Exploring future #seamless learning strands for #MOOC

Last year Nilgün Keskin, Apostolos Koutropoulos, and myself stuck our heads together and wrote a research paper on Exploring Future Seamless Learning Strands for Massive Open Online Courses. There are quite a few research options to explore, so feel free to read the paper.

To provide an idea of what to expect, I gladly share the abstract below, the draft version of the article can be read here through Academia.

This chapter reviews the concept of seamless learning for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) based on the distillation of key factors from papers discussing and describing the mobile seamless learning (MSL) concept. The MSL concept was used as a starting point to explore how MOOC could be prepared for seamless learning and to explore future research options. There is a vast area of research to be explored related to seamless learning in MOOC. The authors belief that some of the challenges faced by MOOC , such as “dropout” rates, redefining learning activities to fit diversity of contexts, self-directed learning, collaborative content artifact creation, the mobility of the adult learners, and the “dip-in, jump-out” aspect of participation can be countered by researching and suggesting seamless learning designs and guidelines that fit both the adult learners and the MOOC realities. Investigating all the elements, challenges and benefits for providing seamless learning in MOOC environments will contribute to the  body of knowledge of contemporary online learning.

For those looking for references: de Waard, I., Keskin, N. O., & Koutropoulos, A. (2014). Exploring Future Seamless Learning Research Strands for Massive Open Online Courses.Handbook of Research on Emerging Priorities and Trends in Distance Education: Communication, Pedagogy, and Technology, 201.

Critical #skills define performances across multiple fields

Critical learning/reading/living is an acclaimed skill. With the internet becoming a global content delivery and discussion forum, this skill has become increasingly important for knowledge creation, filtering out crap and manipulation, or simply in order to try and construct your own voice in your own field of interest. As my Personal Knowledge Mastery class facilitated by Harold Jarche moves forward, this is my next reflective exercise. For last weeks topic was on: challenging ideas and why this is a good thing.
This process of constructive, critical action as an interesting journey that fits my current "where do I go from here in my personal and professional life", as such combine my PhD, with a military training option, and a Cate Blanchett interview mentioning doubt and self-reflection. It all fits together in my mind :-)

And for those looking for some great and well-grounded critique on TED talks, look at what the wonderful Audrey Watters writes on the subject (in short: TED talks are about flashing (entrepreneurial) ideas, not getting them questioned - thx for the link Harold!)

PhD journey and becoming more critical

Being critical is also a key aspect of any PhD or research project. Knowing which terms you use, why you select certain methodologies, whether they stand the test of critical analysis, what weaknesses/strengths they have. Looking back at when I started with my PhD I can see how I have strengthened my critical skills. The verbs I use, the arguments I make, the data I collect and how I analyse that data, everything is scrutinized and rightfully so, as this turns simple actions into conscious, meaningful acts. And in order to enhance these critical skills, feedback from colleagues and supervisors is more then helpful. This was not new to me, as I used it to evaluate eLearning and mobile projects in the past, but really improving that skill will have a profound effect on my future evaluations, and understandings. A clear gain from my PhD journey. 

The use of people trained in being critical in the military

In the PKM course an example from the military is given reflecting on the "Red Team University", a university which trains critical people to be send out into the field and use their critical skills to improve field actions and strategies (so those people question the military staff in order to strengthen tactics), here is the excerpt:. 

The school is the hub of an effort to train professional military “devil’s advocates” — field operatives who bring critical thinking to the battlefield and help commanding officers avoid the perils of overconfidence, strategic brittleness, and groupthink. The goal is to respectfully help leaders in complex situations unearth untested assumptions, consider alternative interpretations and “think like the other” without sapping unit cohesion or morale, and while retaining their values.More than 300 of these professional skeptics have since graduated from the program, and have fanned out through the Army’s ranks. Their effects have been transformational — not only shaping a broad array of decisions and tactics, but also spreading a form of cultural change appropriate for both the institution and the complex times in which it now both fights and keeps the peace.
- Andrew Zolli: HBR 26 Sept 2012 

Cate Blanchett and personal critical analysis as a means to grow in one's profession and life

When watching an interview for the Screen Actors Guild with Cate Blanchett on her performance in Blue Jasmine, in the end one of the questions from the public is on self-doubt and reflection. Although Cate Blanchett has performed numerous times on both theater and film stage, she clearly defines doubt and critical thought as defining her expertise, as fine-tuning her performance. A nice interview.

free book #OER integration in #k12 for #ict4d regions

While exploring OER with an edge options, I came across this free book published by the Common Wealth of Learning, edited by Ferreira and Gaultier, entitled Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning: Open Schooling with Open Educational Resources (OER): opening doors, creating opportunities. A great read which features OER cases from six countries — Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Seychelles, Trinidad and Tobago and Zambia — participating in this ambitious, ground-breaking project to train educators to create a bank of OER that could be used in both conventional and open schools by both school-age children and adult learners. Each country based its OER on its country curricula, but built in enough cultural and pedagogical flexibility to allow the OER to be used and adapted by other countries — epitomising the essence of OER. In addition, the training equipped the participants with the knowledge and skills to train current and future colleagues, thus contributing to the sustainability of the OER.

The project presented many challenges — technical, personal and logistical — for the participants and these are discussed openly and honestly in the country reports. It also brought a real sense of professional and personal achievement, and those who participated can be proud of their contribution to the development of OER for open and distance education. If we can continue to develop and maintain OER, we can continue to educate and to open doors.

The great part of this is the collaboration to get OER centralized across nations, and using it inside of a curriculum based system (which makes the OER open to qualitative evaluation, redistribution, cross-cultural affinity...). Just looking at the table provided by the Namibian OER team got me excited: a clear timeline of what has been done, how and what the main focus was.

A bit of #mobile phone history 1922 and onward

A couple of days ago I got hooked on the British Pathé news reels, and here are three wonderful mobile phone related bits of movie. As an adapt mobile learning enthusiast and researcher, I just got so enthusiastic about these bits of moving history. And when looking at them I think: the same ideas are in all of our minds, whether the technology enables them or not.

The first dates back to 1922 and is called Eve's wireless, and it seems this movie accounts the "Home-O-Fone", which is based on the crystal radio (ah memories of my childhood electronic play-set that offered me a crystal radio as an easy bit of DIY option). In that movie you see two women walking down the street and letting 'hubby' know they will be late. Using a fire hydrant for grounding, and an umbrella as an antenna... great! And what do they phone? A record operator! Or at least it seems that way. The lady who first seemed like a phone operator puts on a record and presto, music can be heard in the street.



A second one links the mobile phone (in this case a car phone, 1946) with what would now most likely be seen as a hotspot. Two Italian (Naples) women park the car alongside the street, plug in a socket and use the car phone. A bit like finding a café with wifi to look at your mail :-)
The movie is called Rome: Auto Telephone, but the description says Napoli, Italy.



A third movie dates from 1946, and is entitled: Madame will you walk and talk. In this movie you see a woman making use of a (hefty) mobile phone option, to keep her (lady)friends on top of what is on sales or not, or getting a knowledgeable man to get the car going again, and the last scene of this movie has a homely feel (ducking behind my chair for the remarks that will no doubt be voiced by my feminist friends).

#OER #MOOC online learning papers from Open CourseWare conference

The Open Praxis special issue from the Open CourseWare Conferenence (OCW) 2014 that took place in Ljubliana, Slovenia is just published. This issue features a selection of papers. I gladly include the list of papers at the end of this blogpost, but first starting with an article and research that I found particularly useful.

The most interesting for my research and online learning interests was the one from Cohen, Omollo and Malicke which was an article on "a Framework to Integrate Public, Dynamic Metrics Into an OER Platform". The authors look at the usefulness of opening up meaningful analytics coming from shared Open Educational Resources (OER). I find this of interest, as it is part of something I want to investigate in relationship to peer/expert knowledge creation, MOOC, mobile learning. This paper provides an overview of what the university of Michigan, USA has done, but it can easily be rolled out to other educational and training institutes or organizations, even - in my view - to an international modus operandi.

The authors concluded with:
Metric-sharing is currency in relationships between OER-publishing-platforms and the faculty, staff, and students of universities and businesses who create OER. This is not the only benefit, but it has been a clear one for us: we are giving a population we have identified as a primary audience something they want. Our experience and user research confirm this.
The technical architecture an organization uses to host and reference OER is tied closely to the organization’s ability to share detailed usage data for its OER. Our use of the hierarchical structure of a Drupal-based platform allows us to easily provide metrics for individual courses or resources.
Metrics on a small scale are interesting, especially to their creators. Metrics can inform qualitative investigation, but they do not answer “why” questions (e.g. “why does this course have so many downloads compared to this other?”). To find analytics, metrics are necessary, but not sufficient.
Due to the structure by which OERbit platform stores metadata, Open.Michigan can group OER and its associated metrics in various ways. This positions Open.Michigan to progress from dynamic metrics to dynamic analytics in the future.
Much like seeing nodding and note-taking when you speak in front of an auditorium, seeing evidence of views, downloads, or comments where your OER are published is validation, evidence that there is some likelihood your effort provides real value to others. Having that evidence allows many to justify the additional effort it may take to openly license educational materials to supervisors and administrators. Open.Michigan’s sharing of individual OER metrics sustains development of open resources and allows an open education initiative, such as ours, to build strong relationships with its surrounding community and thus support the development and sharing of OER on a larger scale.

The above article matches in nicely with the OER and MOOC related article authored by Fernández and Webster (University of Madrid) which described "From OCW to MOOC: deployment of OERs in a MOOC, the experience of Universidad Carlos III in Madrid"

The emergence of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is focusing all its attention on open education. There  is growing interest in creating MOOCs, which can be done by transferring OCW courses to MOOC format. However, a series of doubts arise regarding the pros and cons implied in this transformation. In this paper we discuss the conclusions derived from our experience at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid with a widely disseminated OCW course that was satisfactorily converted into a MOOC. This experience has allowed us to compare two different models of open education initially based on the same content. We also analyze the difficulties incurred in the transformation process and present strategies to successfully carry out this change.

Other articles featured in this Open Praxis issue:

Wikiwijs: An unexpected journey and the lessons learned towards OER	PDF
Robert Schuwer, Karel Kreijns, Marjan Vermeulen	91-102

Public Expenditure in Education in Latin America. Recommendations to Serve the Purposes of the Paris Open Educational Resources Declaration	PDF
Amalia Toledo Hernández, Carolina Botero, Luisa Guzmán	103-113

The potential social, economic and environmental benefits of MOOCs: operational and historical comparisons with a massive ‘closed online’ course	PDF
Andy Lane, Sally Caird, Martin Weller	115-123

Formalising informal learning: Assessment and accreditation challenges within disaggregated systems	PDF
Rory McGreal, Dianne Conrad, Angela Murphy, Gabi Witthaus, Wayne Mackintosh	125-133

Scenarios for the Use of OpenCourseWare in the Context of Student Mobility	PDF
Frederik Truyen, Stephanie Verbeken	135-144

From OCW to MOOC: Deployment of OERs in a Massive Open Online Course. The Experience of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M)	PDF
José Vida Fernández, Susan Webster	145-158

Crowd-sourcing (semantically) Structured Multilingual Educational Content (CoSMEC)	PDF
Darya Tarasowa, Sören Auer, Ali Khalili, Jörg Unbehauen	159-170

An Architecture based on Linked Data technologies for the Integration and reuse of OER in MOOCs Context	PDF
Nelson Piedra, Janneth Alexandra Chicaiza, Jorge López, Edmundo Tovar	171-187

A Framework to Integrate Public, Dynamic Metrics Into an OER Platform	PDF
Jaclyn Zetta Cohen, Kathleen Ludewig Omollo, Dave Malicke	189-197

History from British Pathé movies a treasure trove!

As an avid movie lover and ex-movie critique, I was jumping into the air when I saw the British Pathé journals are opened (while I was on holiday, how dare they!), and are now freely available on their YouTube channel. There is an easy option to subscribe to specific British Pathé channels as well (sportinghistory, vintageFashion). Hopefully innovation will get its own channel soon as well, but fortunately it already has its own collection of movies organized under fantastic innovations.

The movie archive is a treasure trove for any teacher/trainer/history lover. First thing I did was get hold of the copyright on these movies. Because I wondered whether all these movies could be seen as Open Resources, potentially Open Educational Resources (OER). And whether any teacher could use the movies to rehash and make it a rich fit for their own training or teaching purposes. On their Pathé website the copyright is fully reserved, and while looking for YouTube licenses, I do have the impression the standard license is the one used. So it might not be that easy to use footage, or mix it into content that fits your learning goals. I do wonder how much footage can be used for educational purposes (should mail and ask).

Although this is clearly a great set that gives all of us a look into world history, it does come with its own zeitgeist, and its own gatekeepers eye. But then history is always an account of those who have the technology, the knowledge and the vision. The fact that the archive is set free, is like wandering into a movie library ... marvelous, I found 'unused, unissued material' as an anchor point to find fabulous raw movie stuff.
For one: suffragette material: women workers (factory girls) roaming the streets of Camden while being on strike, followed by a 66.000 rich female pageant through London, and of course Emily Davison who jumped onto a horse track and got killed in an attempt to pull down the Kings Horse in 1913, and more (e.g. Taxation without Representation is Tyranny".



And of course a bit of old Belgium, Gallant Little Belgium

#Diabetes, Sue Townsend, Easter a personal mix

This morning sad news was announced as the author Sue Townsend died (well known for her Adrian Mole books, but all round prolific and wonderful writer). Two days ago I finished her book “The woman who went to bed for a year”, a book that compelled me to laugh out loud, reflect upon the spirits of people, and of whom at the end cares the most for each one of us. I really enjoyed the book. As I read the back end of the book two facts sparked an extra, personal interest: blind, kidney transplant. Linking those two together I immediately thought of diabetes complications. After a quick search I found Sue Townsend was just like me a diabetes type 1 person since the 80’s. After reading it, I tucked my feelings on these two facts away to the back of my head.

This morning those feelings stormed to the front again as I read that Sue Townsend was dead. That fact scared the hell out of me. I saw the upcoming years: loosing eye sight, reduced – stopped - kidney function, stroke. I am scared of endings, I am scared of death, scared for me, for my loved ones, for the unknown, for the reducing of my own autonomy.

A letter came a month ago, that I needed to get my eye screening appointment set, I had ignored it. Why? Because I am scared of my own disease at times, and I have the tendency to flee from personal topics of anxiety. I know fleeing never helps on such occasions, but it is clinging on to the utopia of life and how I imagine it: ideal, healthy.

So, an hour ago I got up, picked up the phone and made the dreaded appointment. I need to stay in optimal condition for as long as possible, I owe it to my mum, my son, my partner and myself.

We must all live our own life, with whatever life has in store for us. Being scared only helps in extreme situations where caution is needed, in all other occasions we must face fear, and tackle it by either learning on how to overcome it, or reflecting on what the real basis of this fear is. It also means one must understand and look for that which makes us tick. For me understanding the learning process, looking for solutions that involve technology is a pleasure. Research, talking, thinking. To me learning, either face-to-face, online, any type of blended, is necessary to direct all of us towards trust, life, joining hands. Learning from people we like, support us, whom we support. Professionally I am on a good track.

Personally it is about connecting to people I care about. Partners, friends, colleagues (virtual and IRL), sharing, caring, supporting, dreaming.

Easter is coming, the flowers are out, spring is shining, and at this point in time I live, I love and I am thankful for all the wonderful people and opportunities that surround me. Life is in the living. 

Complacency, failure, improvement cycle and #pearltrees #pkm14

For what ever reason, I seem to have a personal complacency => failure => improvement cycle. Which means that every few years something that I was good at turns into mush.

Messed up more then one presentation
The latest one concerns presentation skills. So I have been good at it (why do I know: feedback forms, mouth to mouth) and then it turns bad (why do I know? Again feedback forms). I did feel myself slip, but I simply told myself 'I had a day off' and soothed me into not worrying. So what is the typical decay of my presentation skills: I know what I know, I actually know quite a bit about certain topics (mlearning, cMOOC), but then I want to share ALL that I know in one hour slot of presentation AND I rely on my brain to come up with structure ad hoc. This does not happen.
There are multiple reasons, as every and any teacher/trainer will know:

• pushing too much information forward to the public simply does not transmit the message
• if you are not a naturally structured person, ad-lib will result in chaos and rambling
• use simple slides for presenting, and use notes to elaborate on your slides, or add audio so people understand the pictures you use (this means: I always think that slides can be used as content booklets (see my slides for yourself)... but I think I will just need to step away from that. Either present, or offer booklets I guess). As Marshall McLuhan said: the medium is the message , and I scrambled both up resulting in a confused feeling in the heads of the listeners.
• a starting point and relations or concepts that are obvious to me, is not obvious for others
• practice, practice, practice to become really good, and aim for the moon while I am at it
• there was even someone in the audience figuring out if I could be one of their future presenters... well I scared them away big time *sigh*

Actions taken
I want to make sure I do not get trapped in my own world of greatness again (apparently I come from a city known for its citizens to think they are great (Antwerp, Belgium). Those citizens even get called 'señor/a' as a nickname to describe that complacent ego phenomenon. Anyway, I searched for a way to improve:

• get some pointers on how to present, i.e. expert knowledge
• corner a future presentation occasion: May 2014 an online forum (which will be on related subject as the presentation I messed up, and the forum also has feedback forms) 
• practice, practice, practice and get better. Why: I want to give pleasurable insights on topic into people's minds, not chaos!

Because of the personal knowledge management course I am following and its assignments. One of our current assignment is testing out new tools. In the past I have used content mapping as a way to organize and built content and information towards new knowledge. I used CMAP from the University of Florida, USA. But it missed some of the easy social media sharing options (but does have meaningful relational descriptions as an option between to sets of content). As such I strolled through Jane Hart's eLearning tools and I found pearltrees as a new tool to put together content in a jiffy, make it visual and retrievable and share it with others. So sharing my pearltree here ( a just started Coursera course, examples of great public speakers, good books, and presentation tips):

Proceedings from recent #MOOC conference

Just a quick post linking to a set of conference proceedings worth reading. eMOOC2014 proceedings of the research track (European MOOC summit in Switzerland, February 2014) which are fully online here. There is a link to a co-authored paper (written by Inge de Waard, Michael Sean Gallagher, Ronda Zelezny-Green, Laura Czerniewicz, Stephen Downes, Agnes Kukulska-Hulme and
Julie Willemson ) Vulnerable Learners in MOOC which I linked to earlier.

But the proceedings link to some magnificent global MOOC cases and experiences and lots of papers on learner drop-out and retention. I just started to read them all through, and the following were already of interest to me (related to my research interest):
Analyzing completion rates in the First French xMOOC by Matthieu Cisel (p. 26)
Scaffolding Self-learning in MOOCs (p. 43) written by Israel Gutiérrez-Rojas, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Mar Pérez-Sanagustín, Derick Leony, Carlos Delgado-Kloos
MOOC Learning in Spontaneous Study Groups: Does Synchronously Watching Videos Make a Difference? (p. 88) by Nan Li, Himanshu Verma, Afroditi Skevi, Guillaume Zufferey and Pierre Dillenbourg
Signals of Success and Self-directed Learning (p. 18) by Penny Bentley, Helen Crump, Paige Cuffe, Iwona Gniadek, Briar Jamieson, Sheila MacNeill and Yishay Mor

Filtering for Future ProFessional Frontiers #pkm14

As the Personal Knowledge Management (PKM14) course moves into its second week, all the participants are asked to filter their social media / their networks. We are suggested to use more advanced filters: e.g. using feeds from people or/and groups, using automated filters of choice (e.g. hootsuite or tweetdeck to filter the personal twitter and other streams).

First I took a look at hootsuite (suggested by Ronda Zelezny-Green) and tweetdeck (both of these are free to some extend. Another paid option is sproutsocial which has wonderful options, but fits more with an enterprise type of social media stream analysis. I tested both and looked at other user comparisons to get an idea of which tool would suit me. I had both used them briefly in the past, but not to their full potential. And as it has been some years now, it is clear that I am better at understanding what these types of tools can do, and the overall structure of the tools in themselves is an improved user experience as well. For me Hootsuite works (but without integrating it into my browser, that feature was the reason why I stopped using hootsuite in the past: too much bling makes me angry and puts me off a tool - but that is me, not the tool).

After only two days, I already found some immediately relevant information (e.g. more status updates on learning analytics for informal learning, more about weak/strong ties in online communities), but at the same time I am loosing more time as I got lost in an information loop. Again... knowledge management is about finding useful tools, optimizing or personalizing them to fit your own goals, and limiting your time on those tools to get the best experience out of them (for me the best experience is: activating a peer network. One immediate benefit of Hootsuite is being able to schedule tweets, this saves time and will - eventually - keep me from returning to my streams in Hootsuite until a moment in time I consciously choose and limit.

The information streams in Hootsuite are currently based on one list, and keywords (e.g. mLearning, learning analytics). I started to build MyKeyPeople list within twitter: adding those twitterers that are of importance to me, that provide new insights, links, ideas.

But I do realize this is person-based, now - like a fellow participant Kavi (@_Kavi ) mentioned - knowledge can be distilled from a higher level by using twitter lists and combining these, or to search for good curators/curations and link these to a RSS/feedread or scoopit... I still have to work on those options. So that makes a good to do. 
Speaking of to do lists, another participant of the course (Shane Johnson) mentioned todoist, a cross-platform software to plan your time or project. Will have to see if this works for me.