Module on open education: policy, accreditation by George Siemens #openEd

This is a course I saw passing by, that I just cannot keep in my mail box, as it might be of interest to many. It is however a paid for course organised by Athabasca University (yeah!). But if you are interested in a short cut to know all about open education through great content, shares, as well as direction and guidance by a great researcher: consider registering. From the mail:

This Fall 2015, the Centre for Distance Education will be offering the course MDDE 622: Openness in Education taught by CDE Faculty member Dr. George Siemens.  

Dr. Siemens is best known for his pioneering work on Connectivism, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), and Learning Analytics.  He acts as the Associate Director of the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute (TEKRI) at Athabasca University, has authored many books and articles including Knowing Knowledge and the Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning, and is the founding member of the Society for Learning Analytics Research.  More recently, Dr. Siemens was invited to the White House to share his research on Innovation and Quality in Higher Education.  

More information about this exciting course can be found below.

MDDE 622: Openness in Education

Openness in content, data, government, and access is influencing organizations of all types. Education is influenced heavily: open educational resources and open teaching hold potential to disrupt the full spectrum of education: policy, learning development, delivery, and accreditation.

This course will offer a detailed overview of the history of openness in education, current trends including legal and technological developments, as well as future directions. Educators in all sectors (primary, secondary, and higher education), as well as administrators, will benefit from being well informed of trends and the organizational impact of open education.

Through review of literature, participation in group discussions, online lectures, and related open education resources, students will be able to:

1. Define openness in an educational context and describe its various instantiations in different educational sectors
2. Identify the potential of openness to contribute to systemic change in higher education and policy
3. Plan, search, deploy, and integrate open educational resources (OERs) from design to delivery phases of learning
4. Analyze current research views on how openness influences higher education enrolment, course design costs, and the distinctions between peer-developed resources (“crowd sourcing”) and centrally curated resources (expert).
5. Describe the history of openness in education (including early literature on open universities in the 1960’s) and detail the impact of technological developments on openness
6. Evaluate prominent intellectual property and copyright systems, detailing the influence of each on scholarship.

Students can register for this course online or by contacting the CDE office at mde@athabascau.ca . 

Have a great day!

20 strategies for learner interactions in mobile #MOOC

Let's be honest, we all LOVE research *grin*, or facts, or lists, or useful practices ... or practical strategies for that matter. Well, here is a new set of useful strategies for mobile MOOCs, I hope you like it!

In my latest research I focused on the impact of mobile access on learner interactions in a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). The research was done to get my Master in Education at Athabasca University. As always all of the Athabasca faculty was supportive to get the research up to their standards (ethical approval, relevant literature...).

The readable and hopefully useful list of 20 mobile strategies to increase learner interaction in a MOOC that came out of my research can be found below in this post, but feel free to read the full thesis here, it has links to ethical procedures (e.g. informed consent form), some web analytics, community of inquiry use to screen learner interactions.... If you want to reference to the strategies, or parts of the thesis, this is the APA reference for it:

de Waard, I. (2013). Impact of mobile access on learner interactions in a MOOC. Retrieved from Athabasca DThesis database http://hdl.handle.net/10791/23 

Abstract of the research 
As mobile access and massive open online courses (MOOCs) become a global reality, the realm of potential distance learners is expanding rapidly. Mobile learning (mLearning) as well as MOOCs are based on similar characteristics as shown in the literature review of this study. They both enhance a community feeling, increasing networking and collaboration; they strengthen lifelong and informal learning, they use social media to a large extend and they are ideal for setting up communicative dialogues. The focus on learner interactions is of interest, as research has shown that dialogue is an important element for learning and knowledge enhancement, and mobile access increases the opportunities to enter into such interactions. This thesis study used a sequential explanatory mixed methods approach to investigate the impact of mobile accessibility on learner interaction in a MOOC. The study showed that opening up a MOOC for mobile access has immediate impact on learner interactions, as participants with mobile devices tend to interact more with their fellow learners in comparison to their non-mobile colleagues. This was deduced from the mixed methods approach looking at web-based statistics, an online survey, an analysis using the Community of Inquiry framework and one-on-one interviews with volunteers. The study formulated a set of 20 strategies and possible consequences deriving from the analysis of the impact of mobile accessibility in a MOOC and more specifically how this affects learner interactions. These strategies might optimize the impact of mobile access on learner interactions in an informal, open, online course. Future research needs to support the findings, embracing a larger learner population from a more varied background. Overall, this research hopes to add to the body of knowledge strengthening the field of distance education.

List of 20 mobile related strategies to increase learner interactions in MOOCs:

Design
1. Offer a ubiquitous learning environment based on BYOD design and content, making use of existing ubiquitous tools (social media, e-mail…) so people can switch between devices at their own preference.
2. Create a user-friendly, one button centralized access learning environment. This easy access must be linked to a clear course overview to increase transparency, user-friendliness and provide the learner with a structure that s/he can organize for self-regulating learning purposes.
Self-directed learning 
3. Provide self-directed learning strategies to the learners.
4. Enabling immediate access to content material as well as discussion areas adds to time management options and it enables self-regulated learning.
5. Offer synchronous and asynchronous learner activities within a clearly timed course. This provides the necessary freedom for the learner to access, reflect and possibly react on the subject touched at specific moments during the course.
6. Provide a clear timetable of the course, while embedding time for reflection into the course timeline. This suggested flexible, yet cohort move through the course provides an opportunity to nurture reflection time, which is in direct relation to learner interactions.
7. Embed informality in the course to allow increased, autonomous learner interactions to emerge. This room for emergence is induced by the course being both formal and informal, or informal overall and being mobile. The informal character of a course results in participants feeling more at ease with sharing and producing content and engaging in interactions across all their devices.
Digital skills
8. Increase the necessary digital skills of the learner, providing basic training before the course starts via meaningful content-related actions. If a course is accessible for a multitude of devices, it affects (the need for) digital skills, because multiple devices have multiple characteristics and affordances.
Content 
9. Offer an array of course materials, varying from bite size snacks to big, time consuming content. The mobility of the user results in the ability to access materials in a variety of locations and times. As such a wide array of course materials is needed to cater to the time availability of the learner. Offering the learner a choice to tailor the content to their current possibilities.
10. Provide a sense of ownership about the content and the learning: BYOD, contextualized options, this adds to the overall learner motivation.
Human learning environment
11. Ensure a safe learning environment. This essential to increase learner interactions in general. Tolerance, trust, daring to write in a non-native language and knowing that one can pose every content related question and not being judged for either its simplicity or format must be set early in the course.
12. Provide interaction/communication guidelines stipulating balanced communication allowing a safe discussion area to be ensured. By creating a safe learning environment, a broader perspective of personalities are tempted to engage and interact in the course.
13. Profile a central course person(s) (e.g. central coordinator, course support person) who watches over the interactions and links to each participant personally, ensuring a trusting learning environment with room for cultural and language diversity.
14. Watch over the group-size. Community feeling is increased by an intermediate group-size and learner-centered activities, which in turn affects learner interactions.
15. Allow networks to emerge. A community feeling based upon easy (mobile) access increases the formation of a more durable professional network for those connecting to each other in a way that surpasses the course duration.
Course activities
16. Embed icebreaker activities and/or discussions at the beginning of the course to allow learner interactions to take off. These activities should also be linked to intellectual topics.
17. Ensure discussions or conversation starters. The act of conversation and exchanging ideas leads to more interactions as participants become more familiar with each other on professional grounds.
18. Create meaningful, contextualized, generic, topic related interactions, as they are pivotal to create a course community spirit, because the exchange of professional interests adds to the knowledge need of the learners.
19. Add activities involving non-verbal communication to offer additional understanding, which increases the community feeling, for it might offer an additional insight into dialogue and discussion.
20. Ensure topic relevant learner diversity in examples or actions. Learners can more easily join in those conversations where they detect knowledge niches to which they can provide an answer, strengthening each other.

Recapturing #aufgs2012 Athabasca University's Graduate student conference

Last weekend I had a wonderful and enlightening time in Edmonton, Canada. It was the first time I met several of my online friends and ... during the conference I got to meet people that really made me feel part of a community, the Athabasca University community.The wonderful thing about this gathering was the high quality research that was shared, and at the same time the feeling of being embraced in the community. The conference was small enough to allow real contact to happen. A great combination.

Who did I meet, and why did they make a difference?
During my master I had many, many really inspiring professors and teachers, one of which was Terry Anderson. Terry connects with people, he is on a mission to make technology part of the human social life and his Athabasca landing is a wonderful platform. He also always keeps me focused and on my tows, which is a good thing in academic life.  
Stella Lee is a wonderful person. We met in 2007 during a mobile conference in Fredericton, Canada. She was passionate and brought her presentation with a lot of humor. Afterwards we decided to go and sit on a bench on the sidewalk of a busy street and give people compliments just to make their day... it was fun! In the last few years we have lived and got some changes in our lives, so it was a blast to catch up again. Too short though.
It was Stella who introduced me to Vive(k) Kumar and Ireti Fakinlede. Vive(k), or V, is an intriguing person. He has an air of complete energy over him and I gave him one extra grey hair by asking him to go outside of his wonderfully build online/offline presentation set-up. He did it, so I was very grateful.
And I had the most wonderful discussion with Ireti on social agents, languages and a vibrant Swahili dictum.
I also met Caroline Park, who I have mailed frequently on mobile topics in the past and all of a sudden here she was in full glory, organizing part of the conference. Tony Ratcliffe allowed me one dance, which was really nice. And last but not least, I had the chance to meet with Leslie Lindballe who single handedly got everyone engaged in making music. She also opened up my mind when she talked about her thougths when getting research grant: either work and study or go and live somewhere cheaper and study, while having time to make music due to the cheaper rent. I loved that remark! Fabulous. Leslie combines ratio with heart and ... that seeps into her learning and teaching as well. Just look at her wonderful on learning video.

#aufgs2012 Viviane Vladimirshi Exploratory study of cross-cultural engagment in the community of #inquiry: instructor perspectives and challenges

Viviane Vladimirschi has finished a thesis on the subject of Exploratory study of cross-cultural engagment in the community of inquiry: instructor perspectives and challenges April 2012 and you can find the full thesis here:
 http://hdl.handle.net/10791/15

During the Athabasca University conference she gave a talk on her research and used methodology (also part grounded theory).

The purpose of this study was to explore how instructors of online courses accommodate and make provisions for culturally diverse learners in an online community of inquiry. Ten instructors from two Alberta higher education institutions participated in two phases of research. To explore this phenomenon in the CoI model, intercultural competency indicators were created to test how they could develop and expand teaching and social presence in a cross-cultural environment. In the first phase, analysis of the open-ended survey questionnaire (AMEQ) revealed that in the absence of any cross-cultural design, instructors use facilitation and open communication strategies to foster learning and prevent conflict. The second phase, informed by the first phase, involved augmenting the original 34-item CoI survey instrument. Additional roles that relate to instructor cross-cultural efficacy were incorporated into both teaching presence and social presence elements in the CoI survey instrument. The revised 37-item CoI survey instrument was then administered to the same respondents for face validity. Findings revealed that the incorporated cultural indicators correlated highly with the teaching and social indicators, indicating their usefulness to measure multicultural efficacy in the CoI model.

The cultural indicators Viviane used were very interesting. So a good read if you are interested in the content.

free eBook on mobile learning just got published by Athabasca University, Canada

Jeroen Van Eeghem from Ghent's eLearning company U&I learning, twittered me this newly published eBook on mobile learning. The eBook is published by the Athabasca University library (2009).

The renowned Mohamed Ally is the editor and the authors that dedicated their knowledge and thoughts are amazing people. I had the pleasure of meeting: Agnes Kukulska Hulme, John Traxler and Marguerite Koole in the past and I can assure you if you have the possibility of talking to them, their knowledge will no-doubt add to yours (really great and knowledgeable people). The other authors are equally impressive (Tom Boyle, Gill Clough, Merryl Ford, Teemu Leinonen, ...) and even when you just roam the eBook chapters, you want to start reading the articles right away.

The book addresses: informal mobile learning (great stuff on which I have a project running with colleagues from Peru, started blogging on that project here), mobile teacher training, advances in mobile learning and different cases ...

Writing an article on how mobile learning devices can bridge DE challenges in developing countries, and this book certainly added to the background of the article.