Hapgood

The Psych 101 MIXABLE MOOC is coming along. As I’ve moved forward on some of the design elements a general template of a module has developed, somewhat organically: Learning Objectives, Readings, Video Lectures & Mini-quizzes, Interleaf/Interleaves, Community. Here’s a screen shot of the introductory module: Threads (which I have composed of these “interleaves” — is… Continue reading

From David Kernohan’s excellent Clay Shirky is our MP3: The problem Higher Education does face is that it is a marketplace when it doesn’t need to be. We spend billions of dollars forcing universities to compete without any evidence whatsoever that this leads to a better or cheaper product. We spend more on HE than… Continue reading

Flurry of anti-MOOC, anti-Cousera columns in the Chronicle recently, many fairly well thought out. Doug Guthrie thinks the real direction should be not cohorts, but customized learning (he doesn’t deal much with the mixed history of programmed instruction, but OK). Cathy Davidson argues (I think rightly) that the real future of this stuff has to… Continue reading

Some notes on where I am with MOOC-wrapping right now (with thanks to Amy, Sue, Melinda and everyone else I’ve been bouncing ideas off of). Right-sizing the wrappable MOOC My first thought was that a MOOC designed to be wrapped would be best specified at something under the target credits of the course as a… Continue reading

I got this email today:   I’m not sure what opinion I have about it, but it’s yet another interesting difference between xMOOCs and cMOOCs. If you wanted to go to CCK09, an early cMOOC, it’s still there, open to everybody, both in Wikiversity and a Moodle site, and, of course, distributed across the web.… Continue reading

My old Provost, who is now Chancellor at Washington State University at Vancouver, gave a speech yesterday which contained a paragraph that should be, I think, in every state university leader’s speeches this year. Talking about MOOC-proliferation, he says: “And it’s not just that we will compete with alternative delivery methods. As an institution that… Continue reading

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 this moment. Background I’ve been interested in hybrid MOOC/F2F designs for a long while. Initially… Continue reading

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 be reminded of how much they miss his prose voice and the sort of sensitive… Continue reading

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 schedule, serialized week-to-week like an ordinary course. Then let people use it, for whatever they… Continue reading

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. The group, which includes Wake Forest and Brandeis Universities, will offer semester-long online courses using… Continue reading