Monthly Archives: November 2012

A Practical (and Real) Question About CC-NC

The oer-community list is still buzzing about whether CC-NC is a good thing for openness or not. I thought I might ask a question that gives the conversation context and actually is a question that I am truly considering at … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

A Perfect Term Paper Assignment from Kurt Vonnegut

Today, Slate republished a term paper assignment Kurt Vonnegut gave his students. Ds106ers and long-time cMOOCers will immediately note that his assignment style (assignments were were done as letters to his students) mimics elements of course blogging. Others will just … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Introducing the Feed-Forward xMOOC (Intro Psych Edition)

Flickr: Gamma Man What is the Feed-forward xMOOC?  The Feed-forward xMOOC is a pretty simple concept. Take existing OER and OCW. Put it in an LMS framework, adding small quizzes, in-video questions, reading assignments, discussion questions, peer assessments. Set it up on a … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Residential Online is the Future of Your Institution (2tor Edition)

Although, I think we might start calling it “campus-based” online. In any case: A group of 10 highly selective colleges has formed a consortium to offer online courses that students enrolled at any of the campuses can take for credit. … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Clay Shirky says xMOOCs = OCW + Cohorts

From a Clay Shirky comment on his post on xMOOCs: The thing that seems to me to differentiate MOOCs from iTunes U and other ‘Access to the lecture’ platforms is the linking of the idea of a course that takes … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

OER and Iterative Improvement

Talk about being misunderstood. The above worksheet, on which students were asked to assign certain activities to different genders, made the Facebook rounds recently, providing both liberals and teacher-bashers with their necessary Two Minutes Hate. Obviously, the worksheet is a … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Coursera praises MOOC-wrapping as they attempt to ban it

If believe that OER reuse could save education, and  you’re looking for a reason for your institution to NOT sign up with Coursera, I guess it’s this, from their terms of use: ““You may not take any Online Course offered by … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

How Coursera Could Walk the Talk About MOOC-wrapping

Daphne Koller, co-founder of Coursera, wrote an article in Forbes this week about the possibility of MOOC-wrapping and mixed models of online/traditional delivery that incorporate free globally offered online courses. I’m glad they are looking at this. I’ve been talking … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Who is accountable at Coursera?

Coursera wants to be the Google of the education world. You can’t complain about your email if the email is free, right? And the same thing holds true with their courses. So when things like this happen in the course … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Unbundling vs. Embedding: Approaches to reuse of integrated course objects

For a long time we have talked about the great unbundling. Roughly stated, a college course consists of content, some activity around that content, and some credit/assessment. Using terms from Matheos and Siemens we can talk about Content, Interaction, and … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments