MOOC Dropouts
Audrey is grumpy and unhappy about the massive dropout rate vs. the hype of the open courses. She writes: I’m starting to get more than a little grumpy about MOOCs, what with all the hype about the...
View ArticleMOOConomics
Carlos Salerno over at Inside HigherEd wrote a piece on the Bitter Reality of MOOConomics. The major point he makes is that because students need to acquire credentials from top universities/colleges...
View ArticlexMOOCs: Inside the box thinking
I had an occassion to present a session on MOOCs to some really bright people a few days ago. My thesis was that MOOCs (cMOOCs) represent an invention (they add vocabulary), while other models (xMOOCs,...
View ArticleOld Wines in New Bottles: New frontiers in Learning
I just visited StraighterLine, got a demo login and went to the course demo. The name StraighterLine suggests that it is a more direct, efficient, economical way to get to what you need – a degree...
View ArticleBusiness and MOOCs
Jay Cross anchored a fascinating conversation on Google Hangouts recently. Thinkers and practitioners on both sides of the MOOC divide (x-MOOC and c-MOOC) such as George Siemens, Stephen Downes, Dave...
View ArticleMOOCs as instruments of democratic politics
Democracy requires intellectually armed political activism to succeed. MOOCs (cMOOCs) provide an unprecedented occasion to demonstrate the power of connective learning for democracy, just as much as...
View ArticleConfused MOOCThink
I came across an article by the progenitors of #EDCMOOC on their initial thinking around MOOC pedagogy (MOOC pedagogy: the challenges of developing for Coursera). Riding on the Coursera engagement with...
View ArticleThe subversion by MOOCs
Stephen Downes puts it succinctly when he says: MOOCs were not designed to serve the missions of the elite colleges and universities. They were designed to undermine them, and make those missions...
View ArticleOffline Connectivism
In 2008, when discussing the critical role of technology in the existence of a Connectivist learning environment, Stephen commented: Take the steam engine, for example. It works through a process of...
View ArticleMOOCs are not books
A startling post by Bernard Fryshman – Books Are MOOCs, Too, leaves me with conflicting thoughts. If he is talking about xMOOCs, I could perhaps agree to a level. If he is talking about cMOOCs, I...
View ArticleThe Outcomes of our Educational Systems
Does a particular type of education system tend to produce the same outcome irrespective of the underlying environment? Or is it that the underlying social, economic and political environment will...
View ArticleMOOCs and the Future of Indian Higher Education – FICCI HES 2013
The 2013 FICCI Higher Education Summit was held on Nov 13 and 14, 2013. I, along with Prof. B N Jain (Vice Chancellor, BITS) and Mohan Kannegal (Manipal Global Education), conducted a master class on...
View ArticleMOOCs are ecologies not episodes
There are two ways one could think of the life-cycle of a MOOC. MOOCs could be thought of as one-time and episodic. They could also be thought of as ecologies, sites or environments for continual...
View ArticleRhizo14 Week 3: Democratizing Uncertainty
Dave Cormier’s MOOC on P2PU, Rhizomatic Learning, in week 3 is focusing on the topic Embracing Uncertainty. He says: At the heart of the rhizome is a very messy network, one where not all the dots...
View ArticleDesign of Complex Learning Environments
This year I will focus my efforts on the design of learning environments that are complex – adaptive, emergent, self-organizing, chaotic and personal. As a project description at TU Delft states: In...
View Article#Rhizo14 Week 4: Are books making us stupid?
Bernard Fryshman wrote a post titled MOOCs are Books, too. I responded saying it depends on whether it is an xMOOC you are talking about or a cMOOC, amongst other humble assertions that “MOOCs are not...
View Article#Rhizo14 Community not curriculum and the end is near
Before I begin (and I am going to miss the hangout again as it will be at 3 AM India time), I think Dave rocked again in #rhizo14. Way to go Dave! Dave is our Elvis I am conflicted when I think about...
View ArticleThe hard problems in eLearning
There are some key challenges that we are facing in eLearning today. And I am beginning to think that these are pretty much invariant to scale. I am beginning to think that perhaps many of them happen...
View ArticleThe Learning Revolution is Here
I didn’t know it at that time, having been born just a few months later, that the revolutionary Open University, UK was born in January, 1971 with 25000 students. Of course, my parents didn’t know that...
View ArticleBlended Learning in India
There are many positives happening in EdTech in India. A government led mission called the National Mission on Education using ICT (NMEICT) has created massive amounts of content for engineering, arts...
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