Free course on teaching connected #online courses

Thanks to the wonderful Maha Bali, I was pointed towards a really nice initiative that allows everyone with an interest to learn how to set up, facilitate and experience an online, connected course (cfr connected-MOOCs). This initiative is called the Connected Courses Initiative, and will introduce active co-learning in higher ed. There is a wonderful bunch of intelligent, kind and creative people at the helm (look at that awesome list of online learning gurus! - I mean the list is simply mind baffling!), all with loads of experience and insight in the matter, so this looks like an exceptional chance to deepen, strengthen or simply explore the idea and the actions related to connected learning. 

There is an introduction on the 2nd of September, and the first (online and free) unit starts on 15 September 2014... it looks like fun. 

The course runs from September to December 2014 and has 6 units all focusing on another - very well tested - online connected learning feature.  

Some words of the organisers (with useful links):

We invite you to participate in a free open online learning experience designed to get you ready to teach open, connected courses no matter what kind of institution you’re working in. We’ll explore how openness and collaboration can improve your practice and help you develop new, open approaches.

You can mix and match — take one unit or take them all, and go at your own pace. You’ll be joined by other participants from around the world who are looking to:

• get hands-on with the tools of openness;
• create open educational resources, curriculum and teaching activities and get feedback from a community of your peers; and
• connect with and learn alongside other faculty, educators and technologists.

Sign up and receive updates from the organizers. Everyone is welcome, and no experience is required. We will all learn together in this free and fun opportunity to start planning your own connected course. The instructors, award-winning university professors from around the globe, are the innovative educators behind successful connected courses such as FemTechNet, ds106, phonar, and the National Writing Project CLMOOC.

An orientation starts Sept. 2 and the first unit starts Sept. 15, 2014 and you can sign up and find more details about the topics we’ll be exploring at connectedcourses.net.

When I read this options, I immediately looked at all the units and though: I must register at once!

Blatantly copying from the core website for immediate reading:

9/2-9/14 Pre-Course: Move in, Registration, Orientation

Facilitators: Jim Groom, Alan Levine, Howard Rheingold

Pre-course: Setting Up Your Network and Registration

Why open learning? Why create your own space, domain, host? Why use your own tools. Why be a node on the web? Why is this important? What does connected learning mean?

9/15-9/28 Unit 1: Why We Need a Why

Facilitators: Mike Wesch, Mimi Ito, Helen Keegan

What is, or should be, the future of higher education?  What do we stand to lose or gain in pursuing the possibilities opened up by the Web?  What are the underlying logics and effects of different approaches to teaching with technology/online?

9/29-10/12 Unit 2: Trust and Network Fluency (Leveraging your “Why”)

Facilitators: Jonathan Worth, Kira Baker-Doyle

In the quantum learning space where interest is a key driver, how do we employ the same dynamics in our teaching? or How do we leverage the power of open? How do we maintain trust and a sense of security in open networks? How do we build our networks? What is social capital? How do we enable at-large learners to engage in our courses? Where should we teach our classes?

10/13-10/26 Unit 3: The World Wide Web - From Concept to Platform to Cultures

Facilitators: Gardner Campbell, Kim Jaxon, Chris Mattia, Howard Rheingold, Laura HIlliger

What is this thing called the World Wide Web? What are the values and ambitions that gave rise to its design? If “the medium is the message,” what is the message of the web? What are some threshold concepts that help us to understand what is meant by “the web”? How is it reframing learning and education?  What do we stand to lose or gain in pursuing the possibilities opened up by the web?

10/27-11/9 Unit 4: Diversity, Equity, Access

Facilitators: Lisa Nakamura, Anne Balsamo, Liz Losh

Co-Instructors:  Veronica Paredes

Goals / Topics:

• The Dialogic Creation of Knowledge
• Networking Across Differences
• Infrastructuring Equity, Access, and Participation
• Subtopics:  Race, Gender, Sexuality, Feminist Pedagogy, Praxis of Networking and Mentoring

11/10-11/23 Unit 5: About Co-learning

Facilitators: Howard Rheingold, Mia Zamora, Alec Couros

What is co-learning?  Why co-learning?  How can teachers empower students as co-learners?  How does this pedagogy differ from traditional methods of teaching & learning? How does the instructor support a co-learning environment?  What obstacles might educators encounter in this paradigm shift?  What obstacles might students encounter in this paradigm shift?

12/1-12/14 Unit 6: Putting it all into practice. Planning the connected course

Facilitators: Jim Groom, Lisa M. Lane, Jaime Hannans, Jaimie Hoffman, Mikhail Gershovich, Alan Levine

Focus on practical issues, overview of issues in teaching open online classes, reflections on previous weeks’ activities, goals for the future.

Serendipitous, #informal learning through some ages

Informal learning has been an important self-constructing force throughout the ages. At present it gains interest with the increase of online learning options (eg. MOOCs in all forms and formats), and it also becomes more visible through the concept of learner-centered learning, personal learning environment... So I picked up a mail from years ago, and revisited it with some of which I learned now. For I wonder how much of informal learning is actually new, in the face of technology I mean.

Informal learning - a (very) quick serendipitous tour:

Leonardo da Vinci is a great example of a human that was instructed as a painter, but through his ideal location (a city filled with artists and knowledge) and the need for travel (sometimes voluntary, sometimes political need), the exchange with other artists (peers) from other regions and the fact that he was able to talk with people from different trades molded him into a genius (cfr. a personal learning network, but possibly with less sustainable connections through travel realities). Da Vinci became interested in different fields which he than explored pushed by his own curiosity and sometimes political circumstances. Looking at his interests, it is clear the man absorbed whatever he found of interest. Chances are he would be a prolific Internet surfer and producer.

Learning from peers and looking up specialists in different fields to learn from them is a natural human learning trade from every era, and current technologies just link more of us together. Plato traveled to peers (School of Pythagoras) that were working on different topics to be able to learn (or exchange ideas) with them. There were more people learning their trade by themselves or with peers and thus the idea of autodidactic learning became a term. This term fascinated artists and scholars and the idea that a human being could become more by learning became a theme in the arts.

The child in the wild or the whole in the wall

A human being raised without external influence and becoming a better human being has been a theme in many cultures. One of the ground breaking novels that cornered this type of self-learning is 'Hayy ibn Yaqdhan' written by Ibn Tufail (known as Abubacer) in the early 12th century al-Andalus. It was later on referred to by Kant, Locke a.o. It later became a theme in Western literature (Mowgli from Kipling, Nel from Jodie Foster a.o.). So we have always known that this approach added a certain je-ne-sais-quoi to every type of new knowledge. For in a way expert learning is always a result of informal learning, for there is no other way new knowledge can be produced... the frontiers of what exist need to be surpassed, and only informal learning can fit exploring minds. And it is all to easy to leap to what Sugata Mitra and colleagues of that train of thought propose in the whole in the wall project.

Grand tour or Google view

Let’s move closer to our era. I see informal learning also as the further democratization of the Grand Tour that started in the late 17th century and which wanted to instruct (mostly British) noblemen in order to become more in touch with the most important features of their times: classic arts, becoming a worldly person. This Grand Tour could be seen as the next step from the early autodidacts. Although the Grand Tour only provided the possibility to learn, a lot depended on the person on whether or not and particularly what they would learn. I like the political awareness linked with literature that was mixed in the writings of George Sand after and during her travelling. So in a way the world became smaller thanks to technology, and principles that worked (or at least that worked for specifically hungry minds) then worked in another era as well, and become more common place. The more I think of it, the less important technology becomes, as we only embed it to fit human action anyway. What do we do with Google view?

Tech results from informal learning

The autodidactic, or self-taught approach to learning has always been crucial to IT (yes, we all know the biggies like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson - euh... missing recent women here). Even at the beginning of the computer age self-instruction was crucial, the mythical Ada Lovelace (image in this post) for example who developed the first computer program for the Babbage machine. Where would the computer age be if self-taught learning or informal learning would not have been an option? Where would anybody be?

To come to heutagogy
Throughout history the concept of autodidact learning has been spoken about on many occasions, but at this time in history this term becomes pivotal again (or with extra focus) to being an efficient knowledge worker. Self-taught learning is now (in part?) encapsulated in a new concept: heutagogy, where it is called self-determined learning, for indeed you need to have determination to really achieve deep learning.
Informal learning is now key to effective corporate, academic, personal learning and I feel that if I could only master this skill with zest, it will bring us closer to the geniuses of all times.... thrilling!

If I could only have more time to learn!