There is another important part to this conversation that focuses upon creating new connections with people that we do not already know, with resources that were formerly unfamiliar to us, and with new and diverse communities and contexts.  This is where connectivism, which I often mention on my blog, has something to teach us about life and learning in the digital age.  While I am not certain that it is a survival skill, learning to connect with new, diverse and dispersed people and ideas is a valuable literacy for this age.  Like any literacy, it gives one access to new conversations, allows one to consider and imagine new possibilities, and it provides one with opportunities that would not otherwise exist.

If I can’t read, there is only so much that I can get out of a book.  I can use it as a paper weight or to swat a fly, but I unless I am literate, I am unable to use the words in it to learn, imagine, or connect with new ideas and possibilities.  The same is true when it comes to cultivating the literacy of connectivity.  This is more than the state of being connected to others and the Internet using a variety of current and emerging technologies.  It also entails coming to understand and leverage various social, psychological, cultural and sociological aspects of connecting with other people, communities and resources.  It involves developing personal and or professional relationships with people on social networks, microblogs, and online communities; and maintaining these connections as one simultaneously navigates online and offline life.  It also involves designing and continually redesigning connections with a wide array of people and things as a way of pursuing our personal goals and aspirations. It is a literacy of connectivity that allows one to discover and use increasingly sophisticated answers to the following questions.

• How do I leverage the digital world to raise funds for a new project or business?
• How do I connect with people and resources that help me explore and resolve problems and challenges in your work and life?
• How do I build a professional network that provides me with new ideas for my current work or even to explore new employment possibilities down the road?
• How do I connect with people and groups that have a common passion or interest and enjoy sharing and exploring with one another?
• How do I leverage collective knowledge from around the world to tackle a social problem that is important to me?
• What are the most effective ways to share my ideas and expertise with people who are dispersed around the world, to get their feedback, and to refine my ideas based upon this feedback?
• How do I meet new people online for personal or professional goals in mind?
• How do I select and manage connections when there are billions of potential connections available to me?
• How do I decide when and if to disconnect with some people, communities or resources?
• How do I leverage the digital world to learn, grow, develop, and help others learn?

These are questions that challenge us to think about what it means to cultivate a literacy of connectivity.  What I am writing here is not new.  This is largely informed by the study digital literacy, the connected learning movement, new literacy studies, the work on connectivism, as well as no small influence from Howard Rheingold’s contributions to the literacy of cooperation.   I’ve been hesitant to use the word literacy in this context, as some argue that we have begun to overuse the term.  Yet, I find myself returning to the contemporary understanding of literacy as a social practice that involves meaning making.  it is more than just a static set of discrete skills.  What I am referring to here is looking at connectivity as a social practice in which one constructs knowledge through the connections that one makes and severs. In that sense, this is a literacy of connectivity.

The Actor – In my earliest days as a teacher, I saw myself as the actor on the stage.  My students were the audience.  My job was to inform, inspire, and engage. At times, I was also the playwright.

The Director – At some point, I realized that my students could join me on the stage, or I could step off the stage and invite them to do the acting.  At times, some sat in the audience while others acted on the stage.  Sometimes I was in the audience.  At other times, I was on the stage alone or with the students.

Unknown Title – Over the last several years, I started to discover yet another possibility.  Now I realize that my students can often write the plays, direct them, act in them, design and build the sets, control the lighting and much more.  Every role that exists in making a stellar play is one that my students can fill. Sometimes I take one or more of these roles as well, but other times I help get things going and then step out of the way.

I’ve participated in a number of MOOCs over the past 3-4 years, and each one is qualitatively different, not simply because of the theme or goals, but also because of the course design and the philosophy behind the design.  Thinking about the differences between MOOCs, I appreciate George Siemens’s distinction between xMOOCs and cMOOCs.  He wrote, “cMOOCs focus on knowledge creation and generation whereas xMOOCs focus on knowledge duplication.” My first MOOC experience was a course hosted by Siemens, and his perspective has certainly influenced my thinking.  His concept of connectivism is central to the vision of a cMOOC.  Connectivism, as I understand Siemens, points out that our knowledge exists in connection to other people and resources.  Given this focus, cMOOCs are often messy, emergent, and less dependent upon the constant direction and distribution of content by a single instructor.  xMOOCs, as I’ve experienced them, are heavy on instructor distribution of content, and often associated quizzes are similar assessments.

With these two concepts in mind, I sought to design a MOOC environment that blended the elements of xMOOCs and cMOOCs.  The vision was for me to serve as a sort of tour guide, occasionally directing people as needed, establishing suggested “sites” and activities.  And yet, I wanted to leave ample room for user-generated, group-constructed knowledge.  Here are some of the MOOC features that emerged from this vision.

1. A Pre-established but Emerging Schedule – Like an xMOOC, I decided to set up a pre-developed weekly schedule with a specific learning goal and driving question (this term comes from a key element of many project based learning plans).  The learning goal leans toward the vision of an xMOOC, and yet the driving question leans a bit more toward the inquiry-based spirit of cMOOCs. There are also learning activities that align with the weekly goal, but they are all optional.  Participants self-select what best meets their own needs, and they are encouraged to develop their own activities as well…even changing the instructions for themselves.  This last part is clearly informed by my personal interest in the power of heutagogy.
2. Suggested but Agile Resources – Every week includes proposed starting points for content (related to the stated goal and driving question for the week).  I pre-selected these sources for participants, not on the basis of the source’s academic rigor (Some are simple popular sources. I even use a Wikipedia article as a key resource in week 1.) , but often because the source seemed like an effective tool for promoting substantive discourse and exploration around the weekly theme. At the same time, these sources are not canonized.  Sources will be added or removed based upon suggestions from the participants.  For example, I’m only two days into the course, and I revised the readings for an upcoming week because some participants / co-learners introduced me to new and better resources for an upcoming week.
3. Co-creation and Crowdsourcing – Each week has one or more learning activities or what I call “missions” that result in the co-creation of resources from which we can all learn.  In week 1, we are only two days in, and we have over a hundred participant-provided examples of different cheating scenarios.  While fewer have been willing to share in this other activity, there is even a “cheating confessional” in week 1, where participants can candidly but anonymously share a personal cheating story in a Google form.  What is unique about this is that all the anonymous stories are collected in a Google spreadsheet that is publicly disseminated to the entire class…yet another resource from which we can learn. By the end of week one, this modestly massive collection of learners will have generated more examples and illustrations than any single instructor could have ever created.
4. Participant-led Live Sessions – Even into the start of the course, I continue to look for new people to facilitate live sessions on topics of personal expertise. This includes an open invitation for participants to lead live sessions.  Given the nature of the course, it is only natural that many people drawn to this course already have a wealth of experience with the subject.  We have administrators, authors, consultants, academic integrity scholars, and practitioners in the course.  In the spirit of andragogy, this begs for a design that leverages this collective and individual expertise, promoting ample peer-to-peer learning that builds upon participant’s prior knowledge.  Toward that end, most weeks of the course have scheduled presentations from an impressive cadre of scholars/practitioners, and this list of presenters will continue to grow as other participants volunteer to lead sessions or connect us with experts or companies beyond the course.  The end result is hopefully a course that is much richer with insight, providing far more diverse perspectives on the topics, and capitalizing upon a body of knowledge that far exceeds what any one person knows about the topic of academic honesty and integrity.  This part of the course is sort of like a virtual blend of the traditional conference and an unconference.
5. Blurred Lines Between Learning Inside and Outside the Course – Using a robust and well-designed LMS like Canvas, almost every page of content in the MOOC is publicly accessible. Regardless of whether you are registered for the course, you can see a large amount of the content through a link to the public pages. Similarly, the course involves weekly themes and questions that are suggested for conversation and sharing on Twitter, using the hash tag #cheatmooc. In addition, all of the live sessions are done using Google on Air, and the recordings of the session are freely accessible on YouTube. The parts that are more protected are the conversations in the LMS discussion board and work submitted in the assignment drop boxes.  This allows for some measure of security and safety for those who don’t want all of their comments shared with everyone on the web.  In this way, the course has a blend of open learning while still maintaining a few features of the more traditional cloistered learning environments.
6. Badges to Recognize Contributions – This first effort is so simple that I hesitate to even call it gamification. And yet, my study of gamification is exactly what inspired the idea.  Each week/theme in the course also has an associated badge that one can earn by completing at least 100 experience points.  People earn experience points by contributing content for the sake of the group, sometimes in the form of sharing examples and illustrations.  Other times, it is in the form of visual syntheses or analyses of conversations or concepts (Venn diagrams, mind maps, graphic organizers, etc.). The idea is that each of these become teaching and learning aids for the rest of the class.  Imagine a class with dozens, even hundreds, of visual representations of core concepts about each key topics. Some experience points are also earned by completing simple quizzes / questionnaires, but they are designed to measure the extent to which a person contributed to the collective.  So, after attending a live session, one earns experience points by filling out a survey about the experience.  What this is really measuring, however, is contribution to the event by being present, sharing the space with others, and potentially identifying others which whom they have shared interests.  The badges are not evidence of mastery as much as they are evidence of engagement with the group and contribution to the collective knowledge of the group. There is no question that badges shout behaviorism and extrinsic motivation, but these badges are an experiment in using behaviorism in service to connectivism.  Yes, there is a measure of contradiction at work here, but as I see connectivism, it is not a rejection of these past theories. I suspect that connectivism is capable of leveraging and connecting multiple learning theories in the context of the digital age.
7. New Knowledge Creation, Dissemination and Assimilation – I created this course because I saw a creative gap in the conversation about academic honesty and integrity, and also because I wanted to see more diverse and creative approaches to addressing the issue. Okay, I also wanted to interact with others who cared about the topic.  If you can’t find a group that works for you, why not create one?  So, what better way to promote dialogue than to gather hundreds of people with an interest in the subject, and then invite them/us to share what they are learning and creating with the rest of the world?  This is central to my ultimate vision for the course.  By gathering around this topic for eight weeks, even if only 5% of the co-learners persist throughout the course, I’m hopeful that we will collectively highlight important perspectives that offer new possibilities when it comes to cultivating cultures of academic honesty and integrity.

These seven design elements exist to support a distinct vision for this current course, one that embraces the spirit of the cMOOC while still pulling from certain features of the xMOOC.  Of course, only time will tell how it all plays out.  I am certain that there will be plenty of glitches and mistakes, and I am excited to learn as much as possible from each of them.

Teacher-led Schools – Imagine a school where teachers don’t simply have influence, but they are in charge of most to all the decisions about how the school functions. There is usually still a board (at least in the US), but pretty much all the site-based decisions reside with the teachers themselves.  Administrators or district leaders don’t select, design and/or carry out the curriculum.  The teachers do it. The same goes for many of the school policies about conduct, grading/assessment models, teaching strategies, etc. While teacher-led schools take on many forms, in some of these schools, the teachers even make decisions about hiring, evaluating one another, managing the budget, and terminating one another.

• Teachers Should Have the Option of Working in Teacher-led Schools
• Teacher-led Schools Idea Hits the Media and Blogs
• Trusting Teachers with School Success (book)

Parent-led – How about a school where the parents collectively make key decisions in the school? This is happening is the UK.  In fact, it may well be the teachers who create the school in the first place.  In other instances, as in the case of homeschooling, parents create cooperatives where children gather and parents take the lead for the learning experiences.  In still other instances, parents are creating cooperatives to extend, shape, or supplement the learning experiences at virtual schools through local cooperatives…sometimes coming close to being a school within a school.

• Parent-led Schools: Adventures at the Blackboard
• We Will Have Hundreds of Parent-led Schools in the First Year
• Colorado Virtual Community Parent-led Cooperatives

Student-led or Student & Teacher-led – Probably one of the more widely known expressions of this comes from the Sudbury schools, where students select the curriculum, learning, establish polices, lead groups that address conduct, etc.  In some, teachers also have a vote, but it is an equal one to the students.  More broadly, this student-led focus is present in a variety of democratic schools around the world, with varying forms and levels at which students are responsible for the decision-making.

• Sudbury Schools
• Democratic Education
• National League of Democratic Schools

In a presentation several years ago, I was listening to author and independent school administrator Gene Frost speak about the changing motives behind parent’s decisions about schools.  In the past, he noted, most parents chose schools for their children on the basis of “identity.”  In other words, they attended the school with which they identified the most.  You send your kids to the local community public school because you went there as a kid or because you played football there.  You send your kids to the Catholic school because you identify with the Catholic faith.  You send your kids to the elite private school because you identify with their vision for high academic standards.  Notice that the identity decision is not necessarily based upon the quality or effectiveness of the school experience as much as what it represents.  If the student has some teachers who are not great, that can be a frustration for the parents who make an identity decision, but it is less likely that they will move their child to a different school based upon it.

Frost noted that fewer people are making “identity” decisions about school.  Now they are making “value” decisions.  The value question is very different.  The identity question is basically, “With which school do I most identify?”  The value question is, “Which school or experience will best meet the needs of my child(ren)?” In fact, we see a growing number of parents who are choosing different school experiences for each child, depending upon what seems to be the best fit.  Parents may take into account a variety of factors, but this is much more like the decision that one makes when they are shopping for a large and important object or service.  With this comes parents who expect that their children’s educational (and potentially other) needs are met consistently and with the quality that they want.  If not, then there is a good chance that they will move to another option. Choice and the expectation that schools serve their children well will continue to dominate in a world of “value” decisions.  Schools driven by the desires and preferences of administrators, teachers, school boards, unions and other stakeholders diminish in such a world…unless those preferences happen to align with the values of a large enough group of parents and students.

Given this continued shift, schools that lean more generally on their “identity” to draw students will most likely decline in towns where there are multiple options, and the number of options continue to increase.  Between traditional public, independent, and public charters; I estimate that there are close to 50 school options for my children within five miles of their home, and I don’t live in the middle of a metropolitan area.  This means that more parents will shop for the best school and then expect the type of responsiveness and customer service that they get from a quality purchase.

Why is it that home-based education and charter enrollments continue to increase?  I contend that it is because a growing number of parents have new power and influence in contemporary education, and they don’t have to settle for one item on the shelf at the local school district.  As parents are increasingly aware of the new and varied options / possibilities, they are asking, “What educational experience(s) are most valuable for my child(ren)?

For those who follow my blog, you’ve no doubt noticed my interest in and support for the value of self-directed learning.  I’m not averse to teacher-directed learning, as there are many situations where it plays a good and important role.  At the same time, if the goal of education is to liberate, then that means creating space for people to become learners who are capable of personal growth and development regardless of whether they are in a classroom with a teacher. At the same time, there are clearly many instances where one needs to grow and develop with regard to a set of specific standards.  I prefer going to a healthcare professional who at least met a minimum set of standards in medical school.  I seek out an electrician who has some demonstrated ability to comply with existing codes. Of course, meeting the standards is not adequate.  One of the reasons that I chose my current doctor is because she noted that she values staying current in the emerging research in medical journals.  In other words, her education did not stop at medical school.  She takes the initiative to continue learning and growing despite the fact that medical school is decades behind her.  Similarly, I don’t want an electrician who does little more than comply with the code.  I want one who can face new and unique situations in my hundred year old house and come up with creative and safe solutions that also keep things at a reasonable cost.  The standards work fine as a baseline, but it is not enough to be a person who earned the certification or met the standards.  The one who stops at the standards or certifications is the one who remains largely other-directed.

Imagine a group of teachers who stopped reading, studying, and learning when they graduated from college.  They only learn what they are “forced” to do so through administratively mandated professional development days.  Imagine if these teachers saw no reason to stay up on the amazing emerging research about the brain and learning.  Imagine if they didn’t have an interest in taking the time to learn about the unique needs and interests of a new student in the class.  What if they didn’t engage in the sort of reflective practice that allowed them to learn from their own teaching successes and failures.  This group represents people who have not discovered the power and possibility of self-directed learning in helping one to pursue and sometimes achieving increasingly greater levels of excellence on one’s vocation.  So, from this perspective, I accept the role of standards and certifications in helping people to meet baseline skills and competencies, but I don’t accept them as adequate for a liberal education that prepares one to be a full and active participant in a democratic society.

At the same time, I’m not suggesting the standards are necessarily the best starting point.  When possible, there is great power in providing people with ample space to experiment, explore, question and drive the learning apart from pre-determined standards. Amid this learning through discovery, the people will sometimes come to a point when they need to master a certain body of knowledge to meet a goal.  It is at that point that they embrace learning by standards in a new way, with a measure of purpose and intrinsic motivation.  Consider the example of learning to play baseball.  To play on a team, I need to learn the rules of the game, the nonnegotiables.  I can’t just run to bases in random order because I feel like it, all in the name of self-direction. And yet, what should I learn first?  Do we sit children down and quiz them on all the rules before they get a chance to experience parts of the game.  Or, do we go to games with the kids, let them experience it, play catch with them, give them a chance to swing at a few balls? Yes, a time will come when they will need to meet the minimum “standards” for playing the game, but that doesn’t always need to drive the learning.  There are many instances where first letting them explore and discover on their own has great benefits.

There are exceptions to this, like teaching certain fundamental safety rules before letting someone play with a dangerous object.  And yet, when time and safety considerations allow for it, leaving room for self-directed learning not only helps one meet immediate goals, but it helps them to develop the skills and character necessary to learn future things on their own.  Emerging brain research seems to support this.  If we want people to engage in deep learning, then it is important to move from teacher-directed to student-directed experiences. When asked what the recent brain research is telling us about how to teach, Dr. Matthew Peterson of the MIND Research Institute replied this way. “Stop telling them things. Have them do things, problem solve, build things, discover how things work (and don’t tell them how things work).” These sorts of challenges provide qualitatively different learning experiences and, over time, result in qualitatively different types of learners and people.

Simply teaching to the point of meeting set standards also has the added downside of failing to equip students who are at the greatest disadvantage. If schools focus upon only teaching to the standards, then the really deep and self-directed learning will happen outside of the classroom, potentially more often for the students who live on environments rich with tools, safety, encouragement, and resources that help promot independence and self-direction. So, without necessarily intending to do so, we have one population of students who stop at literate, while another continues on toward greater levels of fluency in a myriad of domains and skills that will help them take advantage of opportunities that remain largely unavailable to the simply literate.  Self-directed learning is partly about helping people progress throughout life toward fluency, deep learning, over-learning, and the type of immersive learning that leads to deep joy, satisfactions, and excellence.

In summary, I’m not pitting standards against self-directed learning.  I’m simply arguing that standards are almost always inadequate in helping to meet the central aims of education in a democratic society.

The purpose of this short article is to offer yet another definition, “successful cheating.” If the goal of cheating is to earn a higher grade, then what is successful cheating?  Before answering this question, I should explain that I’m not condoning cheating.  I’m simply defining successful cheating in comparison to unsuccessful cheating.  I propose a simple working definition for successful cheating that has three important elements.  Successful cheating is an academic act that requires minimal effort, entails little to no chance of getting caught and results in a higher grade than one would have earned without cheating.

1. It requires minimal effort. If it takes more effort to cheat than it would have to study or complete the assignment, then why cheat?  Interestingly, some people invest enormous amounts of time striving to subvert the system, when it would have been much easier to simply complete the assignment or study for the test/quiz.
2. There is little to no chance of getting caught. If there is a high risk of getting caught, then the risk is greater than the small chance of being rewarded with a higher grade.
3. One’s grade is better than if one had not cheated. Consider the scenario where students plagiarize or buy a paper only to discover that they earned a low or even a failing grade.  Chances are that the students could have earned a higher grade with minimal (perhaps close to no) effort.

Again, I’m not arguing that one should cheat or use this as a guide for how well you are cheating. Instead, it is simply a proposed definition for successful cheating.  If you have to spend hours on end cheating, then studying or doing the work offers you just as much potential for a good grade.  If you have a very high chance of getting caught, then you don’t simply risk a low grade.  There may be even more severe consequences.  Or, if the cheating doesn’t give you a better chance of getting a higher grade, then why do it?

Of course, all of this misses the arguably larger fact that cheating reduces one’s chance of learning.