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27 février 2019

Course Sprint Creative Commons

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Course Sprint Creative Commons
Stephen Downes, Billy Meinke, YouTube, February 15, 2013
Informal online chat I had with Billy Meinke, from Creative Commons, on the course he's developing on open scientific data (I mentioned the course in a post a few days ago, here). We talked about some of the mechanics of setting up an open course, how an open course would use open data, the role of badges in a course, and issues related to managing an open online course. I think people interested in starting their own MOOCs will find this discussion useful.

[Link] [Comment]. More...

27 février 2019

The MOOCs that ate themselves

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The MOOCs that ate themselves
Martin Weller, The Ed Techie, February 15, 2013
Martin Weller outlines "quite a depressing scenario" that may unfold as MOOCs follow invaiably the part set out by Coursera and the rest of them (I don't think that will happen - but that's a separate story):

  • They become unsustainable - a good MOOC is so expensive to put on that it simply isn't worth doing. You're providing it for free after all.
  • Only elite institutions offer them - given the expense, only those institutions who have the money, or the skills to produce broadcast quality content will provide them.
  • They are conservative - as Georgia Tech found, it's better not to try anything risky or innovative, because the cost of failure is too great.
  • MOOC failure will be costly - if you fail publicly and damage your own, and your institution's reputation, don't expect them to give you promotion. So why risk it?

I agree this would be depressing - but I think what's happening is that after this first burst of MOOCs using these (quickly built) platforms, we are seeing an unveiling of many more MOOCs on any number of different platforms. More...

27 février 2019

A Few Thoughts on MOOC Credit (and “Life” credit)

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Few Thoughts on MOOC Credit (and “Life” credit)
Steven D. Krause, stevendkrause.com, February 15, 2013
I got into this discussion about badges with Billy Meinke today (see the link to the video below) and one of the comments I made is that, with the sort of MOOCs I'm thinking about, your contributions are your badges. But it raises the whole question of credentialing and assessment in general. More...

27 février 2019

Estonian Schools to Teach Computer-Based Math

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Estonian Schools to Teach Computer-Based Math
Ben Rooney, Tech Europe, February 13, 2013
Overtly this item is about using softare to teach math in schools in Estonia. But it is also about refocusing math instruction from solving problems in quadratic equations to applied statistics. I get the reasoning - the idea is to shift from mathematical calculation to framing and situating math problems in real life. More...

27 février 2019

Jalopnik reboot hints at new era for Gawker where readers become writers

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jalopnik reboot hints at new era for Gawker where readers become writers
Tim Carmody, The Verge, February 13, 2013
One of my long-time objectives is realized in this development. It has always seems to me that comments on webstes, along with things like posts on discussion lists, should become blog posts in their own right. More...

27 février 2019

Dangerous Curves

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Dangerous Curves
Zack Budryk, Inside Higher Ed, February 13, 2013
Sometimes your students are not only smarter than you imagine, they are smarter than you can imagine. "Professor Peter Fröhlich has maintained a grading curve in which each class’s highest grade on the final counts as an A... [students] decided to test the limits of the policy, and collectively planned to boycott the final. Because they all did, a zero was the highest score in each of the three classes, which, by the rules of Fröhlich’s curve, meant every student received an A." Fröhlich was forced to honour the grades. More...

27 février 2019

The business of MOOCs: how to profit from giving away something for nothing

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The business of MOOCs: how to profit from giving away something for nothing
David Glance, The Conversation, February 13, 2013
The discussion in the comments is much more emlightening than the article itself, which is essentially a restatement of how to profit from giving something away for free, with references to online music, news, etc. - the presumption that online learning should somehow be 'sustainable' is itself never questioned. More...

27 février 2019

Visualizing the community neocortex

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Visualizing the community neocortex
Fred Bartels, Icl - Meta MOOC Explorations, February 18, 2013
Interesting 'meta MOOC' community created by Fred Bartels and an interesting diagram (above) capturing nicely the model of MOOCs as I see them (the people working in neural networks and connectionism will recognize it as a perceptual system, which is exactly what I think MOOCs are). More...

27 février 2019

T3S1: Digital Literacies with Dr. Doug Belshaw

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. T3S1: Digital Literacies with Dr. Doug Belshaw
Doug Belshaw, Slideshare, February 18, 2013
Good set of slides from a Doug Belshaw presentation to #etmooc on Monday (hard to gauge the exact time - the schedule says "all times eastern" but then posts times inside a Google Calendar, which automatically corrects time zones). More...

27 février 2019

Posterous will turn off on April 30

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Posterous will turn off on April 30
Sachin Agarwal, The Official Posterous Space, February 18, 2013
From where I sit, the good people at Twitter have changed their minds about a "vision for making sharing simpler," as Posterous staff claimed when the former acquired the latter last March. Now comes the world that Twitter is shutting down Posterous. More...

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