PLEs, Networks and Knowledge - FREE Course!

Building on the successes of the massive Connectivism course that Stephen Downes and George Seimens mounted in 2008 and 2009, PLENK2010 will be launching on Sept 15th. Sponsored and organized by the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute (TEKRI) at Athabasca University, PLENK stands for: Personal Learning Environments Networks and Knowledge. Find out more here. If you want to learn more about the current trends and the bleeding edge of PLEs / PLNs / group-based learning then this will be the place to be in Fall 2010. It promises to be jammed packed with all kinds of progressive educators as well. So the connections you can make while participating in the group will be very valuable to your practice whether you are a teacher, instructional designer or educational administrator.

Given that Professional Development funds are scarce in almost every jurisdiction, this free opportunity is very attractive. See you there!

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CCK08-Connectivism is here!

The massively online open course on Connectivism has begun (see description here). Already there is so much material on the subject that some of the participants are very surprised and somewhat overwhelmed. In my view, I think the key is not to get stressed out with the large volume of material that will be channeled to participants in CCK08. Learning is supposed to be fun - so I am adopting the approach of simply 'going with the flow' for the next 13 weeks. I'm going to read a few things that interest me each day (mostly from 'the daily' email produced by the instructors and from the Pageflakes RSS aggregation page). And when I 'feel the urge' I will blog about something related to these materials in my regular blog here - I'll be sure to add the tag CCK08 to the postings. I have no specific goal (or expectation) in mind as to the number of readings I will complete each day nor the number of blog postings on CCK08 I will make each week; however, I will keep an open mind and see what happens. I am here to enjoy the ride with the least amount of stress as possible. I know I will learn
something on this journey - without giving myself a heart attack along the way (*haha*)

I hope the same for everyone else that is a participant in CCK08!

PS: If this posting intrigues you - it's not too late to join into CCK08. Give it a try!

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Connectivism is about you!

Are you in EdTech or the Online Education field? If so, this blog posting will interest you.

George Siemens and Stephen Downes will be co-facilitating a course this Fall hosted by the University of Manitoba on the topic of Connectivism. This Learning Theory is relatively new and is built on the central tenet that learning is the process of creating connections and developing a network. Clearly, recent advances in Web 2.0 technologies like social networking are major players in the development of this learning theory. For more information on the theory of Connectivism you can find a general resource on Wikipedia.

The best part of this course is you can have a choice to 1) take it for FREE in a non-credit fashion, or 2) take it for credit in a paid-for version. Regardless, all students are put together into one cohort to research the topic of Connectivism. There's going to be videos, blogs, rss feeds, discussions - everything that fits into the Connectivism model will be woven into this course.

The course wiki goes on to further describe the course as:

"Connectivism and Connective Knowledge is a twelve week course that will explore the concepts of connectivism and connective knowledge and explore their application as a framework for theories of teaching and learning. It will outline a connectivist understanding of educational systems of the future. George Siemens and Stephen Downes – the two leading figures on connectivism and connective knowledge - will co-facilitate this innovative and timely course.

This course will help participants make sense of the transformative impact of technology in teaching and learning over the last decade. The voices calling for reform do so from many perspectives, with some suggesting 'new learners' require different learning models, others suggesting reform is needed due to globalization and increased competition, and still others suggesting technology is the salvation for the shortfalls evident in the system today. While each of these views tell us about the need for change, they overlook the primary reasons why change is required."

Last Sunday night (July 27th, 2008), EdTechTalk did a talk show on this course with participation by Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Alec Couros and Leigh Blackall. It now has almost 1200 registrants! WOW - 1200! If you are interested in this course, you might want to have a listen to the audio recording of EdTechTalk #81.

It's going to be a very interesting experiment. I'll be there. Will you?

Note: photo attribution.

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Wikis in the Classroom - iGlobe

I attended the Eastern Ontario Symposium on Educational Technology (EOSET) hosted by the University of Ottawa last Thursday (May 29th). The format this year was different than in the past. It consisted of a series of short 10 minute presentations. One talk that I found interesting was by Mark Salter in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. He described his large introductory class in "Politics of Globalization" which he branded as ‘iGlobe’ to attract student attention on the materials and to convey that this course was different than other politics courses. It sure was. Mark mixed aspects of problem-based learning (PBL), wikis and pod-casting into the materials of his course. His course has two assignments (in which students had choice as to what deliverables they had to submit) and two exams. Mark reported that often in undergraduate politics courses, professors give feedback to students on their papers and students do not get the opportunity to integrate that feedback into future assignments. He felt that by using the wiki in the course that students could take advantage of professor (and peer) feedback to improve their work by incorporating feedback. I have written on the topic of using wikis as class assignments before, so it is clear to the readers of this blog that I am very pro-wikis. Mark mentioned a good point that I took away from this presentation: he felt that students need a significant amount of training on how to use a wiki in the context of education. In his experience, the concept of a wiki was new to some of his students and so basic training on how to operate it was necessary.


In addition, he felt it was important to emphasize to the students that the goal of using a wiki in this course is not to create as many pages as you can, but rather to create a few pages and edit them extensively and repeatedly. The cycle of ‘research-write-feedback-edit-repeat’ was the preferred activity here. Not simply a linear ‘write as much as you can’ scenario. It is this feedback integrating cycle that is the key in an educational context! The entire course is still a work in progress and you can check out the iGlobe wiki here.

If you use wikis in your undergraduate courses, let us know how they are working in your context by leaving a comment below.

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Is your online course interactive?

What do we mean by ‘interactive’ anyway? Well, in the past I have used Ellen Wagner’s definition from her 1994 work (In support of a functional definition of interaction. The American Journal of Distance Education, 8(2), 6-26.) which defines interaction as “reciprocal events that require at least two objects and two actions. Interactions occur when these objects and events mutually influence one another” (I first mentioned this definition on this blog in Feb 2005).

I recently came across an old (read: year 2000) paper which had a rubric for assessing the level of interactivity in an online course by Rablyer and Erkhaml at the State University of West Georgia: How Interactive are YOUR Distance Courses? A Rubric for Assessing Interaction in Distance Learning.

With a quick Google search I discovered that the authors updated this rubric four years later in an article published to the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks.

Have a look at the newer rubric in this paper. I think it is pretty good. It focuses on five major elements that contribute to interactivity:

1. Social and Rapport-building designs


2. Interactivity in the Instructional Design of the course


3. Interactivity with the Technology Resources


4. Evidence of Learner Engagement


5. Evidence of Instructor Engagement

I took the opportunity to run a recent course that I designed through the rubric and noted that this course scored approximately 18 out of a maximum 25 points. A score of 18 just barely places this course into the “High Interactive Qualities” category (range of 18-25). This rubric also helped me see where there is ‘room for improvement’ in the interactivity in this course. Run your course through this rubric to see where it lands. Let me know if you find this rubric useful and/or if you know of any other rubrics that assess interactivity in a distance course.

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