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!

Reusable MOOC: When massive sync is lasting async

Introductory Note:
This is my third MOOC-related post in 3 days. There will be two more. All are indexed below.

Prior Posts:
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
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And now for today...tomorrow...and the next day...
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
Day Five (June 17): Unabridged Interview on MOOC for Chronicle of Higher Education

Five Forms of Openness to Learn from My MOOC
Naturally, when you teach a massive open online course (MOOC), there is an emphasis on openness. In fact, I have tried to document and put on display this openness in the prequel to my World is Open book titled, "Sharing...the Journey." Hence, I better be as open as can be about the MOOC resources or the critics will come out yet again.

First of all, the MOOC that I did last month with CourseSites by Blackboard remains open. Register and explore this course or other ones from the CourseSites open course series. I am fully aware that, for various reasons, some people might be hesitant to register for it and explore the materials. So...

I move on the second form of openness (i.e., this blog). In this blog post, I list the links to resources for all five synchronous sessions that we held each Wednesday in May 2012 (the 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd, and 30th). If you scroll down to these links, you can click and get a color PDF of any of my presentations and polling questions. Use whatever you like. The world is open to you. But please be a good pirate. You can also watch the archive of each session in Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate). These archives include the video stream from my camera, the audio file, and text of my PowerPoint slides or Web resources displayed. If you want to quickly find a particular segment of a synchronous session, you might watch the YouTube file that was created each week from the Collaborate stream archive. In the YouTube file, you will get the audio file as well as my PowerPoint slides but not the video stream from my camera. While the course has officially ended, you can still self-pace yourself through the contents and earn a badge. You can also share these contents with any of your friends and colleagues, and even your parents and grandparents.

Third, if you want the original PowerPoint slides or any articles or videos of mine that we used each week, just write to me at cjbonk at indiana dot edu. I am happy to reply.

Fourth, if you are shy or do not want to write to me, you can go to my PublicationShare.com Website for many of my articles; at least those that are free and open access. At PublicationShare, you will find technical reports, book chapters, journal articles, and magazine and newsletter pieces. Access, read, download, or share them. Up to you. And many of the Web resources from the synchronous sessions are posted at TrainingShare (see Archived Talks and Resources). You have to believe in the power of sharing!

Fifth, in Week 4, we used the 27 video primers that I had created 1-2 years ago for IU faculty member to help them teach online. The School of Education at IU decided to make them free to the world. The full name for these shared online videos is "Video Primers in an Online Repository of e-Teaching and Learning" or V-PORTAL. I realize that the videos in the V-PORTAL are not high production grade quality (the budget was basically a course release), but they are just primers and they are free. And with Tandberg picture-in-picture capability, there is a multimedia component in each one. Use them if you wish. Ignore them if you wish. If you use them, we took a liberal Creative Commons license on them. As a result, you can watch them, download them, share them, remix them, snip them, post them, translate them (see Arabic version that my friends at King Khalid University (KKU) did last year, for instance), etc.

Clip them or snip them? But how you might ask? Well, Tubechop is a tool that one of the MOOC participants, Stephen Bright from the University of Waikato in New Zealand (lovely place Waikato), told me about that I think is out of this world. You can select any part of a YouTube video and chop it up. This way, you are not wasting 5 minutes of class time showing a 6 minute video when only 40 seconds of it applies to your particular class. How cool is that? It is simple to use, fast, and highly useful. Put TubeChop on my top 10 list of technology tools that I will use in 2012.

By the way, Stephen Bright has done a Scoop.It with many more such tools and resources related to the use of online video in education, including Vialogues and Grocket Answers which foster commenting, discussion, and interaction around the use of shared online videos, instead of just passive viewing. And, of course, in his Scoop.It, he included highly popular links to resources like the TED-Ed, the Khan Academy, and talks from Salman Khan on reforming education. He also included more novel educational video portals that I like to show such as History for Music Lovers from my very inspirational and fun friend Amy Burvall. Do check that one out if you have not seen it; especially, if you love music from the 1960s to today. And Stephen linked to something I had not heard of called Grovo, which is called a "field guide to the Internet." It supposedly has thousands of videos on different Internet products. I have checked a few out and found them upbeat, informative, and crisp.

You might notice that Stephen also mentions the V-PORTAL in his Scoop.it. Each video in the V-PORTAL is about 9 or 10 minutes long. You can find videos on the use of wikis, podcasts, blogging, and shared online video, as well as videos on how to give feedback in online course, create communities, assess student learning, handle plagiarism, and how to manage and online course. Still others are on blended learning, archiving and ending a course, the future, and so on. Where are they, you ask? Well, you can find these videos in my YouTube channel (TravelinEdMan) as well as from the Instructional Consulting office in the School of Education at Indiana University (the latter come with extra resources but might play a tad slower).

So that is five ways that I am trying to share aspects of the massive course. A recap is below. You can...

Recapping Five Ways to Learn from the Blackboard/CourseSites ("Bonk Open") MOOC:
1. Register for the course and find all the free resources;
2. Use the links from the MOOC synchronous sessions provided here in this blog post (see below);
3. Write to me for original documents or files;
4. Check out the open access documents and resources that we used in the MOOC that are posted in PublicationShare.com and TrainingShare.com;
5. Check out the free and remixable videos in the V-PORTAL.

You can even write to students who were in the course and ask them for their takeaways and resources. In addition, CourseSites people are planning to send out a document in the next day or so recapping all the online discussions and blog forum postings, resources shared, controversial issues raised, questions asked, answers given, etc. You must register for the course to receive that document, however. The world opens wider and wider each day for learning. These are the forms of openness in this particular MOOC. Other MOOCs will have their forms of openness and different openness providers. Tomorrow I plan to blog on 20 different types of MOOCs and forms of openness.

The Participants
Of course, with over 4,000 participants enrolled, I am bound to meet some new friends (as well as some critics). I hope that my new friends find use for some of the links mentioned above and below. These new friends of mine are from from Dallas, Florence (Italy), the Ukraine, Boston, Escanaba (Michigan), Sydney, Liverpool, Louisville, Washington DC, London (Ontario), Paris, South Berwick (Maine), Fitchburg (Mass), Albany (GA), Homer (Alaska), Brussels, Cape Town, Dubai, Edinburgh, Alamosa (Colorado), Mobile (Alabama). etc. Great people. Wow what a fantastic experience for me to be able interact each week synchronously as well as asynchronously with K-12 teachers like Meeyong Kim from Korea (who was supposed to be my post-doc this year but could not get her Visa approved at the last minute), military trainers (like my friend Major Tom from Sweden), American composers and authors (like Paul Beaudoin from Fitchburg State University), and Web entrepreneurs (like Christine Malina-Maxwell from the University of Texas at Dallas who founded the McKinley Internet Yellow Pages back in the mid 1990s and now helps run a start-up company focused on big data analysis and security called Chiliad). What a mix of people!

So many interesting, highly engaged, inquisitive, and appreciable individuals. As the course ended, many sent notes of thanks about the free experience. Some sent me songs, artwork, funny quotes, and other things. One of them, Michelle Tillander, from the University of Florida Art Education Department, sent me the picture below.

Blackboard/CourseSites Massive Open Online Course (MOOC):

Topic: Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success
MOOC Info (from my Blog); Intro video (12:24); Registration; CourseSites Course Info

Synchronous Session for Week 1 of MOOC (May 2, 2012):

Part 1: The TEC-VARIETY online motivation and retention model.
Curt Bonk Week 1 Presentation and Q&A online from Bloomington, IN.
Available: Blackboard Collaborate/Elluminate recording; YouTube (1 hour 6 minutes); Color PDF of Slides.

Synchronous Session for Week 2 of MOOC (May 9, 2012):
Part I1: Where Are You R2D2?: Addressing Diverse Learner Needs with the Read, Reflect, Display, and Do Model.
Curt Bonk Week 2 Presentation and Q&A online from Bloomington, IN.
Available: Blackboard Collaborate recording; YouTube (1 hour 55 minutes); Color PDF of Slides.

Synchronous Session for Week 3 of MOOC (May 16, 2012):

Part III: 50+ (actually 75) Hyper-Engaging Ideas: Critical, Creative, Cooperative.
Curt Bonk Week 3 Presentation and Q&A online from Bloomington, IN.
Available: Blackboard Collaborate Recording; YouTube (1 hour 48 minutes); Color PDF of Slides.

Synchronous Session for Week 4 of MOOC (May 23, 2012):

Part IV: The Rise of Shared Online Video, the Fall of Traditional learning.
Curt Bonk Week 4 Presentation and Q&A online from Bloomington, IN.
Available: Blackboard Collaborate recording; YouTube (1 hour 44 minutes); Color PDF of Slides.

Synchronous Session for Week 5 of MOOC (May 30, 2012):
Part V: Participants, Questions & Answers, Demonstrations, and Reflections.
Curt Bonk Week 5 Presentation and Q&A online from Bloomington, IN.

Available: Blackboard Collaborate recording; YouTube (1 hour 55 minutes); Color PDF of Slides

In Week 1, I offered dozens of ideas for motivation and retention online using my TEC-VARIETY framework. I am working on a book related to it at the present time that I hope to give away as a free PDF document with 100+ activities. I also intend to offer the TEC-VARIETY book cheaply in hardcopy format through Amazon CreateSpace in a few months. I may test out chapters as mobile apps as well. Anyone wanting sample chapters should send me an email request. Happy to share. I got half the book done and would love to get your feedback.

In the second week, I went through a few dozen more activities and ideas related to my R2D2 (Read, Reflect, Display, and Do) model. I already have a 100 activities book completed on that model that I wrote with Dr. Ke Zhang from Wayne State University. It was published by Jossey Bass back in 2008. Yes, I do like Star Wars. As the picture below indicates, I also have a full functioning light saber. But it is more the mnemonic and simplicity of the model that is important. Those wanting to read more about it can see the eCampus news piece that I wrote back in December 2009. There was much positive reaction and immediate implementation of both the R2D2 model and the TEC-VARIETY model. Some of the ideas and activities shared by the participants were amazing and well beyond my expectations. Hence, by Week 2, we already had much success from the MOOC appearing.

In the third week, I went through some ideas and activities for fostering critical and creative thinking online as well as teamwork and collaboration. I have been teaching a class on alternative instructional strategies (R546) for more than 20 years now. It has a Website called the Bobweb that has evolved since back in the Stone Age (i.e., 1996 ) and is still in need of much work. Still, you can find much information about creativity and creativity testing in the Bobweb and much, much more. Given my 20+ years of experimentation in that class and related writing, there was much to share in Week 3.

In the fourth week, the ideas strictly related to the use of shared online video as a means to enhance learning, reflection on key course concepts, and interactivity. See earlier paragraphs for shared online video tools and resources that you might use.

The final week was for student question and answers from the students of the course. Near the start of the session, my Dean, Gerardo Gonzalez made an appearance. He had just returned from a trip to Cuba which was his first visit there in some 50 years. Dean Gonzalez seemed thrilled to have been able to return to the place in which he was born. The class loved his stories. Also in Week 5, we shared pictures, ideas, and map locations of the participants. My doctoral student, Donggil Song, came in and sang a couple of songs, one in Korean and one in English. In effect, we did more of the social side of the course in the final week, instead of in Week 1, though, of course, there were introductions online in CourseSites in that first week. Week 5 ended with an explanation of what CourseSites had to offer from Jarl Jonas, the CourseSites Director.

So, I hope all this has been helpful. As I stated earlier, this is an example of where synchronous sessions can find later use as asynchronous resources. Given the wealth of resources saved, archived, and made freely available, this becomes a reusable or repeatable MOOC. Perhaps some people (i.e., you) will take advantage of that. It was not easy to teach this course but it definitely was fun. Having all the synchronous sessions archived provides a semi-permanent record of what took place each week. We also had a discussion forum, blogs, wikis, and other components to the course.

A picture of me and my props in Studio 101 in the School of Education at IU from Week 2 is below. Stop by and visit me someday and I will give you the grand tour of Studio 101 and beyond. Bloomington, Indiana is a lovely place.

There's a whole lot of MOOC'en going on! (or: "The Multimedia MOOC")

There's a whole lot of MOOC'en going on!

Seems much is happening in the MOOC (i.e., Massive Open Online Course) world and in open education in general. The field is brimming with VC announcements and partnerships. As these appear, there are juicy debates about what the field is and what it should enable people to do. Of course, some of the debate is coming from those who have had a MOOC-like experience in the past and have concerns about how it is being portrayed today.

Suffice to say, that the field, whatever its name, is hot. Sizzle. Sizzle. Zap. Zap. If you don't watch out, you're gonna get your fingers burned (or so says the Alan Parsons Project a long time ago). Much about open education has been in the news the past week or two, including the announcement of edX. "MIT and Harvard have committed to a combined $60 million ($30 million each) in institutional support, grants and philanthropy to launch the collaboration." Did I hear $60 million? Yes, I did. Of course, edX comes after all the fanfare of other ventures like Udacity, Coursera, etc.

What is interesting or different here from previous news announcements and press releases is that the goal is not just delivery of online courses to the masses or the joint coordination of technologies to offer these online events. In addition to that, MIT and Harvard people also want to conduct research on human learning and the benefits, impact, and delivery methods of online instruction as well. Such "new" research directions and added attention definitely bodes well for those of us in instructional technology, distance learning, educational psychology, and learning sciences; especially those of us in the online learning trenches for the past couple of decades. Perhaps someone will actually read through some of it.

The Multimedia MOOC: Part 1 (News from Cyberspace)
So much to read, watch, and listen to since this month began. Yikes! As I stated in my previous blog post, it is getting extremely difficult to stay abreast of every news item, blog post, or seemingly major announcement. But attempt to keep up, we must.

There are many ways to try to keep up. I list a few of them below. You might notice that in parallel with the edX research focus, they address many senses or ways to learn. Let's start with the obvious area of text on the Web.

#1. Read: First, for those who relish text, there is plenty of that as well. There are articles in Huffington Post, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the NY Times all covering the same event. The Washington Post's article on this story on May 2nd was titled "Harvard, MIT announce new partnership that will offer free online classes." They all pretty much say the same thing--there is a transformation happening in higher education today from all this online and open education material. I am not sure that is the case, or that it is so sudden. However, it is wonderful to see the awareness of open education rise among the general populace.

As the days pass by, op-ed pieces like one by David Brooks in the NY Times appear, The Campus Tsunami. And of course, there is debate about all the press; especially such op-ed pieces. Just read Joshua Kim's response in Inside Higher Education, "David Brooks Confuses MOOCs with Online Learning" which appeared yesterday morning. A few hours later, Wired magazine was commenting about the importance of the research componet in the edX announcement in a blog post, "Harvard-MIT’s edX Brings Research Focus to Cloud Ed." And the comments sections of each article add fuel to the virtual debate and conversation.

#2. Watch: For visual learners, well, there are many YouTube and other videos of this announcement, both long (37:35) and short (2:23). Engaget offers both text and that same short video (MIT and Harvard announce edX web education platform, make online learning cheap and easy, by Michael Gorman, May 2, 2012).

#3. Listen: For those who prefer to earbud learning, there is a piece in NPR on "All Tech Considered" from May 2, 2012: Explosion In Free Online Classes May Change Course Of Higher Education. (Note: In a small update to my original blog post, on May 10, 2012, Inside Higher Education posted an article, "MOOCs and Machines" by Steve Kolowich. Steve also conducted an interesting and informative interview with Candace Thille, director of the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University and a leading advocate of intelligent teaching software. This interview is now available in a 19:49 minute podcast about "massive open online courses, data, and what we may soon know about how students learn.")

#4 Reflect: Article after article after article to skim or read more diligently. Video after video to watch and share with friends. Now mix in the NPR tidbit and other podcasts or blog posts and you have a corpus of knowledge and ideas that is bound to start people discussing,  debating, and generally conversing. And debate and converse they are. This is a true multimedia type of experience--so much text, so much video, and an array of audio commentary, interviews, and speeches. If Harvard or MIT officials really wanted to study human learning, they might start measuring the recall from their various announcements and press releases.

As I told my dean, Dr. Gerardo Gonzalez, this afternoon, "Everyone seems to be weighing in on this. If we are simply reifying the lecture on a more massive scale and giving it the blessing of both MIT and Harvard presidents as well as Stanford, well then, we may be in for a protracted debate. On the other hand, billions of people have no educational option at present. So the comparison of what we offer now to our present select set of graduate and undergraduate students may be an ill-conceived comparison, or, at least, a highly limited one."

Then I added, "For some, a MOOC, and open educational resources of many types, will be the first sign of access to education. For others, it will be a unique chance for professional development in one’s limited schedule. For still others, it will be an opportunity to experience a global community of co-learners. And yet for others, they will use these contents as a means to find new interests, hobbies, and careers. They might go to college after sampling these educational materials. Too many people are focused on the past and on what is happening today. They do not realize yet that we are in the learning century; and, hence, the types and forms of learning are being extended as well as transformed. Most focus on the transformation part and not on the extension part. I prefer to start with a focus on new opportunities and ways to extend learning in unique ways and to enable the billions of people on this planet who previously did not have access to education a chance to learn."

Dean Gonzalez here in the IU School of Education informed me University Business is offering a discount on their UB Tech 2012 conference at the Mirage in Las Vegas next month (Note: This conference used to be called "EduComm"). More specifically, a discount of $200 will be given to anyone who enters their online competition, "Will edX Improve Higher Education?" They are collecting responses to one question (300 words max) on or before May 11th. They also note that: "One grand prize winner will be selected from all responses to win free airfare to UBTech 2012 (up to a $400 value) and 3 nights lodging at the Mirage in Las Vegas." I think you all should enter! Why not...?

So, they ask: "What’s your opinion? Do you believe edX will truly improve education for everyone?" Do you agree that "Everything we know about higher education is being changed by technology?" If you have an opinion, you might give it a stab at it. The Mirage is fabulous. Great pools of cool water and plenty of sun outside to escape any gambling inclinations inside. More importantly, the Beatles Love show is still playing (now celebrating its 5 year anniversary). It's my favorite Vegas show. And UB Tech 2012 looks to have some great speakers, including Temple Grandin who "has been the subject of numerous profiles, books, magazines and radio and television specials." See above link and read why she is so famous and popular. I can also recommend this conference since I keynoted it two years ago when at the Mirage and had a grand time in a lovely corner suite. EduComm (i.e., UB Tech) people know how to run a conference packed with information as well as entertainment.

The Multimedia MOOC: Part 2 (My Personal Contribution)
As I started reflecting on the events for the past week or 2, I realized that I have been contributing to the Multimedia Mooc monster. No, not just with with my 54 page monster emerging learning technologies syllabus, but with various interviews and videos. There are articles to read, videos to watch, and audio files to listen to.

#1 Read. For instance, I told my dean that there are many benefits to all this open education stuff. In fact, back in 2009, I wrote an article for eLearn Magazine with 30 reasons why it is an interesting and important trend, "The World is Open for a Reason: Make that 30 Reasons!." (see also PDF of that article). Among the 30 are 10 reasons why colleges and universities would get involved in open education; 10 reasons why instructors or instructional designers would; and 10 reasons why students or potential learners would use it.

I also informed Dean Gonzalez about the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that I am doing for Blackboard/CourseSites people now. I thought he might like to know why I am still very much in teaching mode despite our spring term grades being turned in yesterday. And I am not just teaching a few students hanging around for the summer. Nope. This course, "Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success," now has over 3,600 enrolled. Dean Gonzalez is Catholic and I think he is saying a prayer for me the next time he goes over to St. Paul's. I hope so anyway given that over 500 people attended the first of five synchronous sessions last week Wednesday. We will have 4 more synchronous sessions during the month of May, each at 4 pm to 6 pm EST. This week, we talk about addressing learning diversity and learner preferences or styles. My Read, Reflect, Display, and Do (R2D2) model is among the focal points for that discussion. There will be dozens of examples shared.

#2 Watch: If interested, anyone can still register for the MOOC. If not sure, perhaps watch my video introduction to the MOOC. Still not sure? Why then, perhaps enroll and watch session #1 from last week in Blackboard Collaborate/Elluminate and see if anything is interesting. That session addressed online motivation and retention with my TEC-VARIETY model. Need more incentive? Well, if you enroll, you will find three free chapters from my upcoming book on online motivation and retention in the MOOC with 30 ideas or activities for online motivation and retention. There are no requirements. Your learning, your interactions, your selection of resources, and your attendance is totally up to you.

#3 Listen (or read): Many people might be wondering what a MOOC really is. Others might wonder why I agreed to do this one. Well, you can listen to an interview, “Audio/Massive Open Online Courses: Taking Learning to a New Level” that I gave a few days ago to Amrit Ahluwalia who is a writer for The Evolllution. If you want the condensed version of that phone interview, you can simply read the 2 page article that Amrit generated from it or flip through The Evolllution.

#4. Reflect: Seems much is happening in this space. Many people are contributing to it. To understand my perspective on MOOCs, you might listen to the longer audio file above or read the shorter article (see link above). You might scroll further up and watch the video introduction I did to help you gain some insights into the MOOC I am doing with Blackboard/CourseSites people. in contrast to some MOOCs that might be aimed at understanding a particular theory or technology trend, this one is more of a professional development experience in how to teach online. You might also read my article with 30 reasons for the emergence of this open education movement. In fact, as I recommended to Dean Gonzalez, you might use some or all of these 30 reasons as a starting point or as talking points for conversations about online courses and programs or strategic planning meetings for this world of openness and sharing. Or perhaps take a look at the free stuff we have posted at my World is Open book Website.

So much happening all over the world. Multimedia can help us learn--text to read, videos to watch, and audio files to listen to. Seems a few short years ago, this was definitely not the norm. But today with bandwidth widening, storage capacity going up while storage costs plummet, and accessibility increasing, there are many learners demanding such multimedia access. Some want animations, some simulations, some audio with their text, and others just want to see it in video format.

We can also access content when hiking, when on a boat, when out on polar ice, or when simply walking down the street or running the Rails for Trails here in lovely Bloomington, Indiana. You can get content when flying above the earth at 30,000+ feet. For instance, you might check out the May issue of Delta Sky Miles Magazine.

Special Issue: The Virtual Classroom: What’s new—and what’s next—in the brave new world of online higher education and corporate training.

Article: "Learning Revolution: The gurus of online higher education make the case for distance learning and weigh on where it’s headed, "by Steve Calechman. (single page view).

I was fortunate to be interviewed for it (see page 101). There were a slew of my colleagues and friends are in this article as well. These e-learning gurus or heavyweights include: Larry Ragan from the Penn State World Campus, Chris Dede from Harvard, Margaret Riel from Pepperdine University, Mark Milliron from Western Governors University (WGU) Texas, Joel Hartmann from the University of Central Florida, and many others. Many of these people have contributed to the online learning world for a decade or two or even longer. To have us all assembled in one issue sure is cool to see. Equally cool is that they included a picture of each of us. It is certainly great to reconnect with all these thoughtful and warm people, even if just in print or in a cyberspace article.

Unlike the MOOC stuff above, there is just text to read--though in both virtual and physical formats. Someday soon, such articles will have QR codes for an augmented reality experience. Taking your iPod, iPhone, Droid, or some other mobile device, you might hover above one of our pics and get an audio file to listen to or a video or animation to watch. Such technology already exists and is finding increasing applications in educational settings. For instance Craig Kapp from NYU often showcases augmented reality with children's books with his company ZooBurst (video). You might also look at the Aurasma Demo for the learning possibilties. Those interested in museum learning, might watch this piece from the BBC last week, "Top Gear presenter James May meets his virtual self."

Anyway, it was great to see Delta becoming aware of the importance and impact of online learning. If you look at the ads on the side, they are not losing any money on this one. After a dozen or so not so great experiences flying Delta and United last year (including times when they could not find the runway), I can now finally say, "Thanks Delta Airlines!"

Unfortunately, I am not flying in May. Please let me know if you see the article when in the air. Happy readings, listenings, and watchings. As you do, you will see that "There's a whole lot of MOOC'en going on!" Yes, there's a whole lot of open ed going on...The world is truly becoming open for learning.