Hapgood

Mike Caulfield's latest web incarnation. Networked Learning, Open Education, and Online Digital Literacy

  • Is the “Distributed Flip” part of the “Great Rebranding”?

    Stephen Downes had mentioned in a post a while back that the “distributed flip, advanced as this Great New Thing, is the connectivist model of MOOCs, but with small-group in-person attached..” The shift to the term was portrayed as part of (as the title indicates) the “Great Rebranding”, a move to assimilate MOOCs into an Continue reading

  • Community College Is the Disruptor That Is Here Today

    I’ve been trying to write this post since February, and each time it spirals out of control. So here’s an attempt to barrel through and tell it plain. “Disruptive Technology” used to mean something. It’s actually defined, in a book-length tome, by Clayton Christensen in the mid-90s. And it’s definition hinges on a set of Continue reading

  • Distributed Flips, Pacing, and MOOCs as OCW

    Article in the NY Times today, detailing more distributed flips. What I find interesting is this paragraph: The blended course, teaching Python computer programming, is being tried at both Bunker Hill and MassBay Community College, but at different paces. The Bunker Hill class moves slowly, taking two weeks on each week of M.I.T. material. MassBay, Continue reading

  • I Have a Research Question About MOOCs That Your Elite Institution Can Answer in Under an Hour

    I’ve been really curious about how much (and in what way) xMOOC students use forums.    And I can’t find any good data on it. Not even a “per capita visits to forum” number. This is pretty suboptimal for the field, since one of the main advantages of MOOCs often presented is the conversation they allow Continue reading

  • Peak Demo is Real

    I’ve known (ever since my own short stint in higher education marketing) that the demographics of the U.S. are a bit dismal from here on out. The situation, which I’ve jokingly referred to as “Peak Demo”, is that most growth in higher education has been funded by the 17-24 year old set, and that demographic Continue reading

  • Thank you, Cathy

    From Cathy Davidson’s announcement of her new MOOC on the History and Future of Higher Education: It makes me sad that, at a time of educational crisis, the ideas seem all to be coming from elite private schools (i.e. schools that do not need to change their base), from corporations (some of which have motives of public Continue reading

  • The Bloat

    Last night, shortly after falling asleep, I had bizarre dreams, dreams likely created out of the post Brian put up, a post largely about whether institutions block social progress or facilitate it. Dreams aren’t really interesting to read on paper, so I’ll spare you the imagery. But the subject of bloat kept coming up. All Continue reading

  • Intro Psych OOC Rolls On Without Me

    Got a note from Larry Welkowitz, who is teaching the Canvas.net MOOC we were putting together when I left. They haven’t got through QA yet (Canvas.net has a course QA process), but Larry recorded his Hello video: Larry is going to be excellent. You already see that here — he wants to shoot outside for Continue reading

  • Introducing the “Distributed Flip”

    So I think with the recent San Jose State news people may finally start to pay attention to the use of MOOCs and MOOC-like things to support blended learning, a match-up we’ve been supporting here for a while. Good, and glad to see it. Although there is still this pesky little issue of what to Continue reading

  • OER as Snapshot vs. OER as “Runnable Code”

    Today I was reading Pamela Fox’s blog post about discussions inside Coursera on whether they want to open up their code. It’s a thoughtful treatment of the subject, and contains I think a nice discussion of some of the hidden costs of going the open source route. It’s great to see engineers at Coursera thinking about this (see, Continue reading