnic School of Design and Wellington company, Empathy (check out their website and you can see the connection with the message of the film). The documentary, which is promoted through a Website and a Facebook page, consists of a collage of edited interviews with high profile designers, design educators, business leaders, small business innovators, and social entrepreneurs. The ideas presented by Tim Brown and David Kelley, who are well-known through their association with the design firm IDEO and Stanford’s d school, will be familiar to most design practitioners, educators and students. Stories about less well known people and projects provide concrete examples of the benefits of linking design, business, and social innovation. The documentary raises the profile of design as a discipline that is increasingly concerned with wicked problems that are best addressed through the collaborative efforts of people from different disciplinary backgrounds.

The filmmakers, Yang, Melissa, Mu-Ming Tsai and Iris, formed One Time Studio and funded the film personally before raising $18,645 through Kickstarter.com, a crowd funding platform. Others are using Kickstarter to raise money for local screenings. It is impressive to see what they accomplished with such limited funds (a product of design thinking, I’m sure). This is a documentary worth seeing, and New Zealanders have an opportunity to see this film and related documentaries during the Resene Architecture and Design Film Festival 2013.

Open/Closed by Antti T. Nissinen CC-BY

“Open Research” is about removing barriers for society to benefit from research, by ensuring open access to and reuse of research papers, data, materials, metadata and code, and by developing the supporting practices and policies (from the Tasman Declaration).

On On 6-7 February 2013 I joined a group of about 60 researchers, students, librarians, lawyers, technology consultants and software developers who met in Auckland for the first New Zealand  Australian Open Research conference. In a mix of formal talks, panel discussions, informal meetings, and dinner (of course), participants discussed the advantages of Open Research, especially in the sciences (reflecting the expertise of the organisers and many attendees). You can get an idea of the topics that were covered by scanning the schedule for Day 1 and Day 2. There was an active Twitter Stream during the event (#NZAUOR) and collaborative notes are available online. Following the gathering, a core group drafted the Tasman Declaration on Open Research, which you are encouraged to sign. You can also follow the ongoing discussion on Twitter (@NZAUOpenRes). For more about the conference and declaration, see creativecommons.org.nz.

As the conference website explains, Open Research is about “taking the secrecy out of science,” increasing collaboration, reducing the cost of research, and maximising the benefit of research by enabling the sharing and re-use of data. This approach is consistent with other New Zealand initiatives, such as NZGOAL, the government’s “open access and open licensing framework that promotes the release for re-use of non-personal copyright works and non-copyright material held by State Services agencies”, and data.govt.nz, a directory of publicly-available datasets held by the New Zealand government.

All my Bags are Packed (Photo: Mark McGuire, CC-BY)

On 12 October, I flew out of Dunedin, New Zealand, headed for a conference in Vancouver (Open Education 2012). As I waited for the plane to board, I flicked through the stream of images from people whose work I follow on Instagram, a photo sharing/social media service (Facebook purchased Instagram for $1bn back in April 2012). As well as sharing photos with my Twitter followers, I noticed that it is now also possible to sent a photo to a Tumblr blog, as well as t0 Facebook, Flickr, foursquare, and to any email address. I hadn’t used Tumblr for a long time, but I thought I would be a good idea to collect and archive my Instagram photos on a Website set up specifically for the purpose. So, I quickly created Marks McGuire’s Journey (not very original, I know), and snapped a photo of the plane that I would momentarily board, which I used to illustrate this post. My intention is to use this blog only for the photos that I take during my one-month trip to Vancouver, Manchester, London, Toronto, Wellington, and home again to Dunedin. I added one further constraint — the captions would all be in the form of a haiku (three lines of five, seven, and five syllables). As I write this post, I am ten days and about 60 instagrams into my journey.

Monsters with teeth by Cubby CC-BY-NC-SA

Hybrid Pedagogy‘s week-long #MOOCMOOC (a MOOC about MOOCS — Massive Open Online Courses) is finishing today. The organizers provided a plan for each day, which included readings, other resources and suggested activities. They also created a handy dashboard where we could see the stream of announcements, Twitter messages and blog posts. I contributed to a collaborative 1,000 word Google doc (“A MOOC by Any Other Name“) with 52 others, and I participated in the Twitter discussion by following the #MOOCMOOC hashtag. On Tuesday, we were asked to create a short video that responded to the question: “Where does learning happen?”. I started by writing down some thoughts, but I didn’t manage to finish a video. In the end, I thought the words (pasted below) were enough. It will take me a while to wade through the many twitter messages, blog posts and other online documents that resulted from the MOOC MOOC. Already, participants are collating and curating their thoughts and the work of others who this course enabled them to connect to. A summary of MOOCMOOC stories has already been posted. I’m looking forward to my next MOOC, which will likely be #CFHE12 (Current/Future State of Higher Education). This course will run from October 8 to November 18. Like the best (Connectivist) MOOCs, it will be Open, and it will attract open-minded people.

.

Where Learning Happens

It can happen out in public places

alleyways and funny spaces

underneath and in between

locations where you’ve never been

before.

.

It can happen on an airplane

at 30,000 feet above the ground

you’ve found the person sitting

next to you has lived the life you

might have.

.

It can happen walking down the street

you meet someone you haven’t seen

in ages who tells you

everything

before the light changes.

.

It can happen in mid sentence when

you interrupt the program for

a message

from one sponsor

or another.

.

It can happen at a party

once I met a guy who told me how

sub atomic particles romance

with partners rooms away

that made my day.

.

It can happen in a pub

an angel at the bar sharing whisky

while a stranger tells

a history of the world

in six glasses.

.

It can happen when you go to bed

and in your head you find

an alleyway at 30,000 feet

where faster than light neutrinos are

dancing the night away.

.

And it all makes sense.

Abstract

If we think of OERs as we think of physical artifacts, we might focus on their design, production, storage and distribution. We could quantify their number, calculate their popularity, and track their use. However, in open, distributed, networked learning environments, the emphasis is not be on the resources but on the engagement between participants who create, use, modify, and share experiences. Resources can be used to prompt and fuel conversations, and the results of one conversation can be saved and used as fuel for another, but it is the way in which they are created and used that determines their effectiveness in learning contexts. In this talk, I will use examples from several open courses to explore the nature of digital resources and discuss how they are used to enable constructive engagements between networked learners. I suggest that, although appropriate resources are an important part of the learning process, we need to pay more attention to the design of the structures and networks in which they are generated and circulated.

Audio Recording (19 Minutes)

You can download a PDF of these slides by clicking on the link below.

OER- It’s not the artifact, it’s the process (Mark McGuire)

“Technology News” Balmacewen Intermediate School Newsletter No 3 May 2012 p. 5

In their eagerness to cut costs in their recent budget, regardless of the effects, the governing National Party made a serious blunder. Aside from a complete lack of vision and leadership, they are trying to argue that increasing class sizes and eliminating specialist technology teachers will improve the quality of education for young New Zealanders.

In a press release from the New Zealand Association of Intermediate Schools, association President and Principal of Pukekohe Intermediate School, Gary Sweeney, reported that more than 300 intermediate school teachers could lose their jobs next year. These are experienced specialists who teach cooking, sewing, art, ICT, woodwork and metalwork. Following an avalanche of complaints from teachers, principals and parents, the government set up a working party in an attempt to deflect some of the criticism. Radio New Zealand continues to follow the story, reporting on the working party yesterday (Monday, 28 May), and, this morning (Tuesday, 29 May), on the Government’s effort to backtrack due to the unintended consequences of spreadsheet decision making.

It is very hard to see how increasing class sizes and eliminating specialist technology teachers can possibly improve the quality of education. The government may well have realized that they have made a mistake. The question now is whether they are able to correct it. The ability to learn from our mistakes, and to correct them, is one of the fundamental skills that we learn at school. Let’s see if our political leaders have learned this lesson.

Last night, I sent the following email to Mr Andrew Hunter, the principal of Balmacewen Intermediate School, where one of my two sons is a student.

Dear Mr Hunter

As a parent and academic in Applied Sciences, I am shocked to hear that the government is planning to cut the funding that currently supports the teaching of technology to Year 7 and 8 students in New Zealand. Removing specialist, experienced teachers in Art, Food, Fabric and Workshop Technology clearly undermines the government’s stated objective of encouraging more students to pursue a career in science and technology. Furthermore, it will limit the ability of schools to expose young learners to the broad range of disciplines and experiences that enables them to develop as a whole person.

By offering well-supported, hands-on teaching in technology subjects, intermediate schools support a thoughtful engagement with the world of physical materials, as well as with the world of ideas. They encourage students to extend the capabilities of their hands as well as their mind at a formative stage in their development. Understanding the properties and potentials of materials is crucial to design thinking, problem solving, product innovation, and creative expression.

We need creative problem solvers who can navigate and operate within an increasingly complex and unpredictable world. Intermediate schools play a crucial role in helping young students realize their potential as well-rounded, well-educated, multi-talented individuals and citizens. By reducing the capacity of intermediate schools to do what they do best, this ill conceived cost-cutting measure undermines not only the education of our youth, but also the future of our society.

Best regards,

Mark

Dr Mark McGuire
Senior Lecturer, Department of Applied Sciences
University of Otago

edX Press Conference

Several high profile open course initiatives have attracted a lot of attention in recent months. These include Stanford Engineering Everywhere, (especially Sebastian Thrun’s popular Artificial Intelligence course), Udacity (Thrun’s Internet start-up), MITx, Coursera (Princeton, Stanford, Michigan and Pennsylvania) and now  edX, a collaboration between MIT and Harvard. Class Central lists 53 ongoing or upcoming open courses from these universities. Clearly, collaborations between several institutions, and between traditional universities and private providers, is an incresing trend.

The following is from MIT News (2 May 2012):

“Online edX courses will open both universities’ classrooms to the world while enhancing on-campus learning”.

“MIT President Susan Hockfield and Harvard University President Drew Faust, accompanied by top officials from both institutions, announced on Wednesday a new collaboration that will unite the Cambridge-based universities in an ambitious new partnership to deliver online education to learners anywhere in the world.

The new venture, called edX, will provide interactive classes from both Harvard and MIT — for free — to anyone in the world with an Internet connection. But a key goal of the project, Faust said, is “to enhance the educational experience of students who study in our classrooms and laboratories.”

Continue reading this article here.

A key goal of edX, according to Michael D. Smith, dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, “is researching how technology can improve education, both on campus and off campus.” Other universities should be do more than just follow the news about what happens with these experiments. They should be running experiments of their own — and publishing the results in a way that ensures that they are freely available to the public.

We were asked to upload our slides to Slideshare, and then embed them into the DEANZ conference site, so you can see several DEANZ 2012 presentations in the Slideshare website, where you can also find related slide shows. Unfortunately, the slides (usually a PDF of the screens presented using PowerPoint or Keynote) contain the illustrations and the main points of the talk, but not what the speaker actually said while presenting. I decided to record my talk myself using an audio recorder app on my iPhone, which I simply held while I delivered my talk and advanced the slides. I then uploaded the audio file to Unitube (a digital repository at the University of Otago), and embedded it below (I can’t upload audio files directly to my free WordPress.com account). So, you can view (or download) the slides from this blog or the DEANZ conference site, and you can hear the audio here or on Unitube (where it can also be downloaded). By playing the audio file here, and advancing the embedded slides below on your own, you will have a pretty good seat without leaving this post. I’ve pasted  the urls on all of the Websites that are in this presentation, and by clicking the link, the website will open in a new tab. Comments on this presentation are welcome.

One correction: The originator of ds106 is Jim Groom. You can hear him talk about this very creative open course in a YouTube video recording of a talk he gave as part of cmc11 (another wonderful open course). Jim has a terrific blog, and he’s collected links to several of his presentations. If you want to hear a passionate presentation about why he has pushed the boundaries with ds106, watch the keynote that he presented at the Open Education 2011 Conference.

Another correction: The link on slide #33 takes you to the Coursera site instead of to the Connected Learning info graphic, which can be found here. Thanks to Brainysmurf (an open course colleague) for Connecting the Dots.

Audio recording of my DEANZ 2012 conference presentation (30 min. 45 sec.):

Abstract

In business, social media, and other aspects of contemporary society, we can trace the shift in models of production, delivery, and consumption from Push (broadcast) to Pull (download) to Share (co-create). Similarly, we are beginning to see new models of provision emerging in higher education. As Curtis Bonk points out in The World is Open: How Technology is Revolutionizing Education, in theory, “[a]nyone can now learn anything from anyone at anytime” (2009). Martin Wellers is one of an increasing numbers of academics that are promoting the benefits of open, digital scholarship (2011). However, rather than transforming how courses are designed and delivered, most institutions of higher learning are using information technology in a limited way, to enhance traditional classroom teaching (Bates, A. W. T., Sangra, A. 2011). Although institutional structures and practices may be resistant to change, innovative individuals and institutions have developed “open” strategies that provide models for others to follow.

For several years, coordinators of OOCs (Open Online Courses) and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have made use of network technologies to leverage the wisdom of the crowd and to amplify the reach of tertiary courses for both credit and non-credit students (de Waard et al., 2011; Kop, Fornier, & Sui Fai Mak, 2011). More recently, Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE) and MIT’s MITx, have demonstrated how traditional, formal learning for a limited number of fee-paying students can support informal learning for a much larger number of off-campus participants for free. In this paper, I discuss recent research relating to open education and report on my experience as a non-credit participant in several open courses. I discuss recent initiatives by Stanford and MIT and reflect on the potential of Open strategies for traditional tertiary institutions.

References

- Bates, A. W. T., & Sangra, A. (2011). Managing Technology in Higher Education: Strategies for Transforming Teaching and Learning: Jossey-Bass.

- Bonk, C. J. (2009). The World is Open: How Technology is Revolutionizing Education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

- de Waard, I., Abajian, S., Gallagher, M. S., Hogue, R., Keskin, N., Koutropoulos, A.,(2011). Using mLearning and MOOCs to understand chaos, emergence, and complexity in education. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12(7), 94-115.

- Kop, R., Fournier, H., & Sui Fai Mak, J. (2011). A pedagogy of abundance or a pedagogy to support human beings? Participant support on massive open online courses. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12(7), 74-93.

- Weller, M. (2011). The Digital Scholar: Bloomsbury Academic.