Expanding the Reach of the "Monster": 74 pages of Emerging Learning Technologies

In my last TravelinEdMan post 3 months ago (yes, it has been 3 months), I discussed "The Evolution of a Monster" syllabus for my R685 Emerging Learning Technologies course. Those who remember that post, will realize that my course syllabus had grown from perhaps 10 or so pages back in 1990 when I taught at West Virginia University to over 64 pages here at Indiana University (IU) this past fall. Guess what? It has now expanded to 74 pages for the spring of 2013.

How did it get so much bigger? Well, there is much new information on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). In fact, MOOCs accounted for many new pages. I also added new information on famous distance learning experts like Charles Wedemeyer from the University of Wisconsin (he helped found the Open U in the UK and did many other phenomenal things; see his Wikipedia page). Of course, new resources were incorporated like those on oral history tools and projects. Most course topics were updated with new articles, resources, and tidbits that I had discovered during the fall semester. I also inserted pictures to act as section breaks between weekly topics as well as to introduce the new topic themes. Hence, the 74 pages.

You might check it out. With all the new pictures and content, perhaps it is becoming a more beautiful monster. Keep in mind, however, that my assistant, Seth White, and I are still checking over and replacing some of the dead limbs (or links) listed in the monster, but it is basically done. I plan to create a second smaller version of the monster syllabus (i.e., the little monster) without the most of Web resources and tidbits. But that will not happen for a few days.

If you explore the spring syllabus, you will find several free online books as well as hundreds of open access articles. You will also stumble upon dozens of shared online videos, many free Web 2.0 tools, and hundreds of online portals to explore. On page one, you will discover a unique open access multimedia glossary that one of my students, Ozgur Ozdemir, created this past fall for the course. Splendid work from Ozgur--a plethora of videos, books, news, terms, etc., in his glossary. Glancing through the 74 course syllabus pages, you will also find examples of student products including podcast shows, video blogs, prezi presentations, databases, e-books, wikibook chapters, YouTube video summaries of the course, animations, etc.

I should point out that we will have synchronous sessions every week on Adobe Connect Pro, most likely on Monday nights at 7 or 8 pm EST (anyone is welcome any time...the World is Open, don't ya know?). Last semester, these weekly sessions were at 7 pm. We had perhaps 8-10 invited guests from around the world. In the past, my guests have come from the UK, Canada, Japan, Australia, the United States, and elsewhere. I am not sure how many we will have this time around or where in the world that they will come from. But, we will have at least a few.

What do you want to learn about? Digital book research or companies? Look in the monster syllabus, there are many to explore. How about open educational ressources or OpenCourseWare projects? That is in the monster too. Oral history projects? There. Online language learning resources? There too. Adventure learning, extreme learning, mobile learning, virtual learning, e-learning, blended learning...yes, it is all in there as well. Massive gaming? Indeed. It has taken a couple of decades to build this monster. Much has been included.

And there is more...there is always more. Collaborative technologies? Sure, this topic used to the crux for the entire course. Wikis, podcasts, blogs, etc.? Yes, why not! The course, which initially was embedded in cognitive and social constructivist theory when designed back in 1990, today addresses learning theory such as participatory learning, connectivism, constructivism, the psychological underpinnings of social networking, and the development of personalized learning environments. I am an educational psychologist by training, so why not?

I should also point out that this is likely the final time that the "monster" syllabus will exist. Why? No, we have not reached the limit of the monster lifespan. However, I will go on sabbatical in early May 2013. I do not return until the end of August in 2014. Much will happen in the field of emerging learning technologies during those intervening 16 months. Suffice to say, there is really no way that I can update the monster syllabus again in any sane way. I would go "Bonkers" trying. Hence, it will be slashed and burned, but not to a crisp. Instead, come September 2014, I hope to get it under 20 or 25 pages (the real goal is about 15 pages). I will eliminate all the tidbits and perhaps most of the resources as well. Perhaps a couple of the books that I will work on during my sabbatical will have some of those resources listed in them or, at least, I hope so. But most will be purged.

Well, there you have it. Another semester of the monster. A 74 page monster. I hope some of you can use it or refer to it. But please do not step on the monster by mistake or he might bite you back and I have no insurance to cover the damages. Oh ya, I forget to mention--the next time I teach this course it will no longer be a seminar (R685) course, but, instead, it will be a real course and listed as "R678 Emerging Learning Technologies." Yes, a real monster. No more of those fake ones. That is, assuming that I teach it again in Instructional Systems Technology (IST) here at IU and am not reassigned to some other school or unit. It also assumes that I do not shave my head and move to Thailand to become a Buddhist Monk (or Buddhist Bonk) and that some monster does not chop off my hands or my head in the meantime. :-)

The Evolution of a Monster: 22+ Years of an Emerging Learning Technologies Course

The Evolution of Emerging Learning Technologies (and my "monster" syllabus):

Perhaps, like me, you like history. I have been teaching a version of my emerging learning technologies course for more than two decades now. Back then, it was called something like "Interactive Technologies for Learning and Collaboration." The first version was first co-taught at West Virginia University by Dr. W. Michael Reed and myself back in the fall of 1990. Mike passed away a few years ago (July 30, 2009) and that made me reflect on the evolution of the course that he and I first created. First of all, Mike was a fantastic friend and confidant and I miss him. In fact, I blogged on it at the time and many of his friends commented and sent me pictures to include in my blog post (if interested, see: In Memory of W. Michael Reed, Professor and Highest Quality Friend).

Mike Reed understood the theory behind my dissertation on computer prompts and keystroke mapping in writing as well as the potential impact. He met me for lunch and a chat the day I arrived in Morgantown, WV (a place I have only been back to twice in the past 20 years but I may be going through tomorrow night on my way to DC in helping move my son Alex who just got an internship at Global Zero). That was August 1989 and the pub we met at was Gibbies. I departed three years later in August 1992 for Indiana University. During my three years at West (by God) Virginia University (WVU), Mike and I had many a fine discussion about new directions for learning technology. We hit it off immediately and so we did a special issue of a journal on computers and writing (i.e., Reed, W. M., & Bonk, C. J. (1992). Computers and writing research: Extending agendas across ages. Computers in Human Behavior, 8(1), 1-7.) that later became a book (i.e., Reed, W. Michael, & Bonk, Curtis J. (Eds.) (1992). Computer Use in the Improvement of Writing. New York: Pergamon Press). When working on that project, Mike and I decided to create a course related to all the new learning technologies emerging in the late 1980s and early 1990s. To prepare for that course, we attended a special institute in San Diego on new technologies and educational aspects of artificial intelligence sponsored by the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Yes, AERA actually sponsored a technology-intensive institute. Amazing! That institute was co-run by the famed Chris Dede (now at Harvard).

Since that time, this course has evolved into many formats. Below are links to more than a dozen syllabi from the course including the present one--which is what I am referring to as the "Monster Syllabus"--all 64 pages of it. In this post, I am helping people track the evolution of this monster. Everything in the current version of the course is a Weblink. There is nothing for my students to buy. Feel free to use it however you want.

While I am, of course, biased, I think that it is interesting to pan through the various versions of this course and reflect on all the learning technology changes of the past 2-3 decades. Open education back in the 1980s and 1990s was limited to things like audiotapes, television-based programming, sharing floppy disks, and correspondence courses. I know since I am a product of television and correspondence courses. Such learning outlets helped qualify me for graduate school and break me out of my quite boring life as an accountant/CPA and corporate controller.

Memories of such syllabi are wonderful moments of reflection on the students, co-instructors, friends, guest experts, etc., that I had the pleasure to interact with along the way as well as the articles, resources, and tasks used. Unfortunately, I have yet to locate the original version of the course. By reflecting back, I can now ask my students to track the history of this course over time. For instance, they might explore the topics, people, concepts, etc., that were popular in the 1990s, 2000s, and today. They might talk to their colleagues and friends about what they discovered or just do a personal reflection. I think you will see that social networking, MOOCs, virtual worlds, e-books, collaborative technologies like Ning, adventure learning, Webinars and videoconferencing, etc., are not just ideas and technologies that emerged in the past few years.

There are other reasons to post these old (or ancient as some might say in techie years) and newer syllabi. For instance, those who are ambitious might have a correspondence with scholars and researchers about about their articles from previous versions of the course. Others might interview learning technology scholars about their perceptions of changes in the field over time. I am hoping that some of my students do that this semester and into the future version of this monster course. Perhaps some of them will gather oral histories or accounts from experts as well as former students about how the field has changed.

I am telling my students that many questions can be asked. Among them, are there any topics that remain popular over the past two decades? How did the focus of this course change over time? Is this course more or less important today than it was back in the 1990s? Are the total number of pages any indicator of how the field has changed? If so, in what ways? I want them to compare the tasks from 1995 to those in 2001 or 2002 as well as 2010 or 2012. I sure wish I could find that syllabus from 1990. And I want them to look at the books, journals, new sources, online resources, etc. that now comprise this course and note how they have changed over time. Most of my students only want to read about technology research and news from the past year or two. Nevertheless, perhaps some of them might find intriguing articles from the 1990s that remain important today and should be added back to the current syllabus. Many were definitely hard to delete or let go of. Perhaps they will ask me questions about the tasks, activities, and articles that they found interesting and want to know more about. Finally, I am certain that, despite the 64 page monster syllabus, there will still be topics and technology tools that remains missing. Humm, what might they be?

Ok, time to explore those syllabi. I am not including all of them; especially when I have offered it twice in one year. I tried to select one sample syllabus from each year in which I taught the course. Enjoy. And feel free to send me notes on your observations and insights into the field of Emerging Learning Technologies or Interactive Technologies for Learning and Collaboration or this Open Educational World or whatever you want to call it. But be careful not to be sucked into this monster.

Sample Prior Syllabi for "Monster" Course (note: Soon this course will get an official designition as R678 Emerging Learning Technologies and stop being listed as a topical seminar for graduate students. Note also that I might teach this course as a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in the spring of 2013 or some later date...note sure yet. If so, this monster will evolve some more.):

1. Fall 2012, IU: R685 Emerging Learning Technologies (64 pages) 
2. Spring 2012, IU: R685 The World is Open With Web Technology (54 pages)
3. Fall 2011, IU: R685 The World is Open With Web Technology (52 pages)
4. Fall 2010, IU: R685 The World is Open With Web Technology (43 pages)
5. Fall 2009, IU: R685 The Web 2.0 and Participatory E-Learning (30 pages)
6. Fall 2008, IU: R685 The Web 2.0 and Participatory E-Learning (30 pages)
7. Fall 2007, IU: R685 The Web 2.0 and Participatory E-Learning (27 pages)
8. Fall 2005, IU & IUPUI: P600/R685 Online Learning Pedagogy and Evaluation (18 pages)
9. Fall 2004, IU & IUPUI: P600/R685 Online Learning Pedagogy and Evaluation (15 pages) (with Dr. Seung-hee Lee)
10. Fall 2003, IU: P600/R685 Online Learning Pedagogy and Evaluation (12 pages)
11. Fall 2002, IU: P600/R685 Interactive Tools for Learning and Collaboration (12 pages)
12. Fall 2001, IU: P600/R685 Interactive Tools for Learning and Collaboration (13 pages)
13. Fall 1999, IU: P600 Interactive Tools for Learning and Collaboration (10 pages)
14. Fall 1997, IU:  P600 Interactive Tools for Learning and Collaboration (16 pages)
15. Spring 1995, IU & IUPUI: P600/R680 Interactive Tools for a Learning Community (14 pages) (with Dr. Ken Hay)
16. Fall 1990, WVU: Ed.P. 391 New Technologies in Education: From a Cognitive Perspective (with W. Michael Reed) (no syllabus available; but I found some notes that indicate that students read and discussed hypertext media for biology and English, problem solving software for at-risk youth, artificially intelligent math tutoring systems, interactive video for teaching classroom management principles, idea generators and collaborative tools for writing, ERIC on CD Rom, the use of the video camera as a research tool, computer programming for enhancing problem solving, Lego Logo, distance learning and communication, future trends, etc. This course was taught at West Virginia University in Allen Hall, Room 802B from 4-7 pm on Tuesday nights. I was in my second year of academic teaching. I am now in year 23 and still teaching that course. Of course, the title has changed and the content has evolved.)

More Fun: Here are nearly 60 technologies that we discussed and experimented with back in the fall of 1990 class. You might ponder the purpose of each one. Just what did they offer in terms of human cognition and learning? Do any still exist? And what were the research opportunities?

Fall 1990 New Technologies, Programs, and Activities

1.    Knowledge Navigator

2.    ERIC on CD Rom

3.    HOTS Program

4.    Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI)

5.    Kids writing at home and schools

6.    Writing to kids at alternate locations and distance learning

7.    Computers as part of magnet schools

8.    RealTime Writer

9.    Writing with text marked for changes to accept or not and comments

10.  Spanish grammar tutors

11.  Grammatik IV

12.  Appleworks

13.  Writer's Helper

14.  Word Perfect, Word Finder, Definitions Plus, Associated Press' Stylebook

15.  Knowledge Builder

16.  Computer Prompts for writing

17.  Keystroke Mapping

18.  Microworlds and Artificial Realities

19.  Games after schools for San Diego students

20.  Lego Logo and Wierd Creatures

21.  Logo and music composition

22.  Computer Programming

23.  Hypertext on Hypertext

24.  Intermedia lab at Brown University: From Linking to Learning

25.  Fractals and graphics explorations

26.  Digital Video Interactive (DVI) technology

27.  Interactive Video in chemistry

28.  Interactive Video in life and death moral dilemma

29.  The Alternate Reality Kit for physics (today)

30.  The Envisioning Machine for physics (today)

31.  Apple Multimedia presentation

32.  CD's and music analysis and composition

33.  Interactive video and medical training

34.  Interactive video and bird anatomy

35.  Hypercard and bird anatomy

36.  Idea processors

37.  Text analyzers

38.  Therapy Writing Programs

39.  The Rand Algebra Tutor

40.  ACT* geometry and programming tutor from Anderson at CMU

41.  Multimedia (Learning Constellations and children's theory building)

42.  New Video Media: Video, computer games, and music TV

43.  Designing Electronic Books

44.  Handy: Making a scene

45.  POSIT: Process Oriented Subtraction-Interface for Children

46.  PCMATH system

47.  Video camera for collecting, analyzing, and documenting data

48.  VideoNoter

49.  MicroProust and MicroSearch

50.  Debuggy

51.  Instructional Software Design Project (ISDP Project)

52.  Divergent and convergent computer software applications

53.  Database Management Skills

54.  Learning Tool (Kozma)

55.  Raiders of the Lost Arc and Young Sherlock Holmes for macrocontexts

56.  Smithtown (microeconomics)

57.  Workstations and Classrooms of the Future

58.  Construct a World, Hint and Hunt, Syllasearch (Resnick article)

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =  = = = = = = =

Is there a (course) monster growing under your bed too?

16 Rapid Report Reactions: "Digital Faculty: Professors and Technology, 2012"

Steve Kolowich from Inside Higher Education asked for my comments on the second of two reports from surveys conducted by Inside Higher Ed and the Babson Survey Research Group. The first one was on college faculty perspectives related to online education ("Conflicted: Faculty and Higher Education, 2012"). The second one is titled "Digital Faculty: Professors and Technology, 2012." The new report relies on a survey of more than 4,500 college faculty members across the United States and 591 administrators who are responsible for academic technology on their respective campuses. You can access both an HTML and a PDF version of this report. You can also sign up for free and find both reports.

Steve's review of the second survey report came out in Inside Higher Education this morning (August 24, 2012) with the same title as the new report, Digital Faculty: Professors and Technology, 2012 (Steve's overview and expert reactions). It is an excellent review with many insights into the findings, connections to recent technology trends (e.g., flipping the classroom), and reactions from experts. Unfortunately, he was unable to include my comments in this report. Hence, I offer them below after checking with Steve that it was ok to blog them. I do not comment on every aspect of the report, but perhaps reading Steve's summary as well as my blog post below, you can quickly grasp some of the key findings detailed in the report before or after reading it. My comments should also indicate some possibilities for future research in this area. Read on....

16 Rapid Report Reactions: "Digital Faculty: Professors and Technology, 2012"

1.      E-Textbooks (page 5-6 of report): With the emergence of thousands of open access journals and resources, many faculty members are creating online article compilations instead of requiring textbooks; thereby saving students money and potentially expanding the class resources 10 or 20 times beyond what they might have received from a publisher of a single textbook (Steve: see my 64 page emerging learning technology syllabus that I just posted today as a case in point; everything is a hot link...no books to buy). Hence, the question e-textbooks (while it is clear) can have many interpretations. For instance, some might view an “e-textbook” option for students as when the professor or department compiles online or digital articles to replace a textbook.

2.      E-Textbooks (pages 5-6): Another aspect to point #1 above is that while over one-third of faculty members regularly assign books that have e-textbook and traditional formats, I bet that a significant percentage of additional faculty members are using free and open online articles, reports, news, referenceware, books, and other resources to substantially supplement their books and perhaps replace them as I have done. I hate to venture a guess about the percentage but it is likely quite huge. However, it will depend on what is available online in each discipline.

3.      E-Textbooks (pages 5-6): While the percent of faculty members who assigned books that were only in e-textbook format was quite low at 12.1 percent, this is 12 percent that was not doing so a decade ago. And another 16 percent is occasionally doing so. So, stated another way, more than 1 in 4 college professors have replaced printed books at least sometimes with digital ones. That is a sign that the trend toward digital books in higher education has more than reached a tipping point. There is no going back. With such numbers, the publishers and other content providers can creatively experiment with such books and place greater financial resources behind their attempts to e-purpose textbooks.

4.      Digital Materials such as Videos and Simulations (pages 7-8): Digital materials such as simulations and shared online video content are being used regularly or occasionally by most higher education instructors. Such a finding reveals that faculty have come to rely on resources shared and found on the Web to support their instruction. As a result, during the past two decades, we have moved from using traditional media centers to support instruction with their stockpile of videotapes that had to be requested, reviewed, and returned, to an age when millions of free videos are available at one’s fingertips. Such videos, of course, can be watched at any moment and easily replaced when they are no longer available. Importantly, research in psychology has shown that such video content helps learners store information visually, thereby providing another retrieval track. These are exciting times indeed.

5.      Digital Materials such as Videos and Simulations (pages 7-8): The problem with this question, however, is that I see far greater use of videos in higher education than the use of simulations. Naturally, the use of share online video as well as simulations varies by discipline. In field like medicine, engineering, and business, more research and development money exists to create rich simulations that can be shared and reused compared to areas like history, religious studies, or education. In addition, there are other contents available online today that the Digital Faculty report did not ask about, including animations, podcasts, interactive timelines and maps, online referenceware (e.g., discipline-based multimedia glossaries), etc. Such contents are exploding in use on the Web, especially interactive maps and timelines.  Consequently, while this particular survey item is highly intriguing, there is much follow-up research that might be conducted.

6.      Digital Materials used in FTF, Blended, and Fully Online Courses (pages 7-8): Naturally, faculty members who teach in blended and fully online formats use such pedagogical supplements more often that those teaching in traditional classrooms. One plausible reason is that faculty members with such technology interests and leanings may self-select into online environments. A second reason is that their students will expect them to take at least a little bit of risk and experiment with new simulation tools and digital books. Many other reasons exist.

7.      Faculty Creation of Digital Materials (page 8): More than 4 in 10 faculty members are creating content regularly or occasionally to use within their classes. This finding can be interpreted in at least a couple of ways. First, college instructors (and teachers in any setting) always create content. However, what is unique here is that the content produced now is digital—podcasts, blogs, portals, simulations, e-books, online lectures, etc. While, as revealed in this study, a fairly small percent of faculty members are creating open educational resources in the form of lecture capture, it is difficult to create content with all the different media formats and technologies available today. Lectures, while vital in many content areas, are not the only type of open educational resource that can benefit students. It may be vital to explore the different types of content creation activities that college faculty partake in today. It might also be useful to try to understand why 90 percent of college faculty are not using lecture capture on a regular basis.

8.      Faculty Used Lecture Capture to Record or Stream-In Instruction (pages 9-10): The fact that those teaching fully online are doing lecture capture makes sense. Today, synchronous conferencing systems like Elluminate (now Blackboard Collaborate) and Adobe Connect Pro have tools to record synchronous sessions and make them available for students who missed them for whatever reason. Weekly guest expert presentations as well as instructor lectures can be saved not only for current students but also for those who will take the course in the coming semesters. In effect, faculty may not go into an online course with the explicit intention of capturing lectures; it just might be a by-product of teaching online. Hence, the data highlighted in the “Digital Faculty” report about lecture capture is not too surprising. In addition, some faculty members who are teaching online might be nervous about it or might want to make sure that online students have the same lecture materials that face-to-face ones have. Hence, they will record a set of lecture videos before the class starts or as it is ongoing.

9.      Fairness of Reward Structures for Digital Pedagogy (pages 10-11): Another straightforward and expected finding relates to the data in this report on reward structures for digital pedagogy. Some institutions are perceived to be making a concerted effort to reward faculty and some are not. The statistics are split. Still, the data revealed in this report are much more positive than surveys of 10-12 years ago. And sure, when there are vast institutional differences and perhaps competitive systems of rewards in places that do have rewards, the administrators who are funding such programs are going to be more positive about the fairness of such systems than the individual instructors who receive (or don’t receive) the rewards.

10.   Training and Support for Lecture Capture (page 34): The data reported on training and support for digital tools in the classroom is also quite a bit better than was witnessed a decade ago. Still nearly a quarter of faculty members surveyed believe that such training needs improvement. Clearly, higher education institutions still have a ways to go in terms of supporting faculty teaching with technology.

11.   Faculty Perspectives and Rewards Related to Digital Publishing (pages 12-16): It is unfortunate that college faculty do not see rewards from publishing their research in a digital format. Perhaps, like perceptions of online learning, this will change as we all become more familiar with digital outlets for our research. The low percentage of regular digital scholarship is particularly disappointing given all the avenues for such scholarship to be displayed today. Digital scholarship is not just seen in online papers. I have seen it displayed in wiki compilations of various publications from a research team; blog reflections on the progress of one’s research and links to online research articles; video interviews and podcasts of one’s research that get posted with the open access publications; publishing research in free open access articles; wikibooks of research on a topic from a set of researchers in a particular institution or across research sites; online interviews about one’s research; digital books; etc. All of these avenues for dissemination make it difficult for promotion and tenure committees as well as external reviewers of faculty dossiers to make decisions about tenure. Decision making was much less complicated when the outlets where fewer in number. Many of the traditional outlets still exist, and so the easiest way to award tenure is to place perceptual blinders on the other ones for now. Such practices will undoubtedly change in most disciplines during the coming decade or two. Such a case can be made from the data in this report given that faculty believe that the online quality of contents has been getting stronger lately.

12.   Use of Social Media for Interacting with Students and Colleagues (pages 17-18): It is not surprising that faculty use social media to interact with other their colleagues and not students. College instructors only have so much time and personal resources available. If hundreds or thousands of students had their Skype contacts and were friends with them in Facebook, it would be difficult to get day-to-day tasks completed.

13.   Digital Communication Technology and Media Impact on Productivity, Creativity, and Scholarly Collaboration (pages 18-23) and Stress (pages 28-29). The data on enhanced communication, productivity, creativity, collaboration, and connections with others in your scholarly community is perhaps the most important finding of this study. And the fact that female instructors have experienced such enhanced creativity, productivity, and collaboration from digital technology is certainly worth discussing further and following up with additional research. Sure, this constant connection to others and to rich veins of data with this technology can be daunting and quite stressful. Without a doubt, we are getting requests to respond to others via email from the time we wake up to the time we go to bed. Case in point, I had 157 emails in my in-basket to read during the day today (Wednesday) that were not spam. In addition, I had 139 emails that I composed and sent out to others. Despite these email stressors and constant contact from others, the survey data shown here signals that we are more creative creatures who are making contributions today in global venues that would have been impossible just a decade or two ago without such technology.

14.   Daily Email and Responsiveness (pages 24-27): Teaching online and blended brings with it more email. Sure, students want to connect. They want a sense of social presence. Email and synchronous class sessions can provide that sense of instructor caring and feedback.

15.   Use of LMS (pages 30-32): Interesting that the main features of a learning management system (LMS) is to share a syllabus and communicate with students. These two tasks can be accomplished today without an LMS. Also interesting to see the gap between administrators and faculty in terms of tracking student attendance. Administrators are sold on these LMSs since they can track attendance, participation, grades, etc. They manage learning. From my perspective, most faculty members could really care less about such computer log data. College instructors and students are more concerned with the pedagogical and motivational side of learning with digital technology than simple counts of butts in seats—they want rich interaction, engagement, meaningful learning, goal-driven pursuits, feedback, collaboration, etc. In effect, they want powerful and transformative learning. Faculty live in the moment of the course. Administrators fly over the top of the course and rely on sometimes computer log data to determine the course or system effectiveness. Hence, the survey reveals different perceptions of importance on these digital learning technologies.

16.   Excitement or Fears About the Future (pages 35-36): The fact that free content, digital resources, blended learning opportunities, and additional data on teaching are all deemed positive and exciting, while for profit and online education is less exciting and even stressful makes sense. The latter are major structural changes in higher education. The former are enhancements to the present system.


I hope the above comments on the Digital Faculty: Professors and Technology, 2012 report are helpful (HTML, PDF). More information on both reports is here: Babson/Inside Higher Education reports). Steve's overview of this report today in Inside Higher Education is here.

Anyone not yet drowning in data, can read dozens of other similar reports from the past couple of years as listed in my 64 page "monster" R685 syllabus on Emerging Learning Technologies. Class started this past Monday. it is an online class. Many guest speakers (typically Monday nights at 7 pm EST). We had Michael Horn from the Innosight Institute this past Monday. He was fantastic. Anyone is welcome to attend (see syllabus for details). Wish me well in managing the monster. More on this in my next blog post in a couple of days.

Unabridged Interview: "Extreme Learning, Matrix-Style" in Big Think

Some people are wondering when I will post to TravelinEdMan again. How about tonight? Perhaps.

Why have I not been blogging you ask? Well, after finishing my Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for Blackboard back in May (see blog post with archive), I have been working on a book on online motivation and retention using my TEC-VARIETY model which I hope to give away free as a PDF and sell cheaply in Amazon CreateSpace as well as Kindle. One chapter left to write--on goal setting and yielding products. Each chapter takes about a week to write up. Hope to be done after I get back from the 28th Annual Wisconsin Distance Teaching and Learning Conference next week. Will I take a break from writing and hang out in Madison, Wisconsin next week and jog along Lake Monona and Mendota in early August? Yes! But I will try to finish the book before I leave or right after I get back. Then, it will take a few months of editing (and cutting) and copyediting before it I get the book done. I wrote too much....as per usual.

In the meantime, below is my unabridged interview by David Berning from Big Think which took place a few weeks ago and was posted yesterday. Some of you might want to read the article that appeared in Big Think, Extreme Learning, Matrix-Style. It was, in fact, the lead article in a set titled: "Today's big idea: Disrupting Education" (see list of these article).

First, I think I must explain how this interview came about. My team and I have been tracking Big Think as part of our extreme learning research and contacted them to help us collect survey data on informal and extreme learning (you can take the survey, in fact). A couple of wonderful people at Big Think replied that they wanted to talk to me about the research we were doing. Since only part of my reply is in that article in Big Think, I thought I would post the full response here in my TravelinEdMan blog.

What is Big Think you ask? Some might check out their Wikipedia page or their YouTube Channel. Bascially, Big Think includes short video interviews, multimedia presentations, panel discusions, and blog posts of hundreds of intellectuals around the planet. If you browse through it, you might find information on topics like stem cell research, happiness, global warming, technologies or foods of the future, etc. See the About. I heard that some of the founders have experience with producing the Charlie Rose show on PBS. It shows. Suffice to say, this Website is top notch. I remember some of their early interviews when I first explored it around 2007 were with folks like Richard Branson from Virgin Airlines and Deepak Chopra. People now listed in their expert list include John Seely Brown, Bill Nye the Science Guy, Larry King, Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom (IU Professor, recently deceased), Ken Burns, James Gleick (author of "The Information"), Salman Khan from the Khan Academy, Dana Boyd, Jimmy Carter, Gloria Steinem, and many other artists, novelists, neuroscientists, filmmakers, politicians, and economists. Way cool.

This is the age of the open education world. Websites like Big Think are playing a huge role in that openness. It now focuses on topics like the future where my interview appeared as well as history; life and death; love, sex, and happiness; science and technology; the environment; beliefs; media and the internet; identity; politics and policy; etc., among the experts of the world. I definitely plan to use this resource in my emerging learning technologies class as well as my class on learning theories. For those interested in shared online video sites, see my portal listing of nearly 80 such sites.

Ok, now, on to that full interview with David Berning from Big Think (and remember, you too, can take our informal and extreme learning survey).

Unabridged interview of Curt Bonk, Instructional Sytems Technology Department, Indiana University, by David Berning, Big Think.

(Please Note: Resulting article in Big Think can be found here: Extreme Learning, Matrix-Style, Posted August 2, 2012.)

David (Big Think) Q#1. What is, in your opinion, the main purpose of education? Is this purpose being fulfilled today? How can the integration of technology better serve this purpose?

Curt Responds: Among the chief goals of education is to help the human species deal with unique problems, issues, or situations as they arise. Education offers possibilities for reflection on the credibility, appropriateness, relevance, and reliability of information sources. The education person knows when she knows, what she knows, and how to obtain information and new skills and competencies which she presently lacks. And that is where technology often plays a significant role. Learning technology, when thoughtfully integrated, can assist in efforts to seek, find, and filter knowledge that is appropriate and timely. It can share the cognitive load with the learner by offering cognitive maps of key concepts, interactive timelines and notecards, images and graphs, assorted referenceware, and sequenced data upon demand. Technology supplements and augments what the learner already knows.

Today, much of the dialogue about education is about catching up to those deemed ahead on various standardized test scores. Unfortunately, most highly used tests measure the basics and not much beyond. Web-based technologies, however, can give us all the information we need within milliseconds. When we can have the equivalent of the Library of Alexandria in our pockets on an inexpensive flash drive, we must begin to question exactly what should be taught and ultimately what knowledge is. As the forms of such knowledge-based technology multiply and reduce in price, a new dialogue needs to open up about the benefits and intensions of education.

The purpose of education has swiftly pivoted from knowing what something is to knowing how to find out about that thing. The basic tools of knowledge discovery are now Wikipedia and other wiki-like tools, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, TED talks, online news services, digital books, and a vast array of online learning courses and modules.

David (Big Think) Q#2. Your study focuses on understanding the motivating force technology can have on the learning/teaching process and the capabilities it has on sharing knowledge and information. What exactly do you wish to do with the results of your study?

Curt Responds: We hope to create a space for sharing stories of how technology has impacted one’s life in a significant or life empowering way. Such cases and stories can be used to inspire others. We want people to imagine new careers and discover how learning opportunities on the Web can lead them there. We plan to put these stories, with proper permission, of course, into a book or report that is indexed across ages, cultures, and learning situations. Whether one is a young person or more experienced adult, we hope to build an assembly of stories that anyone can use to find role models, new learning vistas, and innovative ideas about education. We intend to help open up the educational world to people who have had it closed for far too long. Open educational resources, opencourseware, open content, open source software, open access journals, and so on, bring immense possibilities for change. The world is now open for learning as I discuss in my book, “The World is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education.”

I also want to document aspects of human development during the lifespan that heretofore have been hidden from view. This particular goal will admittedly take much more time. However, we are living longer and there are myriad more ways to learn today than just a few years back. It is likely that there are not only human learning gains from the expansion of learning technology and open content on the Web but also wholly new forms of human development that need to be revealed, mapped, and understand.

David (Big Think) Q#3. You distinguish between two separate types of 'informal teaching/learning methods' in your study: simple self-study and "extreme" learning. Can you briefly elaborate on distinction of these terms?

Curt Responds: We are attempting to distinguish between everyday informal activities such as looking up travel or health information in a Wikipedia page or finding an article in a learning portal on Shakespeare, Hemmingway, or Jane Austin, from something that is much more novel and unique which we are calling extreme learning. An example of extreme learning happened to me this past May when over 4,000 people enrolled in a course I was teaching for Blackboard using their free course management system in CourseSites. The course, “Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success,” was focused on how to teach online and people who completed it got a badge (registration remains open; in addition, a recap of the course can be found in my blog).

You might think that 4,000 is a lot of students. So did I. However, there is a course on social networking this summer at Stanford with over 400,000 students. And last fall, a professor at Stanford taught an online course on artificial intelligence to over 160,000 students. Not too surprisingly, the success and potential of such massive open online courses or MOOCs has fostered a number of new ventures including Coursera, Udacity, and Udemy. Those wishing to stick to branded universities are in luck as MIT and Harvard recently formed a new partnership to offer such courses through edX.

Other forms of extreme learning include teenagers navigating the globe as solo sailors and keeping up with their high school studies using Skype, satellite phones, and other technologies. Another example would be when researchers in the Amazon provide educational resources and blog posts for kids in schools to read, analyze, and respond to. Still other forms of extreme learning are evident when a researcher listens to a podcast of a chemistry or physics course while involved in a scientific project on polar ice. Perhaps you have heard about people who bike ride through the Americas and blog about their adventures. Or maybe you have been one of the millions of people around the world signing up to take or teach a language in Livemocha, Babbel, or The Mixxer. These, too, are examples of extreme learning.

David (Big Think) Q#4. Surely, it could be argued, that the internet exposes its users to a more distracting environment than what is experienced in a classroom setting. Is this a problem you have witnessed first-hand with your students? Does this argument at all hinder the appeal of online learning and its overall efficiency?

Curt Responds: Sure. There are times that I have to ask my students to turn off their screen or power down their devices. However, one might also think about how to enlist their services with the technology that they bring into the classroom. For instance, you might assign someone the role of “Google Jockey.” The person in that position might find and display Web resources and tools as you mention them in a lecture or as a small group is presenting their project or ideas. In effect, instead of banning various technology that learners bring with them, you are endorsing it. With such a policy, the learning resources of the course dramatically expand.

Another Internet problem is being distracted by inappropriate content. There are trillions of pages of content on the Web. If just one percent could be used in education, there would be more content than anyone could ever hope to use. What each instructor and every department should be doing is finding and agreeing upon 20 or 30 of the highest quality Web tools and resources (e.g., The Encyclopedia of Life, the Khan Academy, The British Library “Turning the Pages” Website, TED Ed, LinkTV, Big Think, The New York Public Library, Sophia, MIT OpenCourseWare, Open Educational Resources Commons, Impossible2Possible, Polar Husky, Earthducation, iCivics, MedTube, Livemocha, BBC Learning English, etc.). Once selected, they should design innovative and pedagogically engaging curriculum activities around these resources and programs.

My research team and I have been finding and rating hundreds informal and extreme learning Websites during the past couple of years. We are looking at the learning potential, scalability, novelty of the technology used, content richness, functionality of the technology, uniqueness of the learning environment, extent of technology integration, and potential for life changing experiences. If successful, we think we can alter and perhaps elevate the discussion about online learning quality.

David (Big Think) Q#5. What are critics' primary concerns about the integration of technology and education? In your opinion, are these concerns valid?

Curt Responds: There are many issues that have been repeatedly raised for decades. Among them is the cost. Once you purchase laptops, iPhones, or Smartboards for a particular learning purpose or need, at some point, they will need to be upgraded or replaced. This is an expensive undertaking, especially in these tough monetary times. However, if technology can help to blend the learning environment, thereby reducing the time for face-to-face instruction, it can offer significant monetary benefits.

Second, is the concern about technology replacing teachers or the entire school or university. Some charter and innovative school programs, for instance, are experimenting with different types of blended learning. With blended learning, students might learn online as well as in physical buildings wherein lab assistants handle student questions and concerns instead of higher priced teachers. Naturally, there are debates about the quality of such instruction and the role of traditional teachers. Despite the debates and concerns, I expect that this trend will accelerate in the coming years. The role of the teacher will dramatically shift as basic skills are handled with computer technology. Teachers will play a more vital role in higher order tasks. For instance, such instructors will orchestrate online collaboration activities with students and classrooms around the world. I predict that increasingly, teachers will be concierges, tour guides, and expedition leaders who find content and make it available for learners to explore, instead of force feeding them with precanned lectures and prepackaged content.

A third concern related to technology in education is the continued digital divide. Many students lack technology access at home and hence are often behind their peers in both technology-related confidence and skills. As a partial solution, stimulus monies in many communities (including my own) were used to get an iPad or laptop for all children enrolled in lower SES schools. But such initiatives are only going to have a modest impact without proper teacher training.

A fourth concern relates to the types of technology tools that should be integrated. The arguments made between using technology for basic and higher-order thinking skills began decades ago with Skinner machines, were extended in the 1980s with the emergence of hypermedia and multimedia, and persist today with in the world of the Web 2.0 and beyond. Fortunately, the tools for collaboration, interaction, engagement, and authentic learning have proliferated in recent years. Still, many educators and politicians view learning technology strictly from what it can do to help boost standardized test scores.

David (Big Think) Q#6. Where can readers go to learn more about you and your study?

Curt Responds: They can explore our extreme learning research project. Once there, they can read our recent conference papers, explore extreme learning Web resources, tools, and projects, and scan through the interests and biographies of those involved in the project, including my own. They can also read some of the life changing stories that have been shared to date.

(Remember the interview in Big Think is here, Extreme Learning, Matrix-Style. Enjoy. Some of  you might also enjoy my survey on informal and extreme learning)

Unabridged Interview on MOOC for Chronicle of Higher Education

Fifth MOOC-Related Post in Five Days (I'm now done...):
The previous four days, I have made a series of blog postings on massive open online courses (MOOCs). I did for Blackboard with their CourseSites people. Let's recap:

Day One (June 13): Jarl Jonas Director of CourseSites by Blackboard reflects on first MOOC
Day Two (June 14): The EvoLLLution from Toronto to a Global MOOC
Day Three (June 15): Reusable MOOC: When massive sync is lasting async
Day Four (June 16): Twenty Thoughts on the Types, Targets, and Intents of MOOCs
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And now for today...
Day Five (June 17): Unabridged Interview on MOOC for Chronicle of Higher Education

In this final post, I insert the full responses sent to Jeffrey Young from the Chronicle of Higher Education for his post related to my MOOC on Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success that was offered through Blackboard/CourseSites. This is the "unabridged" version or nearly 2,500 words, instead of the 500 or so that were in the Chronicle of HE this last week. I also include a few pictures and information from four of the international MOOC participants that I had not shared with Jeff as well as a few fun snapshots that Chuck Carney from the IU School of Education took of me during the second synchronous session. As you will see, I tried many ways to engage the MOOC audience.

Jeff Young's post on June 11, 2012 was titled, "Building Different MOOC's for Different Pedagogical Needs." He actually interviewed four professors doing such a MOOC. The full article was titles, "4 Professors Discuss Teaching Free Online Courses for Thousands of Students." It was interesting to read the stories of the other three professors. These interviews are among the most read and emailed Chronicle articles during the past week. Nice work Jeff! I always like reading your articles.

Jeff Q#1. Why did you sign up for this?


Curt responds: Simple--I was asked by Blackboard people. One of the key people from Blackboard just happens to be a student in our online master’s program in Instructional Systems Technology (IST) here at Indiana University. She had heard about my expertise in online teaching and learning and asked me to help. A MOOC is a major commitment so I had to reflect on it for a while. I agreed to it for several reasons. First, from what I could gather, Blackboard felt that educators are now extremely hungry for information that can enhance student online learning. I have developed a couple of models for teaching and learning online (i.e., R2D2 (see one MOOC participant use of it) and TEC-VARIETY (see sample participant reflection on it) and give between 80 and 100 talks each year on this topic; hence, it was a solid match. Through the Blackboard MOOC, I can perhaps influence thousands of instructors who potentially teach tens of thousands of students each year. And I can do this without having to leave Bloomington, Indiana. There are thousands of instructors using the free tools and course management system in CourseSites; many of whom have never received trained to teach online. In effect, it is a good cause.

Look at the math. There are nearly 4,000 people enrolled in the MOOC. If just 25 percent of them find one idea or activity that they can embed in their online courses, think of the global impact in terms of online pedagogy and enhanced teaching. From an instructional standpoint, it may be the most important five or six weeks of my life.

A couple of days ago, I was thinking to myself that there are more people in this one class than I have likely taught 23 years of teaching in higher education. Every time I reflect on the MOOC, a series of light switches keep going on and off in my head. If teaching is a calling, than a MOOC may be the ultimate such calling—at least today. In the past, books, conferences, journal publications, magazine articles, interviews, and radio and TV appearances were often viewed as the primary means for academics to get out new ideas. Today, not only must we add blogging and podcasting about one’s research findings or new teaching approaches to the mix of dissemination outlets, we must also consider the impact of teaching or designing a massive open online course.

(Note: I was explaining my Read-Reflect-Display-Do (R2D2) model during the Week 2 synchronous session on May 9, 2012 when the above picture was taken.)

Jeff Q#2. What’s it like so far? Please briefly describe what a typical “day” of online teaching is like...

Curt responds: Oh, my, where to begin? The MOOC we are doing is a professional development (PD) course. Consequently, it is more like a summer workshop experience for college instructors than an introductory course on computer science or engineering that you might hear about from Stanford or MITx. Hence, the course expectations as well as the forms of assessment, interaction, and communication may be different in our MOOC from the others you have heard about. Since I am conducting a synchronous Webinar session each Wednesday in May for a couple of hours, there is much to prepare. Building an interactive 2 hour session for hundreds of people located remotely around Planet Earth is not particularly easy (truth be told, it is now 6 am and I have yet to go to bed tonight as I have been preparing for the final synchronous session of our MOOC later today). And even if you are successful in creating the content, you are still dependent on access speed, file size, ease of technology use, and participant understanding of English.

So “my typical MOOC day” always involves thinking about and fine-tuning ideas for the weekly session. As part of this, during the week, I must upload any relevant PDFs of my PowerPoint slides for those enrolled to review. There are also Web resource links for participants to browse, links to videos to perhaps watch, and articles that need to he uploaded to the system. In addition to resource sharing, I respond to participant introductions (new people arrive every day), blog and wiki posts, and article and video discussions. I also might brainstorm with my assistants and the CourseSites team a set of potentially engaging discussion prompts for the week as well as motivators we might use in the synchronous session. Such activities are all so new and constantly evolving that each day there is a significant new decision to be made.

I am also receiving personal emails from participants asking me to review their pedagogical ideas and evaluate their prior or current online courses (i.e., “look under the hood” as one participant asked me yesterday). I might also read through strategic plans for online learning if they are administrators or government officials. While all this is going on, I am trying to make this a truly global experience, so I am constantly collecting information about participant location, job, future plans, etc. I use a physical globe in the weekly synchronous sessions to indicate where many of the participants are from. In the future, I anticipate that such information will be automatically collected and displayed within the CourseSites system.

I am fortunate in that I have a few people from CourseSites helping me out as well as eight teaching assistants here at IU who have all been through one or more of my courses. In fact, several of the TAs have been my instructional assistants in the past. They have volunteered to help in the MOOC so that they can gain more teaching experience as well as understanding of how a MOOC operates. In addition to helping with participant feedback, members of the MOOC team record themes related to the discussions and blog posts. This is often a massive undertaking, At the same time, a couple of them help me summarize resources mentioned in the weekly Webinars. Still others collect specific participant information when we request it.

We do not have the luxury of the computer-based assessment systems that are mentioned in many other MOOC endeavors such as those at Stanford and MIT, but we have some pretty savvy and helpful instructional technology graduate students here at IU; perhaps the top such program in the world. But you do not need any of that internal assistance (be it human or machine) to create an effective MOOC. There are tens of thousands of people around the world who would be willing to help an instructor or course design team with a MOOC. Moral: do not be jealous of what others appear to have that you do not. The Web offers much in the way of feedback, interactivity, support, and expert guidance that anyone can take advantage of.

Our professional development course requires a different set of instructional skills and technology tools than an introductory college course might require. As with any PD activity, there is a ton of personal consulting, advice, guidelines, and resource sharing. There is no typical day. But I will admit that many more hours are spent planning the weekly synchronous session than anticipated (the clock continues to tick…now at 6:30 am). You really do not want to mess up in front of hundreds of your peers.


Jeff Q#3. What needs to happen for you to consider the course a success?

Curt responds: In terms of course success, we hope to see participant enthusiasm as well as interactivity, dialogue, and responsiveness. We want to see new groups form and make connections and share their respective innovative course plans. Each week, a number of people from our MOOC have shared exciting and insightful ways of using some of the frameworks and activities mentioned in the MOOC. These frameworks related to online learning motivation and retention, learner diversity and learning preferences, and the use of shared online video. Some of their descriptions extend well beyond anything I ever thought of when designing some of these models and frameworks initially. This is quite heartwarming and exhilarating.

In addition to the roughly 4,000 enrolled, to date there have been more than 5,000 discussion board posts, nearly 400 blog posts, and many more posts in the MOOC wiki. Regarding live participation, the first synchronous session had more than 500 participants and the rest have averaged well over 250.

There are extensive conversations and, at times, heated debates in the discussion forums and blogs. There is also much sharing and pooling of resources. The weekly summaries of discussion and Webinar themes are filled with resources. There is likely enough information in “Let’s Discuss” forums and blogs to create at least one book of best practices for online teaching and learning, if not two. There are also some 20 self-formed groups (e.g., Nursing Educators, E-learning Entrepreneurs, Christian Colleges and Seminaries, Mobile Learning, librarians, K-12 Educators, Change Management, All About Adjuncts, etc.). Each of these groups helps to personalize the massive online experience and provide a sense of learning community.

While not everything has run smoothly, and there are some participants who have their personal preferences of how a MOOC should be run, we have observed extensive positive feedback about the MOOC in Facebook, Twitter, participant blog posts, and other forms of social media as well as via email and even face-to-face contact with MOOC participants when we bump into them.

Those who complete the course will get a badge. In addition to badge completion, MOOC participants will complete a short survey related to the MOOC during the coming week. Results will be used in designing future courses like it.

Jeff Q#4. Has anything surprised you about the students who signed up for your course?

Curt responds: Well, I helped Ray Schroeder at the University of Illinois at Springfield with his course last summer. He had 2,700 people sign up from all corners of the earth. So the size of our MOOC is not that surprising. In our MOOC, participants are mainly coming from higher education settings but also from K-12 schools, military bases, government agencies, corporate training centers, and consulting firms.

What perhaps surprises me the most is how quickly the MOOC participants have grasped and adapted some of the ideas presented and embedded them in their own online and blended courses. For some, it was a mere day or two for them to flesh out a dozen or more activities and ideas. In fact, many of their ideas are much more detailed than the examples that I lay out in my own presentations and books. In a word, I find the immediate applications “phenomenal.” Typically, when I teach, there are some practitioners in the course, but many are fulltime graduate students. In the MOOC, I basically have approximately 4,000 practitioners who each have own personal goals and objectives. They have existing or upcoming courses in which to try out the ideas that are presented, discussed, and shared. It is like an evolving and living laboratory for online pedagogy.

The people in the MOOC appreciate the ideas shared and questions posed, whether they are coming from an elementary teacher in Korea (see below), a Captain or Major in the Swedish or Norwegian military (see below), a vice provost from a high ranking university in Texas, a high school teacher from rural southwestern Kentucky, an instructional designer from Sydney, Australia, a director of teaching and learning center in Dubai, or a college professor from Guadalajara, Mexico. They are all on equal footing here. There is no sense that anyone has greater credentials, more power, or better ideas. The MOOC flattens power, control, and responsibility. And that flatness combined with much openness is truly welcomed by all.

(Note: the pictures and text about them are additional supplements for my blog post which I did not send in for the Chronicle of HE interview. As shown below, South Korea is at the high end of the learning technology spectrum.)

(Note: Picture above of is Dr. Meeyong Kim, from Saeil Elementary School in Daejeon, South Korea. Meeyong was supposed to be a visiting scholar working with me this year. But could not get a visa. So the MOOC became a way for her to take one of my classes while still being in Korea. A map of her location is below).

(And when I visited Korea last September, Meeyong and her family took me to the DMZ. What an interesting place! See below.)

Curt (continues response to Jeff's question): I am also amazed that during the weekly synchronous sessions some people have stayed up past midnight in the UAE and Saudi Arabia or have woken up at 4 or 5 am in Korea, Singapore, or China to participate. It was relatively easy for people in North and South America to attend on Wednesday afternoons each week, but much of the rest of the world has had pretty rotten times. Nevertheless, many highly engaged individuals from outside of North America still came and contributed enormously to our synchronous activities and events. And many others sent us notes that they enjoyed watching the recorded programs days or weeks after the original aired.

(Note: Picture above is of MOOC participant, Mark Curcher of Dubai Men's College in the UAE. In this picture, Mark is looking over the Dubai skyline from the Burge Dubai. Mark tuned in at midnight each week. Below he is accessing some gold bullion from the world's highest ATM.)

(Note: I got to see Mark's offices at Dubai Men's College (DMC) a little over 3 years ago. Celow Mark points to his picture at the entrance of DMC.)

Curt continues: So I guess it is the willingness to flexibility get involved and learn from the course content that is the most surprising. Time, location, status, etc. are no longer barriers to learning that they once were.

(Note: Picture above is of MOOC participant (on right with hat), Major Thomas Lyck, Head Teacher of War Studies from the Swedish Armed Forces School of Logistics in Skoevde, Sweden. Major Tom participated in the MOOC late at night, though the sun did not set until midnight. He even participated while at a conference sponsored by the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) lab in Oslo, Norway. The conference took place in at Pers Resort in Gol, Norway (see point A below), where I met Tom the previous year. On the left is Commander Geir Isaksen, Head of R&D/XO at the Norwegian Defense ADL Office in Olso (see purple dot below). Geir brought me to the conference the previosu year. Both are wonderful people.)

(Above is Major Tom with two of my books which he apparently was using in the design of his courses. Below is a map of his location in Sweden.)

(Below is a picture of me with one of the MOOC participants, Leonardo Tosi, from Florence, Italy. This screenshot is from an interview that he conducted with me about my World is Open book outside of the MOOC using Adobe Connect (the same system we use here at IU). It was for his summer class of Italian teachers who were reading parts of my book. Leonardo had translated the beginning (prequel in Italian; English option) and ending (postscript in Italian; English option) of the book into Italian for them as well as the foreword in Italian (English option) for the new Chinese edition of the book.)

(Note: Leonardo is a project manager in the ICT and education area of the INDIRE Institute in Florence. INDIRE is a consortium of many different universities in Italy, including the University of Milan, the University of Florence, the University of Macerata, LUMSA University of Rome, the University of Palermo, the University of Catania, and University Leonardo da Vinci. Sounds like an interesting and rewarding place to work. It was great meeting people around the world each week in the MOOC. However, I should point out that most of the participants came from North America; I am just including the above 4 people from other countries in this particular blog post.)




Jeff Q#5. Do you have any concerns going into the course -- about format, implications for universities, or any other aspect of this unusual venture?

Curt responds: My chief concern is that there have been MOOCs in the past and some people seem to treat them as a type of religious experience both in terms of the content covered and the ways in which information is displayed, communicated, and reused. However, each MOOC is different. I think we need additional research on how to structure a MOOC, the types and forms of incentives to embed in such a course, the forms of learning assistance or scaffolding that are now possible, the range of resources that can bolster a MOOC-like experience, and so on. But a successful MOOC for an introductory or intermediate college course is much different in content and delivery format than what might prove effective in a PD MOOC (see previous blog post from yesterday).

I should point out that our MOOC will remain open at the CourseSites Website long after my commitment ends. People can still learn from the recorded content and earn a badge and perhaps some self-confidence (see blog post from two days ago). This openness will be a sign that they do not have to rush through the content. Future participants might come to realize that some of their pedagogical ideas might need a minor tweaking before finding rich success. They might also find innovative ways to troubleshoot through their weaknesses and begin experimenting with a technology tool that might not have even existed when the MOOC was first delivered. In addition, newcomers might have make new connections to peers who have completed the course and received their badge(s) days, weeks, or perhaps even months or years earlier. Not only might they contact their course peers from a different cohort, those who enroll later can directly contact the course designers or myself at any time. They might simply watch the archived weekly performances. I have been told that our synchronous sessions were at the high end of information, interactivity, and engagement, and yet were highly spontaneous and unpredictable. I tried to make them rich in content and yet fun. I hope that they find much reuse, replay, and remixing.
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That was the end of the interview. The above unabridged transcript is about 5 times the length of what ended up in the excellent Chronicle article, so I am sharing the complete transcript here in my TravelinEdMan blog. As noted, in this blog post I also include some additional information and pictures from 4 of the international participants. But that is only 4 of the 4,000 who enrolled in the course. I also shared with Jeff some of the unsolicited MOOC participant feedback; if interested in what the participants had to say, click and scroll down to May and June 2012 to read. I let him know that had obtained permission to share and wished him well.

So I have some to the end of my 5 blog posts in 5 days on my MOOC. That was not easy as I typically only post to TravelinEdMan once or twice a month. Now I have to get back to writing my online motivation and retention book using my TEC-VARIETY framework. I got half done last summer and have not touched it since last August. If interested in the topic, write to me for sample chapters. I am happy to get your feedback. I hope to give the book away as a free PDF document in a few months.

Those prefering to read more about the MOOC are in luck since I made some previous MOOC-related postings in April and May. See below.

April 19th: A Close Up Look at an Upcoming May MOOC
April 29th: Video Intro for Upcoming MOOC and IU Press on the Event
May 1st: Open-access articles on the "Digital Campus" about open access
May 7th: There's a whole lot of MOOC'en going on! (or: "The Multimedia MOOC")

May the force be with you if you read them!