GoogleTranslate Service


MOOCs at F-Alt

September 4th, 2008 by Graham Attwell

From Open Education News:

“There has been a lot of buzz about the free and open Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course to be facilitated by George Siemens and Stephen Downes in September. To date, over 1,200 people have signed up for the course prompting a new label, Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), to describe this super-sized open education course”. On a new blog about the course George says:

“As a group, we all share in the success (and failure) of MOOCs …We have to walk a line between innovating teaching and learning while still keeping things at a level that permits the ideas we’re presenting to translate into the realities of educators and administrators … While Stephen and I are facilitating this course, I think it’s critical that the larger community identifies with it and takes ownership of it. Our course isn’t happening in a vacuum – we’re building on our own previous work and the work of others. And once our course is done here, others will hopefully learn from our experience and build on it. Spiralling innovation. But I’m hoping we won’t only see people building on our work. I hope we’ll see others building with us … Research opportunities are enormous. MOOCs are uncharted, largely undocumented, territory. This course will produce a significant amount of data – both quantitative and qualitative.”

It is great that teh course is free and open. But is this real innovation. Are we not just reinventing mass rows of students sitting passively in tiered lecture tehares albeit on-line. Is thsi just another Tayloritic model of education. Cheap – yes! Efficent – yes! Effective – perhaps not. Particpation…learner support? Is the innovation technical or pedagogic?

These issues and more will be the subject of the F-Alt (the fringe conference at Alt C) warm up session in the bar at 9pm in the bar at Leeds Univeristy on Monday. It probably won’t be massive. Bit it is open and you are all invited.

Please follow and like us:
fb-share-icon
Tweet
«
»

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 11:38 and is filed under e-learning 2.0, Pedagogy, teaching and learning, Wales Wide Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Tweetbacks/Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. CCK08 « open found and Susan says:
    September 8, 2008 at 02:15

    […] to our online Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course. Also, our MOOC will be the subject of a Fringe Alt discussion (see here and here). George Siemens, elearnspace, September 4, 2008. [Link] [Tags: […]

  2. Connectivism: Education as an act of liberty | The Babbel Blog says:
    November 18, 2008 at 16:39

    […] not everyone is so enthuisastic about MOOC: “It is great that the course is free and open. But is this […]

  • Search Pontydysgu.org

    Social Media

    RSS
    Facebook
    Twitter



    News Bites

    Cyborg patented?

    Forbes reports that Microsoft has obtained a patent for a “conversational chatbot of a specific person” created from images, recordings, participation in social networks, emails, letters, etc., coupled with the possible generation of a 2D or 3D model of the person.

    Please follow and like us:
    fb-share-icon
    Tweet

    Racial bias in algorithms

    From the UK Open Data Institute’s Week in Data newsletter

    This week, Twitter apologised for racial bias within its image-cropping algorithm. The feature is designed to automatically crop images to highlight focal points – including faces. But, Twitter users discovered that, in practice, white faces were focused on, and black faces were cropped out. And, Twitter isn’t the only platform struggling with its algorithm – YouTube has also announced plans to bring back higher levels of human moderation for removing content, after its AI-centred approach resulted in over-censorship, with videos being removed at far higher rates than with human moderators.

    Please follow and like us:
    fb-share-icon
    Tweet

    Gap between rich and poor university students widest for 12 years

    Via The Canary.

    The gap between poor students and their more affluent peers attending university has widened to its largest point for 12 years, according to data published by the Department for Education (DfE).

    Better-off pupils are significantly more likely to go to university than their more disadvantaged peers. And the gap between the two groups – 18.8 percentage points – is the widest it’s been since 2006/07.

    The latest statistics show that 26.3% of pupils eligible for FSMs went on to university in 2018/19, compared with 45.1% of those who did not receive free meals. Only 12.7% of white British males who were eligible for FSMs went to university by the age of 19. The progression rate has fallen slightly for the first time since 2011/12, according to the DfE analysis.

    Please follow and like us:
    fb-share-icon
    Tweet

    Quality Training

    From Raconteur. A recent report by global learning consultancy Kineo examined the learning intentions of 8,000 employees across 13 different industries. It found a huge gap between the quality of training offered and the needs of employees. Of those surveyed, 85 per cent said they , with only 16 per cent of employees finding the learning programmes offered by their employers effective.

    Please follow and like us:
    fb-share-icon
    Tweet

    Other Pontydysgu Spaces

    • Pontydysgu on the Web

      pbwiki
      Our Wikispace for teaching and learning
      Sounds of the Bazaar Radio LIVE
      Join our Sounds of the Bazaar Facebook goup. Just click on the logo above.

      We will be at Online Educa Berlin 2015. See the info above. The stream URL to play in your application is Stream URL or go to our new stream webpage here SoB Stream Page.

      Please follow and like us:
      fb-share-icon
      Tweet

  • Twitter

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • Meta

    • Categories