Three Kinds of MOOCs
Lisa M. Lane, Lisa's (Online) Teaching Blog, August 22, 2012.

Lisa Lane has come up with a list of three types of MOOCs - 'network based', as characterized by the connectivist MOOCs, task-based, as characterized by Jim Groom's ds106 courses, and content-based, such as the Stanford AI course. It's a pretty good list - I don't think the cleave between network-based and task-based is so large (we have continually talked in our MOOCs about how t add a greater task component to the network structure) but I can certainly see the thinking behind it. See also Audrey Matters, The Mechanical MOOC.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Networks]

The Lost Art of Instructional Design - Remembering Dr. Judi Harris' Activity Structures
Miguel Guhlin, Around the Corner, August 22, 2012.

I've heard several references to SAMR in recent days, and as Miguel Guhlin suggests, we're rediscovering old ideas. Not that there's anything wrong with that. In fact, it's a good thing. "Tweaking someone elseís idea isn't nearly as satisfying, or as effective, as designing an activity that fits the unique combination of factors that present themselves in any particular classroom at any particular point in time. Reinvention; the process of taking something like a new tool or idea and making it our own in its application, is very important to both teachers and students." But once you've done that, go back and take a look at the old stuff - you can see the differences that point the way to innovation.

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The dilemma of open courses in an Australian university
David T. Jones, The Weblog of (a) David Jones, August 22, 2012.

David Jones is declaring the MOOC a fad and adding that he developed his first open online course in 1996. Here it is. Yes, fine, and here is my open online course from 1996. Here's my fallacies course from 1995. And here is Patrick Crispen's 1994 email-based "Internet Roadmap" course, which infleunced me a lot. But simply opening a course online does not create a MOOC. What makes a MOOC is the way it is designed - it supports thousands of users that fully interact because it is distributed. It's not located in just one place, it is located in many places. In fact, even if you removed the central course page, you should still be able to follow the course online by following and being a part of the exchanges of resources and interactions among the participants. A MOOC is a web, not a website.  The core of the MOOC is the gRSShopper aggregation engine, and that's what made a MOOC possible. That's why we claim to have developed the MOOC, rather than crediting people like Couros of Wiley - or, for that matter, Jones, or earlier incarnations of ourselves.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Traditional and Online Courses, Interaction, RSS, Australia]

Students Find E-Textbooks ‘Clumsy’ and Don’t Use Their Interactive Features
Angela Chen, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 22, 2012.

Another anti-tech article from the Chronicle (it's like they can't let go of the genre). "Many students find the e-textbooks 'clumsy' and prefer print." But from my perspective, e-books represent the end-point of the document-based culture. The last gasp of the paper metaphor. The way of the future is to see online content as data or as Dave Winer says, streams, or a 'river of news'. Anil Dash captures the idea in a post last week. "tart moving your content management system towards a future where it outputs content to simple APIs, which are consumed by stream-based apps that are either HTML5 in the browser and/or native clients on mobile devices. Insert your advertising into those streams using the same formats and considerations that you use for your own content."

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Books, Marketing, Content Management Systems]