TravelinEdMan

Ten TravelnEdMan Plans for 16 Month Sabbatical: Much to do in the Open World

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Sun, 05 May 2013 20:00:00 +0000

Grades are posted as of last night. Today is the first full day of my 16 month sabbatical. Yes!

So what are the plans? A little bit here and a little bit there.

Ten Sabbatical Plans:
1. Blogging: I intend to blog more. Also, plan to make the posts shorter and to the point. I have some experiences from the past winter and spring to post yet (from the UK, Austin, U of Florida, Shanghai (via videoconferencing), UW Milwaukee (via Web conferencing), and elsewhere).

2. Book Completion: I need to finish my online motivation and retention book as well as my World is More Open book. Both will be free to the world when done. Too many committees and service work has been slowing me down. Draft chapters are available to those who ask.

3. Travel Plan Outlook: I will likely send one week each month in different parts of the world. Here are some initial travel stops tentatively planned after the coming summer.

          a. Tokyo (International Christian University (ICU) in September. My friend, Dr. Insung Jung, is arranging and said that I will stay in a guest house of ICU.
          b. Las Vegas for E-Learn in October (I are planning to coordinate a preconference symposium on MOOCs and Open Education with Mimi Lee, Tom Reynolds, and Tom Reeves. This event will take place Monday October 21st with a presession reflection in Red Rock Canyon the day before. The preconference symposium will be like the session on "E-Learning in Asia" that the four of us did 5 years ago at eLearn in Vegas in 2008 that resulted in a special journal issue and print-on-demand book. We hope that many of our friends and colleagues from 2008 will return to help out.).
           c. After E-Learn, I will keynote the Health & Safety Institute Conference 2013 in San Antonio, Texas and then head for Anaheim.
           d. Anaheim for AECT 2013 in the following week in early November.
           e. Taiwan (at National Sun Yat-Sen University in Kaohsiung and most likely Taipei as well) in mid to late November,
           f. The UK for BETT and other things in January.
           g. University of Hue in Vietnam (Wikipedia) to keynote a conference, "Innovation and Good Practice: Global Perspective" for various Asian university leaders March 15-16, 2014.
            h. AERA April 3-7 in Philadelphia in April, 2014.
            i. Tampere, Finland for Ed Media in June, 2014 and perhaps Helsinki and other places in Finland.

This is just a starter list of travel destinations for TravelinEdMan. There will be dozens and dozens more requests.

4. Upcoming May Travel Plans. This Month is Jamming. This week Wednesday May 8th I will be speaking at the University of Indianapolis where my daughter, Nicki, goes to graduate school in occupational therapy. Next Monday May 13th, I will be speaking at the Faculty Summer Institute at the University of Illinois (the FSI agenda). On May 15th, I will speak at the 4th Annual Stone Soup Professional Development Conference at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina. And on May 21-22, I will be on a discussion panel and then keynote the 2013 UA System Scholars Institute at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

5. Upcoming June Travel Plans: In June, I will speak on MOOCs at our Indiana University 2013 Mini University (full list of speakers). This will be the opening session on June 10th. I will also present some of my research on MOOCs and self-directed open learning at the 25th Annual Ethnographic and Qualitative Research Conference in Cedarville, Ohio on Friday June 7th.

6. Book Reading: I intend to read more books. I have been listening to many books in my car since 2006-2007 (when I had my last sabbatical).

7. New Book Projects: I have many other book writing plans. Some related to the open learning world and extreme learning and others related to emerging video technology.

8. Running: I plan to run in Bloomington and elsewhere. I get to see the cities which I visit better from a morning run. During my last sabbatical, I started a trend of running every day at least once a day until I got plantar fasciitis. Ouch! Wish it was not raining so hard. I have had my jogging clothes on all day.

9. Reflection: I plan to reflect more. I have a lovely wooded backyard with a creek at the bottom and many birds singing. Placed a bench down there overlooking the creek and park (former farm) below.

10. Rosemary: I plan to see my auntie Rosemary (my father's younger sister) and her 50 year anniversary of being a nun at an even in my hometown of Milwaukee on Saturday July 6th.

Ok, those are some plans. All for now. Remember, that I plan to blog more.

Bringing Experts Around the World to Your Class: One Interview, Two Videos, and Five+ Lessons Learned

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 04:15:00 +0000

Introduction. Back in mid February, some folks at our Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CILT) here at Indiana University (IU) asked me if they could interview me about how I bring in experts into my classes via videoconferencing, Skype, Web conferencing, chat, and so on. I have been doing such activities for nearly two decades now and so they were interested in capturing some ideas from me. The video interview is now posted as a Spotlight report for faculty development purposes here at IU (Bringing Experts Around the World to Your Class). There are two short videos along with a few paragraphs of text from that interview. Below I explain more about my rationale for engaging in such instructional activities.

Thinking back. Way back in 1995, Dr. Ken Hay and I team taught a course on "Interactive Tools for a Learning Community" between IU Bloomington and IUPUI in Indianapolis. In the middle of the semester (see Week 11 of old syllabus from 1995), we had Elliot Soloway from the University of Michigan and David Palumbo from the University of Houston at Clear Lake come into our class via CU-SeeMe. At the time, CU-SeeMe was free while other Web conferencing options at the time were highly expensive. The class was taught each week via videoconferencing using PictureTel technology. With the savvy tech help of Dr. Bob Appelman, we combined to videoconferencing systems together. It was pretty cool at the time. In fact, we published an article about the event in Educational Technology magazine.

Added to that course was a weekly asynchronous discussion using VAX Notes. There were several students in that course who debated and criticized the ideas in the articles we read that particular week from Drs. Soloway and Palumbo. They did not believe that computer programming could impact thinking as they had described (i.e., the expression many researchers used in the 1980s and 1990s was "Logo as Latin"...you learned a computer programming language and your thinking would improve just as it would from learning Latin or so they thought). Anyway, those same students who discarded these ideas and perspectives, were nodding their heads in agreement with everything that Elliot and David said when we brought them in via CU-SeeMe. These students found out that one article did not represent a person and that people's ideas can (and do) change over time.

Lesson Learned #1. Asynchronous activities first. Then try synchronous. It whacks students in the side of the head and kicks them in the seat of the pants. They see new ideas and perspectives. And they rethink on their previous perspectives and biases. Of course there was another factor--Elliot Soloway looked like Santa Claus when projected through low bandwidth on CU-SeeMe. Anyone in the room at the time had to love him. In fact, a professor walking by my classroom stopped by and sat in when he saw what we were up to.

While that was a fascinating experience with Elliot and David back in 1995, I have had dozens and dozens of guests around the planet since that time. In fact, a few years ago, I tried this technique once again (sync then async) with the world famous instructional designer, Dr. David Merrill. Worked fabulously then too.

This week, I had my former student, Dr. Kira King from Orlando come in and chat about her different work-related experiences in instructional design and development since leaving IU 15 years ago. While she is the healthcare field now doing scenario-based learning for interactive simulations, she also have experience working for with museum schools, the World Bank Institute, the military, financial services companies, and the Disney Institute (i.e., a wine tasting course). My class topic was on collaborative technologies and so we planned to discuss our 1998 book, Electronic Collaborators: Learner-Centered Technologies for Literacy, Apprenticeship, and Discourse, but we never got to that since her work experience was so interesting and important to share. It was another fantastic week of intraplanetary sharing.

I must admit that the idea of bringing Kira in dawned on me later than normal. In fact, I called Kira last Sunday night between NCAA basketball games. I needed her presence less than 24 hours later. It was after 9 pm EST and she had gone to bed early that night. I woke her up. Yet, she was gracious and said no problem, "I would be happy to talk to your class tomorrow night." Whew. I am fortunate to have such wonderful friends and former students.

Lesson Learned #2. The world is open. You can alter your class at any moment with new resources, guest experts, activities, and collaborations. There is an endless sea of expertise to tap into. And sometimes you just have to go with the flow and see what happens. Sometimes it works great and sometimes not as great. Just be open and flexible and the good times will vastly outweigh the not so good.

A few years ago, I invited my friend John Traxler at the University of Wolverhampton in the UK to discuss mobile learning with my online students via Adobe Connect. The following year, Paul Kim from Stanford was the guest when that topic came up but this time we used videoconferencing since it was a face-to-face class. Students learned so much from Paul that they are still talking about it. A few weeks before Paul came in, Anya Kamenetz discussed her DIY-U book with my class. That sure was fun! Anya and I just happen to be the keynotes for the UA Systems Scholars Institute in Huntsville, Alabama in a few weeks.

I also like to bring in people from other countries. For instance, George Siemens from Athabasca University in Canada came in to discuss his theory called "Connectivism." His Canadian colleague, Stephen Downes, has appeared via Webcam to present on open and personalized learning environments. Very frank and impressive stuff always from Stephen. A few weeks later, Yayoi Anzai has made an appearance from Tokyo talking about her highly creative use of blogging, podcasting, and wikis for learning English. I was flying home from Saudi Arabia that day and my assistant Seolim Kwon handled it. I arrived for the last few minutes after more than a day of travel. As is clear by now, each of these synchronous events have been highly memorable and rewarding.

While these people were all great, I rarely bring anyone back; at least not for a few semesters or years. In Kira King's case, it had been about 13 or 14 years since she last was a guest in my class.

Lesson Learned #3. Despite the fact that you can connect with anyone at any time and invite him or her to join your class, you really should plan ahead. See the articles, resources, and activities that you have organized. Is there someone whose articles you are reading that are highly complex or complicated? Might there be one on a recently popular topic? Is there someone you know or met recently who would excite your students? If so, contact them.

More recently, Ray Schroeder from the University of Illinois at Springfield discussed massive open online courses (MOOCs) as well as related changed about to impact higher education (that was February 2012). That same month, George Veletsianos from UT Austin was a guest who talked about adventure learning as well as social media.

During the current semester (Week 8), Dr. Rey Junco was our expert guest who presented his research on social media (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, chat, etc.). Once Rey agreed, I took screen shots from various articles that he had published during the past few years and uploaded them to a PowerPoint deck. During our Adobe Connect meeting, he responded to most of those and just told me to skip on any that he felt were not important to the points he was making. After that, Rey responded to student selected quotes from his various articles (I had asked my students to bring in a few for him to respond to). Rey was highly skilled at performing in such a "hot seat." He is about to move to nearby Purdue University. It was be great to have him in the neighborhood.

In Week 6, we also had Steve Carson from MIT give us a fascinating look at open education and the impact it is having around the globe. Again, I brought in a few screen shots from one of Steve's papers for him to respond to. In Week 3, Peter Young from San Jose State University discussed digital book and mobile projects that he has been involved with.

Lesson Learned #4. You can make it easy on your guests by preparing questions, screen shots, or quotes for the them to comment on or respond to. If it is an open and flexible environment, the guest can skip any item that you bring up. This makes for a more relaxing yet highly focused discussion on the ideas and relevant content produced by that individual.

So many possibilities for global and cross cultural interaction today. What fun times these are! This semester, I am experimenting with the combination of Google Hangouts and Adobe Connect Pro. We use Adobe Connect for PowerPoint presentations and Web explorations, whereas Google Hangouts is used for chats and reflections about such content as well as the weekly readings, videos, and Web resources from the monster syllabus. Keep in mind, however, that the limit is 10 people in a Google Hangout, unless you move up to Google On Air.

I have had many more guests. In fact, last fall, I started my semester with Michael Horn from the Innosight Institute discuss his recent articles on blended learning. The students in the course had not even been introduced to the course syllabus and expected activities. I decided to just jump in first thing with Michael. That was fun. He has the book with Clayton Christensen, "Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation will Change the Way the World Learns." We used Adobe Connect with Michael as well as my other weekly guest experts that semester. This attendance was optional, we recorded each week so that students who missed could watch it later. I also posted the link each time we had a guest to my Facebook account and anyone in the world could lurk in. I think we had nearly a dozen guests last fall, including three on one night alone when we got to the topic of digital books. But please don't think I was slacking; in actuality, I also presented most weeks.

Lesson Learned #5. You (i.e., the instructor) are not vital the start or the end or any part of your class. You do not need to start the class with the all-too-boring reading of the syllabus. Try something new. Break it up. Bring in highly inspirational and talented people to excite your students about the content and different topics that you will be reading and learning about.

Takeaway. Why do I bring in guests with Adobe Connect or link to them with videoconferencing or Skype? Simple. I want to expand student minds beyond preset course materials and expectations. I want to build perspective taking and social cognition. Social cognition is the most vital skill that we can try to foster as instructors. I view this activity as part of a cognitive apprenticeship process. Clearly, in this age of information abundance, we (instructors) are concierges (see 2007 blog post on this notion). We challenge and support learners with the resources that we make available. Sure, my 75 page monster syllabus on Emerging Learning Technologies is a bit much. But you can challenge with much less.

One of my doctoral students, Miguel Lara, was aware of my use of guests. After obtaining a fulltime job at the CILT, Miguel asked me to talk about the topic as part of a faculty development effort here at IU. I think he did the later splicing of video snippets. Miguel and his colleagues finished the video (actually 2 parts) and posted it two days ago. They titled the episode or "Spotlight" report, "Bringing Experts Around the World to Your Class. You can read much more on my views on why I bring in guest experts from reading the article that Miguel posted. You will discover several more lessons learned. You will also find two short videos. As per below, these have also been posted to YouTube today.

Part 1: Benefits of Inviting Guest Experts (3:48)
Part 2: Expanding Global Awareness (2:17)

So will you be bringing guests into your class? Perhaps. If so, let me know how it went.

Note: I hope to post to my TravelinEdMan blog a few more times in the coming week. Perhaps one per day for the next few days. Not sure yet.

Want Some MOOC With Your TV Dinner?

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 17:26:00 +0000

Again, it has been a long time between posts. Apologies. There is much to discuss here in TravelinedEdMan in the coming weeks. There are many press releases, podcasts, and news interviews from the past two or three months that I have not posted.

In addition, I have a trip this coming week to SXSWedu in Austin and one the week after to San Diego for the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) Conference 2013 (I am in the ending plenary). Let me start reflecting back first. My next blog post will be about SXSWedu and the Cengage Learning conference within it. My Cengage talk will be streamed free to the world. Unfortunately, my "Cage Match" with Dr. Chuck Severance of the University of Michigan on MOOCs on Thursday morning at 9 am at SXSWedu will not be streamed. See next blog post.

As I said, let me reflect back a few months in order to bring us to a recent publication of mine. Back at the end of October, I was heading to Australia for a 10 day trip to 3 cities, namely, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Sydney. In the final leg of the trip, I was meeting up with my good friend Rick Bennett at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). He was arranging a symposium on MOOCs, Rhizomes, and Ruksacs and related trends on a Friday afternoon November 9th in the College of Fine Arts (COFA) at UNSW. It ended up being a most splendid event.

Before I got there, Rick's media department asked me to write a little press release about MOOCs. What I wrote on the plane to Melbourne and titled, "Want Some MOOC with Your TV Dinner," was considered a bit too long and "not opinionated enough" to submit to the Aussie media. Instead, the Aussie media interviewed me when I was there. COFA, by the way, is known for its online programs and resources including Omnium (Rick helped build it and then research Omnium). More recently, Rick and his colleagues have built a cool social media tool for one's courses called Ruksac (ala having course resources in one's backpack). Do check it out when you get a chance.

When I got home from Oz, I revised the article and extended it. I then sent it to one of my contacts at Inside Higher Education. However, my main contact there left a few weeks later to work for the Chronicle of Higher Education and the article sat at Inside Higher Ed for 2 months. I finally got a response from Inside Higher Education that they had too many articles on MOOCs and mine was not unique enough.

Fortunately, I was able to publish it during the past two weeks in The EvoLLLution in 2 parts. The Evolllution is concerned with lifelong and online learning which are the focal points of this article. I thank my friend Amrit Ahluwalia for reviewing it and finding it to be to his liking. Part 1 of the article came out Friday February 1st in HMTL and PDF. Part 2 came out on Friday March 1st in HTML and PDF formats.

The basic premise is that TV and correspondence courses changed the lives of many people during the previous century (including mine); even those of low quality. None of them had the interaction possibilities that we have here in 2013 Today, people debate the quality of MOOCs as if there is a certain threshold that we are aiming for. Sure, we all want more engaging and interactive content; in fact, I am working on a book on online motivation and retention. However, we cannot discount the many lives that are changing from MOOCs that have limited or no interactivity. People can still learn as self-directed online learners. Perhaps such views will evolve and hence why I publish this in the EvoLLLution.

The opening paragraph to Part 1 of the article starts with the following:
"If you grew up in the 1960s and 70s, you likely remember those TV dinner nights when your parents were out or when there was nothing else in the fridge. You just heated it up and you were done. You know the one: you get a slab of meat, some diced-up potatoes, a side tray with an assorted mix of carrots, corn and peas and, perhaps, another tray with rice or gravy. Bland, but still passable as a meal."

Anyone remember those meals? Do you now want some MOOC with your TV dinners?

The opening paragraph to Part 2 of the article starts with the following:
"Given the possibilities presented by Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS); instead of simply looking at achievement gains (or losses), we must begin to ask how self-directed local and global teams as well as personal visits from a MOOC instructor are helping to foster important moments of reflection and change. Not every outcome can be determined from test scores, page-hit rates or student retention data. Lives change. People change. Education is a key vehicle for fostering such life transformations. And MOOCs have the potential to change lives on a grander scale than perhaps any previous form of learning delivery."

My life changed from TV and correspondence courses. I am sure many of yours have as well.

See what you think. Part 2 has a link back to Part 1. More soon. I promise.

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

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 06:15:00 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 04:31:00 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fall 1990 New Technologies, Programs, and Activities

1. Knowledge Navigator

2. ERIC on CD Rom

3. HOTS Program

4. Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI)

5. Kids writing at home and schools

6. Writing to kids at alternate locations and distance learning

7. Computers as part of magnet schools

8. RealTime Writer

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

10. Spanish grammar tutors

11. Grammatik IV

12. Appleworks

13. Writer's Helper

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

15. Knowledge Builder

16. Computer Prompts for writing

17. Keystroke Mapping

18. Microworlds and Artificial Realities

19. Games after schools for San Diego students

20. Lego Logo and Wierd Creatures

21. Logo and music composition

22. Computer Programming

23. Hypertext on Hypertext

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

25. Fractals and graphics explorations

26. Digital Video Interactive (DVI) technology

27. Interactive Video in chemistry

28. Interactive Video in life and death moral dilemma

29. The Alternate Reality Kit for physics (today)

30. The Envisioning Machine for physics (today)

31. Apple Multimedia presentation

32. CD's and music analysis and composition

33. Interactive video and medical training

34. Interactive video and bird anatomy

35. Hypercard and bird anatomy

36. Idea processors

37. Text analyzers

38. Therapy Writing Programs

39. The Rand Algebra Tutor

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

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

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

43. Designing Electronic Books

44. Handy: Making a scene

45. POSIT: Process Oriented Subtraction-Interface for Children

46. PCMATH system

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

48. VideoNoter

49. MicroProust and MicroSearch

50. Debuggy

51. Instructional Software Design Project (ISDP Project)

52. Divergent and convergent computer software applications

53. Database Management Skills

54. Learning Tool (Kozma)

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

56. Smithtown (microeconomics)

57. Workstations and Classrooms of the Future

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

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

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

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 16:32:00 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 04:51:00 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unabridged Interview on MOOC for Chronicle of Higher Education

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 07:29:00 +0000

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!

Twenty Thoughts on the Types, Targets, and Intents of MOOCs

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 03:22:00 +0000

Fourth Post in Four Days (one more to go):
For the past three days, I have posted information here in TravelinEdMan about the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that I did for Blackboard with their CourseSites people. Let's recap:

Day One (June 13): Posted interview with Jarl Jonas, Director of CourseSites from Blackboard about the MOOC.
Day Two (June 14): Posted links to a series of MOOC-related interviews with Amrit Ahluwalia from The EvoLLLution.
Day Three (June 15): Posted links to all the archived resources from the 5 weekly sync events in the MOOC.
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Today's and Tomorrow's Posts:
Day Four (June 16): Posted 20 ideas (with help from Jay Cross) on the different types and potential purposes of MOOCs.
Day Five (June 17): Posted unabridged transcript of a Chronicle of Higher Ed interview on the MOOC.
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Ok, this is the Day Four post. And tomorrow with be the final post. That fifth post will include my full interview responses to Jeffrey Young from Chronicle of Higher Education that he asked me about the MOOC. You may have read the shortened version of that interview as well as his interviews with 3 other professors who have done a MOOC lately (Four Professors Discuss Teaching Free Online Courses for Thousands of Students).

Anyway, on to Day Four. This story begins when I was on a chartered plane with some IU information technology people back on Monday June 4th. One of them, Brad Wheeler, the IU CIO and Vice President for Information Technology (VPIT), asked me about the MOOC that I had helped run and the types of MOOCs that might emerge in the coming years as financially viable and/or educationally worthwhile. Brad was aware there that are many questions being raised about the business plans of companies and other entities offering or promoting MOOCs today like edX, MITx, Coursera, Udemy, Udacity, etc. On the way home, we discussed several recent trends and announcements. That discussion got me thinking.

Starting the List...

When I got home from that short half-day trip, I jotted down some ideas in response to his question. I came up with 12 types of MOOCs that are possible or that might be employed in the coming years. When done, I sent them off to my friend Jay Cross over in Berkeley for review and went off running. During that run, I came up with four more MOOC-related ideas, all of which started with an "R" word. And so my list stood at 16 types, targets, or intents of MOOCs. As per usual, fantabulous Jay wrote me back a few hours later. He had found my list and questions to him "interesting" and suggested four additional ideas which brought my list up to 20. But Jay had an important caveat--he suggested that my list might be difficult to differentiate from large-crowd online experiences. As a result, it might not fit with initial MOOC criteria or intentions. Perhaps he was right. So I kept thinking.

This listing activity reminds me of an article I wrote back in July 2009 for eLearn Magazine on 20 reasons why people share online content. My friend, Dr. Lisa Neal Gualtieri, had requested it after she heard that my "World Is Open" book was about to come out. That article quickly evolved into 30 reasons (10 reasons institutions shared; 10 reasons instructors shared; and 10 reasons why students would want to use that free and open content). The article was titled: "The World is Open for a Reason: Make that 30 Reasons!" (PDF of document). Many of the 30 ideas in that article were credited to or inspired by David Wiley now at BYU. And many other items in that list of 30 were mentioned in my book, The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education.

So perhaps the following list of 20 ideas may become 30 as well in a week or two. Perhaps in just a day or two. Or perhaps I am done. Keep in mind that this is simply a little brainstormed list. There is nothing really scientific in it at this point. There is a listing in Wikipedia which you might find to be much better. Also remember Jay Cross' caution that this list may overlap significantly with ideas related to large-crowd online experiences that have nothing to do with education or with the purpose and function of MOOCs (at least, as originally constructed). If it does overlap, I am sure that there will be extensive criticism of my 20 item list. Please be aware that some of the ones mentioned below lean more toward the higher education world and other ones lean heavily toward the corporate sector. Some simply address adult and informal learner needs in general.

Apologies if the list below does not jive with the existing literature on MOOCs, steps on anyone's toes, or is offensive to anyone from any of these camps; especially those who offered some of the initial MOOCs and laid out the principles or criteria related to them. Such individuals have thought much longer and harder about this topic than I have. They are the brilliant, creative, and risk taking people in this space, not me. I am just responding to the question posed by my university CIO and VPIT and playing with ideas here as that is what one does in a blog. Thoughts? Here are 20 of mine (with significant input, as noted, from Jay Cross on four of them).

Twenty Types, Targets, and Intents of MOOCs:

1. Alternative Admissions Systems or Hiring System MOOC: A MOOC (or series of MOOCs) is offered and high scoring or impressive MOOC participants get admissions privileges, job interviews, or points if they later apply for a particular degree program, certificate, internship, or job.

2. Just-in-Time Skills and Competencies MOOC: Like Coursera and Udacity, the course is given to the online masses and paid by a subscription or a membership fee or by advertisements. As a former CPA and corporate controller, I see this as a fairly sound business plan for now; however, more specific details are needed. It is clear that tens of thousands of people are more than willing to sign up for a massive course as a means to sharpen their skills. The revenues could be quite astronomical. Let's hope the learning is too.

3. Theory- or Trend-Driven MOOC: Course discussion or activities focus on an emerging theory, trend(s), hot topic(s), or idea(s) and the MOOC is the ideal platform to showcase such a theory, idea, or trend. Take, for example, the current Change MOOC or connectivist-related ideas and courses from George Siemens and Stephen Downes.

4. Professional Development (PD) (practical) MOOC: People come and select the content that they wish to explore as a means to foster personal retooling, extension, and reflection. In a PD MOOC, there is limited (or no) testing or assessment of some minor little skills; instead, there is extensive sharing of what one has done in the past, what one is presently engaging in, and what one hopes to do next given this course experience. Examples here include the Blackboard/CourseSites MOOC that I just facilitated on "Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success" or the MOOC that Ray Schroeder from the University of Illinois at Springfield orchestrated last summer that was called "Online Learning Today...and Tomorrow."

5. Loss Leader (dip toe in water) MOOC: Give away one course in every department or program as a means to attract new students to that major, program, or department. This type of MOOC may become the most pervasive type during the coming 2-3 years and then it could die a quick death. For those in the corporate world, see #13 below which stands to last much longer, but is similar to this idea.

6. Bait and Switch MOOC: Create a fantastic name for the MOOC or description of it and perhaps have celebrities involved in teaching it, but use it as a means to sell a product or to turn the audience on to something else. See also #9 below.

7. Experimental MOOC: Here, the instructor, program, or organization might use a MOOC to test out new concepts, findings, or ideas. In effect, the MOOC is a test-bed for one’s research and ideas. These could be pedagogical test-beds (i.e., testing out different learning technologies and activities) or highly scientific ones or both.

8. Degree or Program Qualifier or System Bottleneck MOOC: If there are early or introductory college courses that students tend to drop or fail, perhaps let high school students take the course prior to college in a MOOC-like format with other high school students from around the country or the planet. New connections could be formed among students heading to college. If there is a common bottleneck or course filter that weeds out too many students, a MOOC might be offered during the summer to let current students complete it in a self-paced fashion.

9. Personality MOOC: MOOC experience is offered with the main goal of meeting some celebrity or expert. Though masked in a specific topic like personal passion or leadership, any content actually learned is an add-on bonus.

10. Name Branding MOOC: MOOC is offered to help push out one’s brand name. This idea overlaps with #5 of the loss leader MOOC, #6 (if celebrities are used), and #9, and perhaps every other idea listed here. This one may smell familiar to many people.

11. Goodwill MOOC: MOOC is offered as part of a mission to help educate the people of this planet. In effect, instead of "giving the world a Coke," educational opportunities are offered. Many non-profit entities and foundations have significant Web presence today and offer myriad online resources (e.g., Seeds of Empowerment, iEARN, Impossible2Possible, etc.). A Goodwill MOOC might extend that. In a way, this is what many people initially envisioned when the OpenCourseWare (OCW) movement arrived over a decade ago with announcements from MIT, Yale, and others.

12. Interdisciplinary MOOC: MOOC has a series of panelists or guest experts from around the world (or from different departments at the same university or company) presenting content from disparate yet somehow related disciplines. Creativity and innovation will be targeted in such a MOOC. Participants enrolled in them might envision new degree programs or college majors, start-up businesses or new ventures, life goals and opportunities, personal quests, etc.

As indicated earlier, Jay Cross added the next four insightful MOOC ideas.

13. Recruiting MOOC: Covers a skill in demand, say, advanced Python programming. Companies in need, pay for names/contact information of high performers. Set up specifically for recruiting, not recruiting as by-product. This is similar to idea #1 mentioned above.

14. Marketing MOOC: Jay noted that he had just talked with a company that helps middle managers improve their practice by providing content which becomes the catalyst for discussions among small groups of managers. To buy the idea, people in the company have to believe in self-directed learning. A MOOC on management development and/or informal learning would attract potential customers. I must add to Jay's point by saying that there will likely be myriad other types of marketing MOOCs that unfold in the coming years; this is just one example.

15. Conference MOOC: Jay also suggested that as an adjunct to a professional conference, one might document the back channel, share the content, facilitate discussion, and so forth. A MOOC could help stretch out the conference from a short-term event to a lasting process.

16. Learning Room MOOC: A friend of Jay's makes and markets virtual conversation software; sort of an easy-to-use, Second Life type of tool for business types. One thing that his customers love is having a persistent space online with posters on the wall, presentations at the ready, and the opportunity to just drop by. A MOOC could fill the same role. Different topics could be cycled through. Events here could include discussions of TED talks, debates of current events, or courses on social media marketing.

Thanks Jay! Brilliant stuff as always. Life is good when you have a friend like Jay. As I indicated, after sending Jay an email with my original list of 12, I went jogging and four more ideas popped into my head. So I added them to my list of types, targets, and intents of MOOCs and now I am at 20 such thoughts. Here they are...notice that they all start with the letter "R" and yet I fail to use the big R word--Relevancy. Humm...

17. Religious Revival MOOC: Some MOOCs will undoubtedly meet with extreme success. When they do, learning communities will form, and, with that, new friendships, social networks, and personal as well as professonal relationships. There will be extensive amounts of socially shared history and stories of personal as well as group success resulting from such experiences. And like eating yummy Godiva dark chocolates, people will crave more such experiences. They will look forward to the next time it is offered or something akin to it is announced. It will be a revival of sorts...a MOOC sought after with religious fervor. Remember the online course that Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle offered to some 2 million people a few years ago with spiritual and religious undertones? Now think 5 or 10 times that and even that might be too conservative an estimate for the highly successful MOOCs.

18. Rotating MOOC: Some MOOCs might rotate topics between a set of introductory topics within a program, department, or discipline. Alternatively, the rotation might be between institutions or oganizations that offer them. For instance, one year, the core expertise might be at the University of Iowa and then next year it might come from the University of Central Florida, and so on, depending on where the strong programs are housed. Or it might rotate between experts in North America, South America, the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia-New Zealand. Those in corporate settings might see the MOOC leadership or organizers rotate between different branch offices or headquarters.

19. Repeatable MOOC: As with rotating MOOCs, repeatable MOOCs might be of at least two types. For instance, the MOOC might be repeatedly offered and prior participants might be allowed to take it again and again and receive a badge or some other type of signature recognition since the content is constantly changing. Another type of repeatable MOOC is one that is offered every so often (perhaps each month or every other month) with basically the same set of content, structure, and goals. Once such a course is created, it is highly cost effective; especially if technology/machine-based assessment is employed, instead of human assessment. See idea #2 above for companies offering repeatable MOOCs already.

20. Reusable MOOC: As I noted in my blog post yesterday, the course that I just completed for Blackboard/CourseSites people is a type of reusble MOOC. All of the content has been preserved, including all of the weekly synchronous sessions that we held. While we had some 3,500 people initially, enrollment has now climbed to over 4,000 people as the registration stayed free and open during the course and will remain so long after. Anyone can reuse or repurpose that content. In effect, the MOOC remains open for future students (i.e., you) to go in and learn and perhaps earn a badge or whatever. Good luck.

After completing the above list, I went running in the 91 degree heat we have today in Bloomingotn, Indiana. Fortunately or unfortunately, I did not think of any new ideas when running. So that is it for my starter list for now. These are twenty quick thoughts on the types, targets, and intents of MOOCs. I fully realize that I did not discuss the theory or principles underlying effective MOOCs. As I indicated above, many others write much more eloquently, forcefully, fervently, insightfully, and thoughtfully about all of that theory stuff than I do (ya, my graduate degrees are in educational psychology, but I sorta was forced to leave that field 6-7 years ago and so "my mind is a zero" as the song says). If you want to know the principles, philosophies, or criteria of MOOCs, read their work. Or perhaps read Dan Butin's thought provoking piece in eLearn Magazine this month on what he thinks MIT should have done.

This particular blog post is more on the practical or implementation side than the theoretical side. The audience, therefore, is perhaps more geared to practitioners and administrators than theoreticians and experts in the emerging field of MOOCism. Again, I am just trying to answer the questions raised by my CIO/VPIT as we flew home two weeks ago.

There is much still to discuss. Questions are being raised not only about the business plans of MOOCs, but also about who is taking these courses (i.e., demographics), the language surrounding MOOCs (i.e., terminology), the forms of assessment or credentialing (i.e., making it count), and so on. I think that understanding the various types, targets, and intents of MOOCs might help a bit in addressing those vital questions. Hence, I offer my list of 20 thoughts. Your lists will likely differ from mine. Best wishes.

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Note: Earlier blog posts that I made on the "BonkOpen" MOOC and MOOCs in general are 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")

Reusable MOOC: When massive sync is lasting async

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 03:58:00 +0000

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.

The EvoLLLution from Toronto to a Global MOOC

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 03:58:00 +0000

Introduction...This is my second MOOC-Related Post in Five Days:

Day One (June 13): Jarl Jonas Director of CourseSites by Blackboard reflects on first MOOC

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And now for today...
Day Two (June 14): The EvoLLLution from Toronto to a Global MOOC

Note: Later in the week, I will post these...
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

The Evolution of The EvoLLLution...
Whew, I just completed the fourth of a series of four interviews on my Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Thinking back six months ago, I had not envisioned teaching 4,000 people in a MOOC. Sure, I had helped with the eduMOOC that my friend Ray Schroeder from the University of Illinois at Springfield had offered last summer with 2,700 people (see my blog interview of Ray at the time) and we discussed teaming up for a follow-up. But back then my brain was highly focused on NSF grantwriting and Christmas and birthday gifts that I might receive, not on some monster class to masses of participants around the planet. I already had a 54 page monster syllabus on emerging learning technologies. But that was for a dozen or so students, not thousands.

This story begins on December 15, 2011. It was on that day that I got an email about something else from a guy that I did not know who was from someplace on the planet but I was not really certain where, to be honest. It was all a mystery. His name was Amrit Ahluwalia. Perhaps he was from the Middle East, I thought to myself. Maybe he knew my friends in Dubai or Riyadh and they recommended that he contact me. Perhaps he was from right here in Indiana or wanted to come to IU for graduate school. International student applications were coming due. Or perhaps he was from???

And what did he want? No, he was not writing to wish me happy birthday remarks one day early. Nor was he congratulating me for getting all my fall course grading completed. And he did not send a Christmas jingle in his email or offer me a vacation cruise package deal either. Instead, Amrit wanted me to contribute a short excerpt from my World is Open book for a newly announced online publication called "The EvoLLLution." More writing? More work? Ug. Fortunately, all he asked for was something short and simple. I informed him, however, that it was supposed to be my winter break and I already was knee-deep in NSF Cyberlearning grant proposal writing; in fact, one grant had gone in the day before and the other one my team was just starting to work on. It was due in mid January. As a result, I said "maybe."

Like me, you might be asking yourself, who is this guy, Amrit Ahluwalia? And why would he want me to work harder than I already was during my holiday break. Well, Amrit Ahluwalia, it turns out, is the managing editor of The EvoLLLution. He and his team are based out of an office a few hundred miles north and east of me up in Toronto where, until global warming kicked into gear, winter lasted perhaps 6-8 months of the year. Hence, he probably did not really know that there was something called winter break.

What is this EvoLLLution?
You might also want to know more about The EvoLLLution. What is that all about? Well, the Website indicates that it is a grassroots community of higher education stakeholders that is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario (Canada). Amrit's initial email informed me that it was an "online newspaper, written exclusively by higher education stakeholders. Its contributors come together to form the only community, devoted exclusively exploring and improving non-traditional education." That sounded interesting to me. My mind and body are all about nontraditional learning of any kind (and, as many people are aware, my research is now devoted to informal and extreme learning). To further entice me, Amrit sent link to a video explaining more about the the role that "The EvoLLLution" would play in society in the coming years. Very cool video. I was hooked. This online newspaper would be situated in the fastest growing and perhaps least addressed area of education--the adult learner.

From what he has told me since that time, it is clear that The EvoLLLution is a unique organization whose time has come. It is an inclusive community comprised of thinkers such as university and college administrators, educators or all stripes, and, most importantly, nontraditional and lifelong learning students. Unlike many organizations in the field of education, it purposefully reaches out to employers, government officials, and other industry stakeholders, who are also adapting to the immense paradigm shift in higher education taking place today. In effect, Amrit and his colleagues have assembled a community of thought leaders who can raise awareness about nontraditional and lifelong learning. From what I can tell, the people at The EvoLLLution truly hope that the constant flow of ideas available through their online newspaper can inspire transformative changes in higher education that are needed today and in the decades to come. And with their input, they also hope that there will be broad scale societal recognition of the immense value of continuing and adult higher education. I hope so too.

So what did he want from e I wondered? According to Amrit, The EvoLLLution publishes "articles and interviews written by individuals who are on the ground looking at how higher education has changed and discussing ways to adapt the industry to today's realities." He also noted that they seek articles that discuss the business and management of modern-day higher education; an area of vast changes today. Additionaly, many of their articles explore tactical methods and strategies that can help alter or shift higher education in ways that personalize education according to the needs of today's students, and, as he put it, "the ever-changing and ever-advancing workforce." He then reminded me to watch the short video (1:50 minute). He also said that more details on The EvoLLLution could be found in the "About Us" section of their Website, including links to subscribe or contribute to it.

When I further inquired into his role, Amrit said the he was involved in establishing "relationships with our vast array of contributors from across the higher education and continuing education fields and assist them in generating content based on their ideas and opinions to be published on our online newspaper." Ok, I was fine with that. In fact, I was more than fine with it. But back to work on NSF grant proposal #2 I went. And my mind drifted off into thoughts about wikis, crowdsourced content, and learning environments that could be automically generated by computer code. Amrit and The EvoLLLution soon faded from my memory banks.

The Return of The EvoLLLution
A few weeks later, however, another email arrived from him. In it, Amrit kindly asked again for a short piece based on my World is Open book. I was still hard at work on my 2nd NSF grant proposal. And so he waited patiently for still another week or two. Soon, another email arrived with positive words of encouragement and hopes and dreams that I would contribute something in the coming weeks ("Extreme Learning Hopes and Dreams" was, in fact, the title of my first NSF grant).

And so, after finishing and submitting my 2nd NSF grant proposal of the month (This one titled SWALE or "Scholar Wiki Automated Learning Environments"), I sat in my hot tub and hoped that my fingers, back, neck, and brain could mend themselves quickly and that I could type up something up for him that would be worth reading. Luckily, it did not take too long for most of my body to heal (though my shoulders and back remain a problem for my chiropractor). Ten days later, I sent him a piece, "We All Learn," which appeared in digital form on February 16th. Amrit thanked me for it and we parted ways...or so I thought.

For a couple of months, I read articles appearing in The EvoLLLution but was thankful that he did not want me to produce anything else since the Spring 2012 semester was a difficult one filled with travel and committee work. But my new friend Amrit was not gone for long. In April, I received another email from him. This time he had heard about the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that I was doing for CourseSites by Blackboard on Instructional Strategies and Technology Tools for Online Success. I think he had read my blog post on this and got excited about covering a unique and evolving story. He said that wanted to interview me as we were about to start the MOOC as well as during the course and after it ended. Ultimately, there would be four MOOC interviews.

The EvoLLLution MOOC Interviews
The course ran from the end of April to early June with 5 synchronous sessions in Collaborate (i.e., formerly Elluminuate) each Wednesday afternoon in May from 4-6 pm EST. The first interview I did alone with Amrit via my home landline near the end of April. My first synchronous session with 500+ people occcured a few days later on May 2nd. The second interview was 2-3 weeks later with help from five of the eight volunteer teaching assistants (TAs) that I had quickly assembled when enrollment was nearly double our expectations of roughly 2,000 participants to well over 3,500 signing up by the start of the course. That particular interview took place from my Indiana University office in the School of Education. It was deemed a "half-time report." As such, it focused on the problems and challenges that we faced or had resolved. The third interview Amrit conducted with Jarl Jonas, Director, and Sarah Bishop-Root, Marketing and Communications Manager, from CourseSites by Blackboard. They discussed the types of learners that had showed up in the MOOC as well as the expectations that Blackboard/CourseSites people had when planning it. And the final interview was conducted a week ago and appeared in The EvoLLLution yesterday. It was concerned with assessment and the credentialing side of a MOOC as well as the potential of MOOCs and their "evolution" in the future. Jarl, Sarah, and I all participated in that one. It was the longest of the four that we did and perhaps the best.

All four sessions lasted around 15-25 minutes. They are listed below. I hope you can learn something from one or more of them. To help your learning, each was audiotaped. It is important to point out that the audio files are always longer than the article. If you read the article as well as listen to the interview, you will see that Amrit did a marvelous job of condensing the sometimes rambling and resource-filled phone discussions into each article.

What's Your MOOC Pleasure--Text or Audio?
1. Massive Open Online Courses: Taking Learning to a New Level. Interview of Curt Bonk by Amrit Ahluwalia, April 30, 2012, The Evolllution. (Article; Audio).

2. The MOOC Halftime Report. Interview of Curt Bonk and MOOC TAs by Amrit Ahluwalia, May 22, 2012. The Evolllution. (Article, Audio).

3. MOOCs Making Waves with Nontraditional Students. Interview of Jarl Jonas and Sarah Bishop Root by Amrit Ahluwalia, June 7, 2012, The Evolllution. (Article, Audio).

4. The Potential for MOOCS. Interview of Jarl Jonas, Sarah Bishop Root, and Curt Bonk by Amrit Ahluwalia, The Evolllution. June 13, 2012. (Article, Audio).

If anyone wants a PDF document of these articles, send me an email. There is much to reflect on and discuss from all four of these interviews. Each person reading or listening to them will have different goals and associated takeaways. In the end, I must thank my friend Amrit Ahluwalia and The EvoLLLution for their interest in the MOOC we did last month on Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success. These were fun discussions and reflections.

Note that the Course Registration, Information, and Introductory Video all remain open. We have over 4,000 people enrolled now. The world is truly open for learning. Enjoy it. Live it. Share it. Be it.

Jarl Jonas Director of CourseSites by Blackboard reflects on first MOOC

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 02:33:00 +0000

Introduction...The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that I did with Blackboard people using CourseSites officially ended a week or 2 ago. It now has over 4,000 participants. Registration will remain open. So, now it is time to do some reflections on it in my blog (TravelinEdMan) as well as on MOOCs in general. Mixed in is an interview of Jarl Jonas, the Director of CourseSites, as well as the full (i.e., unabridged) version of the interview that Jeffrey Young of the Chronicle of Higher Education did with me that appeared back on June 11th (briefer Chronicle version). Those interviews start and end this sequence of blog postings.

Below is MOOC blog Post #1. The first of 5 such posts:
Day One (June 13): Jarl Jonas Director of CourseSites by Blackboard reflects on first MOOC
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And here are the posts that I made later in the week...
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
Day Five (June 17): Unabridged Interview on MOOC for Chronicle of Higher Education
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"Reflections on Blackboard, CourseSites, and the MOOC"

An Interview with Jarl Jonas Director for CourseSites by Blackboard, by Curtis J. Bonk, Professor, Indiana University, USA

This past weekend, I had an email conversation Jarl Jonas about the Massive Open Online Class (MOOC) I helped with last month, “Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success.” While I say "helped," as noted in a post in the Chronicle of Higher Education this week, I was the instructor of record. But that is really all anyone can do in a MOOC. You help or assist in the learning process. I had much assistance from others. Jarl was among those providing the help. For that, I am quite thankful.

The course, which I have discussed in many previous posts, has now attracted over 4,000 participants; as of today, there are 4,010 people enrolled in it and it keeps growing despite the fact that the synchronous sessions ended two weeks ago and my role is winding down. People can still go in and register and then learn from the content and forums and so on. As noted below, those that do can earn a badge. If interested in the course or in a badge, Jarl Jonas, or his assistant, Sarah Bishop Root, can help.

Who is Jarl Jonas you ask? Well, Jarl is Director for CourseSites by Blackboard, a free, hosted online course creation and facilitation service for individual instructors. Jarl is also an adjust faculty member for Excelsior College teaching Business Communications and am a former Secondary Language Arts teacher. Perhaps more importantly, he is an educator and life-long learner excited about the use of technology to enhance student engagement and achievement.

Amazing, he responded to my questions from 30,000 feet on my way to Austin (by way of Dallas). Below are my questions and his responses. You can also find his reflections on the MOOC in a blog post he made last month.

Curt Q1: What is CourseSites? How long has it existed? Why was it created? In what ways is its mission different from the more profit-oriented side of Blackboard? And how is it part of the mission?

Jarl: CourseSites is a free, hosted online course creation and facilitation service that empowers individual K–12 teachers, college and university instructors and community educators to add a Web–based component to their courses, or even host an entire course on the Internet. The service is powered by Blackboard’s latest learning management, mobile, SMS, and synchronous communication technology and is intended to help teachers establish what we like to call ‘one learning landscape.’ Many instructors are sending students to multiple sites to obtain information, interact, and complete assignments, which can cause confusion, frustration, and disengagement. With CourseSites, we provide most, if not all tools necessary to support all aspects of instruction.

CourseSites has existed since 1999, but it’s taken on a few different forms. In February of 2011, we launched the current free version to support Blackboard’s mission of “Everyone Educated.” By providing CourseSites, we remove a common barrier of access to technology and offer educators and their students a space to experiment with and/or use technology to enhance the teaching and learning process. To ensure the experience is successful and that the technology does not hinder learning, we include training and support for instructors and students. As well, with this updated, no cost service, we hope to establish a community of e-Learning practitioners who can help one another and discuss best practices, ideas, and challenges of teaching in this realm. This community includes Blackboard, and as such, CourseSites serves as a wonderful vehicle for students and instructors to voice their positive and constructive opinions about the software and experience that we can feed back to the Blackboard Product Development team with the intent of continuous improvement.

Curt Q2: Personally, I see CourseSites as sort of a goodwill arm or effort of Blackboard. If I am correct, can you describe other such goodwill efforts underway within Blackboard? For instance, I heard that there were some mobile learning initiatives for third world or developing countries in which Blackboard is involved. In fact, my son, Alex Bonk, has gone on two trips with Paul Kim from Seeds of Empowerment to help with literacy training in remote southern Tanzania and with indigenous youth in northern Argentina. He also did the documentaries and photography (see Facebook). In both cases, representatives from Blackboard also were part of the team. Did you know about this? Is Blackboard reaching out with CourseSites and other ways that people might not be aware of?

Jarl: One of the things I like most about working at Blackboard is the caliber of my colleagues and the ideas they have to help advance education around the world. As you describe, the Seeds of Empowerment project has had a profound impact on many individuals at different levels and is a working example of the passion that Blackboard has for improving the quality of life for all. You can read a bit more about some of the results here.

CourseSites is a wonderful resource in itself, but for my colleagues and I, that is not enough. Last Fall, we worked closely with Creative Commons to provide instructors with a way to publish their course as an Open Educational Resource (OER.) to their instructor homepage. Course packages become available in Common Cartridge and Blackboard format and get tagged with a CC-BY license for all to consume, remix, and reuse. Then, this Spring, we announced our open enrollment feature, along with our CourseSites Open Course Series: Empowering Learning Through Community. The open enrollment features enable instructors to offer open courses of any kind to any number of students. To lead by example, we launched the open course series with your first course on Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success. Thank you for helping to launch the series and make such an impact!

Aside from these initiatives, Blackboard supports volunteerism and community service. We often participate in local service days to help give back to the communities in which we work and are provided 8 hours to volunteer with a charity of our choice.

Curt Q3: What are the most interesting and rewarding aspects of your job?

Jarl: My biggest passion in life is helping others to reach their full potential. The next is a thirst for knowledge. I can fulfill these passions in many ways, but being a part of CourseSites enables me to fulfill these on a much larger scale, all while broadening my perspective. I get to interact daily with individuals from around the world and hear how about their challenges and successes. I am able to give them a voice in our development to help them overcome certain obstacles and increase their student achievement.

As you know, the realm of instructional systems technology is ever-changing. This is both exciting and frustrating for all of us. I am a constant student in this job which helps keep me on my toes! I like to see what’s happening ‘out there’ and see what I can do to bring that to our users through functionality, or perhaps through educational programs. I work with equally passionate individuals and we have a lot of fun. I look forward to providing more and more opportunities for learning, experimentation, and advancement with CourseSites users and beyond for years to come!

Curt Q4: Why did Blackboard/CourseSites decide to offer this course? What interested you in doing this project?

Jarl: As former high school teacher, faculty development coordinator, online course developer, and Blackboard consultant, and as a current online instructor at Excelsior College, I’ve personally struggled and have seen many other educators wrestle with how to engage students — with or without technology. An enormous tool chest now awaits educators and designers to help motivate students to learn and achieve, but many are still overwhelmed and have little access to professional development resources, or someone who can help them make some sense of the theories and tools. Knowing that this need exists, among many, my colleagues and I began to think how we could leverage CourseSites to not only provide free and open access to some of these tools, but to educate teachers and instructors on how to use these and many others effectively – at no cost. Undoubtedly, there is a host of information that instructors can access on their own, but our experience also tells us that some professionals like a ‘structured’ learning experience. This is evidenced by the response and participation levels we saw.

Curt Q5: Was there anything else?

Jarl: We also wanted to try and see how an open course might work in an environment like CourseSites, as a place to start the conversation. We didn’t aim to mimic the MOOCs provided to date, but wanted to create an open opportunity for individuals to learn how they want (i.e., readings vs. live class), interact with whom they want, and choose the tools with which they were most comfortable (i.e., blogs/wikis/discussions.) We also created some opportunities for networking and were very pleased to see the number of groups and discussions established. Many have continued to interact even after the course has ended which could give rise to an ongoing community of practice.

Curt Q6: How supportive have Blackboard (the for profit company) been of this free online course and new venture? Do you have any examples of support that you can share? What benefits does a MOOC like this reap for Blackboard and CourseSites? Did anyone high up the food chain at Blackboard express any doubts or concerns about such a course or initiative? Are people up the food chain even aware of it? Stated another way, what has been the response internally at Blackboard HQ in DC?

Jarl: Blackboard and its’ executives are very supportive of CourseSites and the open course series. As I mentioned earlier, these initiatives help us to fulfill our mission of Everyone Educated, and provide fun, innovative opportunities to learn more individually and as a company. Many were very excited about the course launch and followed its progress closely including our CEO, Michael Chasen and President of Academic Platforms and CTO, Ray Henderson. Since joining Blackboard, Ray has been vocal proponent of advancing Blackboard openness initiatives and recognized our open enrollment capability and open course as further opportunities to accomplish that.

Curt Q7: What’s it like so far? Has it met your expectations and vision?

Jarl: The course has now ‘officially’ ended, but is still open for anyone to enroll or return to access, review, and download learning resources. Looking back, I would say the course well exceeded our expectations. We had nearly 4,000 participants signed up. Over half of these participated in the discussion boards, blogs, and/or wikis contributing to the 6,000+ interactions with these tools. In our live sessions, we had over 500 in the first session, and then over 300 on average in subsequent sessions. For this time of year, at least in the US with terms ending and holidays beginning, I was very pleased with the turn-out and engagement. Additionally, individuals have formed over 20 groups on their own to network and connect about the course material within certain subjects or contexts and thus have formed their own community of practice. We were really hoping for this type of organic experience. I recently looked at our survey results for the course and over 90% agreed that they would take a course with us again. We will work hard to improve that percentage next time, but feel that is a good indicator of our success, along with the response that we’ve been getting such as:

“I'd like to express my gratitude to Mr. Bonk and everyone who paid lots of time and efforts to make it work. It was a great chance to learn from each other and grow professionally. I had an opportunity to participate in different MOOCs, but this one was the best I ever experienced to join. The platform and scheduling as well as the manner of running the Course was unbelievably great and well prepared. I enjoyed all the webinars run by Dr Bonk, though the time didn't fit me, as it was always after midnight. Anyway, the opportunity to watch the recording makes it even better.”

Nina Lyulkun, Associate Professor, Business Foreign Languages Department,
Khmelnitsky National University, Khmelnitsky, Ukraine (May 31, 2012)

Curt Q8: You and Sarah Bishop-Root have helped me out a lot in this course. Can you describe a typical “day” of online teaching in this MOOC-like experience? What do you tend to do?

Jarl: Initially, Sarah and I built the asynchronous environment we used to support the learning experience. The live sessions were meant to be the centerpiece, and we designed the CourseSites environment to provide alternative and supplemental resources, suggested reflective activities, and networking opportunities. Once the course began, Sarah and I split duty and had the assistance of our intern Nina Uqdah and your TAs. Sarah helped to monitor the course Twitter feed and I helped to monitor questions inside the course about the use of the platform, course structure, the badge, etc. As needed, we reached out to you for content-specific questions, and collected questions for the live session’s Q&A portion. Once we added the TAs, they assisted you with responding to participants regarding the content and questions that they may have had regarding application.

While we attempted to design each week in advance prior to launch, we were updating each week with further resources, such as adding the live session recordings and discussion/blog/wiki/chat summaries. As well, early on we ran a few tests with you to ensure that the live sessions would run smoothly and worked with our Blackboard Collaborate group to make adjustments as necessary. This surely became our main focus for six weeks, but we planned that accordingly amidst other ongoing job obligations at Blackboard. Sarah and I were also trying to be students in the course as well. Admittedly, we learned on many levels, but I need to go back to review the live session and resources to focus on the content as we were mainly focused on the experience for participants first and foremost.

Curt Q9: Did you ever imagine in school teaching days ever imagine a world or a course such as this?

Jarl: Instead of describing again, you might read or listen to the interview that Sarah Bishop Root and I did a couple of weeks ago with Amrit Ahluwalia that appeared in the Evolllution. MOOCs Making Waves with Nontraditional Students, June 2012 (longer audio file).

You might also read the one that came out earlier today that you and Sarah joined in on. The Potential for MOOCS, by Amrit Ahluwalia, The Evolllution. June 13, 2012 (longer audio file). (Note: This was the fourth and perhaps final interview that Amrit did on our MOOC.)

Curt Q10: What were your goals coming into this? Did you have any success factors in mind?

Jarl: Our main goal was to connect educators with information and other professionals that could help them increase student motivation, engagement, and achievement. We expected about 2,000 to enroll and participate and received double that. Along the way we expected and facilitated ways for participants to interact with one another so they could continue the dialogue well beyond the course environment and timeline. The aforementioned numbers are a good indicator of the initial interest, and the continued participation has been better than expected. All this has been happening at a crucial time during the typical US-based term (finals, graduation) and we’ve still seen good numbers.

Curt Q11: How is learning evident or indicated in the MOOC? What about connections?

Jarl: Participant learning has been evident by the conversations we’ve seen in the discussions and blogs, along with the resources and ideas shared in the wikis. Connections, on the other hand, are evident by the self-formed groups, along with the dialogue outside of the course in individual blogs and other social media. Some of the blog posts have been phenomenal in terms of how they have applied the examples and models presented.

There are many other signs of success. For instance, we have received much positive feedback from participants. This feedback is found in many forms of social media, including Facebook and Twitter posts, email, and much more. One of the most recent notes that caught our attention was from Professor June Klees from Bay College in Escanaba, Michigan. She said:

“I’ve greatly enjoyed participating in this class as part of my continuing professional development in online teaching! It's been the exact type of refresher that I've been craving, with the added bonus that it has very much validated my work as an online educator. I think what I will use the most is the videos as anchors and review, which will be incorporated more in my online, on-campus, and blended (to be created) classes. I highly recommend that all online educators, seasoned or newbie, join in the learning fun!”

And about halfway through the course, Lana Hiasat, Instructor at Dubai Men’s College in the UAE sent you a note that matched our hopes for the course:

“I am really enjoying your Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). It is so well structured and I’m getting so many ideas out of it to implement next semester. I will be trying wikibooks in the next few weeks.”

And after the course, she sent this update:
"I would like to thank you again for a very positive experience. After we finished the course I went on to plan my next year’s course design to include many of the tools that I have learned from your course. I think the main success of your course was that you managed to keep me--a quite busy teacher--motivated to do the weekly readings and listen to your presentations. It is very difficult to keep online learners engaged and interested in keeping up with the workload and you did that. Thanks again!”

Curt Q12: Has anything surprised you about the “students” who signed up for and participated in the course e.g., location, title, educational sector, etc.)?

Jarl: We knew that a wide variety of participants would sign up in terms of levels of experience with online learning, but I’m not sure we expected the varying levels of professionals (IDs, teachers, VP, Provosts). This shows us there is still much ground to cover at every level to ensure we are providing the best educational experiences for students at all levels and ages.

Also, we are tallying the exact number of countries represented now, but had some great response from around the world! Participants mainly came from the US, but we had many students from the Ukraine, UAE, France, South Africa, Belgium, Ecuador, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Mexico, the UK, and Saudi Arabia.

Curt Q13: Do you have any concerns going into the course -- about format, implications for universities, or any other aspect of this unusual venture?

Jarl: Despite all of the hoopla about MOOCs recently, I think we are far away from moving beyond our current higher education structure. That’s not to say what we have is optimal, but open education has many open questions and areas for exploration and maturity. Opportunities such as this open course help to augment over-burdened faculty development staff and provide some context and structure to the volume of research being published about learning in this paradigm.

Curt Q14: What are the motivators from this course? What is working in that regard?

Jarl: Badges are in their infancy, but quickly becoming somewhat of an accepted achievement indicator. As such, we decided to offer a Bonk Open Course badge to help encourage enrollees to participate in the suggested reflective activities and interact beyond the live sessions. As well, we are providing a way for users to store their achievement in the Mozilla Open Badge Backpack. Mozilla is leading the way regarding badge standardization and display. Otherwise, the participants can display this badge proudly on their blog or personal site as way of letting others know they met the stated requirements of the course and have acquired new skills to motivate and engage students in online and hybrid courses.

Curt Q15: So, time for a final question...what might you do next and when in terms of another MOOC-like experience from you guys? What might we be looking for from CourseSites and Blackboard in the not-too-distance future?

Jarl: Well, as I mentioned, your course was the first in the open course series so you can expect more learning experiences to be provided this year. During the live session in the past course we polled participants on some areas of interest. Universal Design and Accessibility were topics of interest. We are exploring how to address that need, along with other open education topics. We’d also love to have you offer another course after you’ve had some well deserved rest!

In the immediate future, we’ve partnered with the National Repository for Online Courses and are offering a webinar on their design framework this week. Anyone interested can learn more and register here.

Announcing Webinar: Designing Effective Resources for Online Learning
Date: June 14th
Time: 2 p.m. ET
Session Presenter: Ruth Rominger, Director of Learning Design - National Repository of Online Courses (NROC)

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

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Tue, 08 May 2012 06:58:00 +0000

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.

Open-access articles on the "Digital Campus" about open access

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Wed, 02 May 2012 06:31:00 +0000

Are you interested in open education and alternative learning routes? Are you concerned about the regimentation of schools and academic programs? I know that I am. I always have been. I never really liked traditional schools and schooling. Fortunately, emerging learning technologies often provide options for learning. Audiotapes, TV, satellite, radio, CDs, etc. As many people know by now, TV and correspondence courses saved my sanity back when I was a highly bored corporate controller and CPA back in the early to mid 1980s. And today the Web is saving countless lives.

However, it is getting harder and harder to keep up with the news in learning technology and open education. I am not sure how anyone can be an expert in online learning or open education. What is interesting is that today this is a hot topic and front page news. Back in 1984, it was not. And now with venture capital pouring in, this space will be expanding even more. More open access articles will be published about open access. And finance people (I used to be one) and marketing people will begin to take center stage. Is it, "exit stage right" for academics and researchers...? I think not. There is so much to research here. My team is asking many open educational resource (OER) questions.

But each day there is something pressing to read from Education Week, the NY Times, the Washington Post, the USA Today, Time, eSchool News or eCampus News, Chief Learning Officer, Wired, or the Chronicle of Higher Education. Well, now there is a special issue in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the Digital Campus. This issue came out online on April 29, 2012 and the paper edition was in my mailbox this afternoon. The articles within it are definitely emphasizing this wave of open education. The world is open for learning as we all know by now. Don't agree? Read on. And on and on and on. There are so many examples today of how one can learn online in extreme and not so extreme ways. As the previous link indicates, my research is now in extreme learning.

There is one article by Katherine Mangan in this special edition that immediately caught my attention. It gives anyone reading it a sense of wonder about where, when, and how learning can occur. The title is "Open Education's Wide World of Possibilities" (Note: you may need a password for this article now. Earlier today, you did not. If you cannot access it from the link above, try here (Note: this is an alternative link from the Chronicle of HE) or try here instead (for a blogger post of the article)). Three sources for this article? Well, actually, I found about 20. This is just another example of the open learning world.

When reading this intriguing article, you will "discover" that learning can now take place from Tibet while herding yaks, from the northern tip of Canada while collecting scientific data, from soup kitchens and orphanages in Mongolia, and so on. Dentists in rural parts of Afghanistan are upgrading their skills from shared online videos from the School of Dentistry at the University of Michigan. College kids are passing classes in which they were initially "floundering" after finding open educational resources which helped them learn. Former accountants (like me) are teaching science and winning awards after "plowing through" online lectures and Khan Academy materials. MITx, Udacity, iTunes U, Peer 2 Peer University, Saylor.org, and many other resources are springing up to change the learning possibilities for the people of this planet.

These are exciting times indeed. How do the different open-access courses compare? What do you get? Videotaped lectures? Guest experts? Access to the instructor? Online study groups to learn with?Asynchronous discussions? Syllabi? Audio files? You can read more about what is offered in different free online courses in a chart comparing their content. That article is called: Open-Access Courses: How They Compare.

What exciting times these are! I wrote about some of this in a newsletter piece for the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) Online Newsletter back in October 2009 (The Wide Open Learning World: Sea, Land, and Ice Views) as well as in my World is Open book. Today anyone can learn anything from anyone else at any time.

You can read about John Boyer's fascinating class at Virginia Tech with more than 2,600 students. The course is in geography and is called "World Regions." Read this one and you will hear about a professor who is truly loved by his students. He goes all out to help his students learn. And learn they do. Boyer brings in guest experts from around the world. And he uses many types of free and open access technologies like Ustream, Facebook, Twitter, shared online videos, and Skype to help them learn. In effect, Boyer is a role model for this open educational world that we are now in. The article is called "Supersizing the College Classroom: How One Instructor Teaches 2,670 Students."

Speaking of which, my MOOC for Blackboard that starts later today at 4 pm EST (and is every Wednesday in the month of May at that time) now has over 3,200 people in it. Wow. Hope you can join in. The course will remain open for registration during the month of May. No worries if you sign up late.

Here are a couple of other articles in the special issue (or from that day) that might be of interest:
1. The Imperfect Art of Designing Online Courses, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Dan Berrett, April 29, 2012.

2. Social Networks for Academics Proliferate, Despite Some Doubts, Chronicle of Higher Education, Katherine Mangan, April 29, 2012.

There are many more articles in this special issue. That is enough for now. You can find them from the first link in this blog post.

When you are done browsing and reading them, you might consider signing up for the MOOC. Hope to see some of you in the Blackboard/CourseSites MOOC or beyond. We will try to address all this confusion with a couple of simple frameworks or models for making sense of it. That is the hope anyway. And perhaps the ideas discussed or presented in it can help a life or 2 (or more). Fingers crossed

Video Intro for Upcoming MOOC and IU Press on the Event

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 06:46:00 +0000

With 2,800 people already signed up for the Blackboard MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) that starts this Wednesday at 4 pm EST, I was asked to do a video intro (see below). It is a little over 12 minutes long. It was the longest of the 5 or 6 takes we made last week Thursday afternoon. I try to explain the upcoming events in the MOOC. We will meet every Wednesday in May at the same time.
Video Intro to Blackboard/CourseSites MOOC. Dr. Curt Bonk: Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success, 12:25, April 27, 2012.

I had a ton of support from people in the Instructional Consulting (IC) office within the School of Education at IU. Thanks Peter. Thanks Karen. Thank Eulho. Thanks Miguel. Thanks everyone.

The registration for the MOOC will remain open during the course.

As I said, IU has been highly supportive. Last week, there is a university press release (IU School of Education professor Bonk to deliver free online course on online teaching) as well as an article in the student newspaper (the Indiana Daily Student or IDS; i.e.,

"IU Professor to offer online teaching course"). And my instructional systems technology (IST) department had a short online news story as well (i.e., Open Web Course Launching in May, April 26, 2012).

This is the largest class I have ever done. There might be more people enrolled in this one class than all my combined classes during my 23 years of teaching in higher education since my doctorate. It will be a fun experiment. My blog post from April 19th has most of the relevant information in it.

I look forward to meeting some of you in a couple of days. And, of course, I definitely cannot wait to see a few old friends and former students around the planet. The focus of this MOOC will be pedagogy or instructional strategies for teaching online, though it will also include much information on emerging learning technologies. Time for bed.

Here's My Spin on "Chronicle Spring"

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 17:25:00 +0000

Chronicle Spring: Anyone out there flipping through the online or "wired" version of the Chronicle of Higher Education lately? It is filled with advice columns each week (and sometimes daily). The weekly paper version is too. Articles can be found on completing dissertations, writing and modifying resumes, applying for jobs, job interviewing techniques, midcareer mentoring, when and how to give notice that one is leaving for another place, departing or retiring from academic life, and so on. There is so much advice out there, my head is spinning.

The past 6 or 7 weeks have given us all ample stuff to read about life as an academic in between grading papers, serving on committees, and conducting research. Given that we had "Arab Spring" last year (see this interactive timeline of Arab spring from the Guardian), I think we should name the spring of 2012, "Chronicle Spring." There sure is a plethora of career advice and mentoring articles coming from the online Chronicle of Higher Education the past month or two to support that notion. Listed below are a few such articles; most of these are from the past couple of weeks, but all are less than two months old.

Ten Sample "Chronicle Spring" Articles:
1. My Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Dissertation, April 8, 2012, Rachel Herrmann, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

(Note: The essence of the above article--get done! Few people write dissertations that change the world. As I said, get done! I tell my students the same thing. Sure, 1 or 2 doc students in 10 (at most...more like 1 in 20 or 1 in 100) will come up with a fantastic new model, theory, instrument, research method, etc. But the vast majority will not. Most of them, however, will provide useful insights into some topic area and nudge their chosen field ahead a bit, but their work will not be of the earth-shattering variety that is reported in Time, Nature, or Washington Post.)

2. Midcareer Mentoring, Part 1, March 19, 2012, Female Science Professor, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

3. Midcareer Mentoring, Part 2, April 16, 2012, Female Science Professor, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

(Note: During the past week or two, I have shared the above two articles on "midcareer mentoring" with many friends and colleagues who recently obtained tenure and many of them quickly returned notes of thanks. Apparently, this article about strikes a chord with people as they think about whether it is time to leave their current institution or organization or perhaps to stay and perhaps retool with a sabbatical.)

4. Why I Tossed Your Résumé, April 17, 2012, Brent Miller, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

(Note: This article has some quick comments on why your resume may be tossed from the pile of applications into the nearest bin as well as an insight or two or how to get one's resume/CV noticed and perhaps get the job. It is personally funny and touching in parts since I have experienced many of the things mentioned when on search committees in the past.)

5. Graduate Schools Need to Improve Career Counseling, Report Says, April 19, 2012, By Stacey Patton, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

(Note: According to this article, "the number of jobs requiring a master's degree will increase by 22 percent over the next eight years, and the number of jobs requiring a doctorate or professional degree will increase by 20 percent." However, there is limited career counseling for graduate students about their respective job options. This lack of help on career pathways and options could be a reason that these advice and mentoring articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education are so popular today.)

6. The End of the Affair (about the pain of turning down a job offer), April 18, 2012, George David Clark, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

(Note: This is a short article that has also struck a chord with friends of mine who had difficulty accepting one offer over another.)

7. You Will Not Reject Me. I Will Reject Me, April 17, 2012, Allison M. Vaillancourt, The Chronicle of Highe Education.

(Note: The essence of this one is that many brilliant people lack the personal confidence to apply for jobs for which they are interested and are highly qualified. Very sad I think. As such, it is an important article to quickly skim through and reflect upon. Is that you?)

8. A Few Thoughts on a Graceful Exit, April 20, 2012, Gene C. Fant Jr., The Chronicle of Higher Education.

(Note: Clearly, you should be fair to those around you when you have a job offer that you are likely taking or indeed have taken. If you have hired the movers and scheduled a pick-up time for your furniture and put your house on the market, you better tell someone you are leaving and need to be replaced on the fall or spring teaching schedule.)

9. Work-Life Balance Is Out of Reach for Many Male and Female Scientists, March 8, 2012, By Audrey Williams June, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

(Note: this article uses a recent survey data report to foster a discussion of better ways to foster a work-life balance; especially in STEM fields. According to this survey of over 4,200 scientists and researchers around the planet, 48 percent of women were not pleased with the way work and personal life mesh, whereas that drops to 39 percent for men. Both figures are way too high.)

10. In the midst of all of these advice articles, of course, there are discussions about salaries. And there are charts and tables to lend support to such discussions. For instance:

Professors Seek to Reframe Salary Debate, April 8, 2012, by Audrey Williams June, The Chronicle of Higher Education. Along with that article is an interactive Table of salaries and detailed data on the different colleges profiled.

(Note: Definitely worth playing with the interactive data chart. It is eye opening to see where my university ranks when compared to other places around the USA.)

Ten Causes of Chronicle Spring:
Had enough of all these articles? Me too. I have enjoyed each one but my brain is going a tad mushy with all the advice, recommendations, and data points. I think there are many reasons for the increase in all the advice and guidance columns and increasing need for career mentoring. Here are ten such reasons (as you can see, I do like the number 10).

1. Spring, Spring, Spring: It is springtime and people are getting interviews for new positions and pondering whether to leave their current institution or organization or not. In addition, spring is a time for renewal and reflection. Summer is around the corner, and if you do not teach at that time, it can be a time for much writing productivity and advancement of one's research. These advisory types of articles can help one plan for summer.

2. Jobs, Jobs, Jobs: The job market is clearly picking up. Seems nearly all my current and former students on the job market are getting interviews and some of them have multiple job offers. That was not the case a year or two ago. Part of the reason is retirements. Of course, all is not rosy for those getting positions today since, at many institutions, the faculty replacement policy is 1 person being hired for every 2 or 3 retirements. As such, mentoring and advice is needed on whether to take such a position.

In my current discipline, instructional and educational technology, things are really heating up. The Chronicle of Higher Education, in fact, has been documenting some of the current explosion in venture capital for learning technology companies (see list of start-ups at the bottom of this article on Piazza; there are others as well; 3 Start-Up Announcements From the Education Innovation Summit and Online-Education Start-Up Teams With Top-Ranked Universities to Offer Free Courses). As you pan through such articles, it is clear that there are many job opportunities out there for those who want to work outside of academia.

In addition, nearly all college and university campuses and government agencies now need instructional design and distance or e-learning learning support for their online and blended courses. Those seeking a job in instructional technology, educational technology, or e-learning on a college campus or in a government, corporate, or military setting (or even in a school district), might see the jobs portal from my department (Instructional Systems Technology (IST)) at Indiana University or my personal portal of over 30 job Website portals. And there's always the jobs database from the Chronicle of Higher Education to peruse through.

3. Mistakes, Mistakes, Mistakes: Because we are coming out of a recession, no one wants to make a mistake and pick the wrong place to move to or make a bad decision of any kind. At the same time, most people do not want to wait too long to make a move. It is a nerve-wracking situation for many. They need advice and mentoring.

4. Information, Information, Information: So many articles to read and learn from in order to stay abreast of what is happening today. So much to consider in terms of one's career. How can anyone keep track of it all? I know lately I have seen a surge of people seeking advice about their careers, whether they be graduate students, assistant professors, or associate professors. Some want advice on writing their resumes or CVs. Others want to know about interview questions that they might be asked (see my blog post on that). And others want to know whether they should focus their careers in a couple specific areas; and if so, how. That is just a small sample of the questions I am getting the past few weeks.

5. Flow, Flow, Flow: Some people are seeking happiness and flow. They want to have a richer, better, and more meaningful life. And they seek out advice columns and personal mentoring for such. It is hard to balance a career and family life; especially, after surviving a system with so many hoops and hurdles like getting a master's degree or a(n) Ed.D. or Ph.D. We are conditioned to be working all the time and to be competing with others around us (either implicitly or explicitly). Stop! Stop! Stop! I recommend people enjoy the journey and help as many people around them as they can. There is something to be said for going with the flow. There is something to be said for having a high quality of life. Just focus on your own flow state and ignore the stuff happening around you (or don't focus on flow...just exist within it). Do that, and all will be well.

6. Models, Mentors, Maintaining Meaningful Relationships: Many graduate students and faculty members lack a personal mentor, coach, or guide around them who cares about their personal growth and is willing to devote significant amounts of time to help them reach their full potential. Such meaningful relationships take time to build, nurture, and maintain. Open access articles found online can be a short-term solution. But, we certainly need both.

7. Who Knew? Too New!: Many of the people I talk to are new to all of this stuff. Some have never interviewed for an academic position before. Others are in their first academic post and it is going so-so or perhaps it is highly frustrating. Still others are doing great and love their job and institution but want to excel at an even higher level or nonetheless want to explore options. All want to read these articles found in Chronicle Spring.

8. Options, Options, Options: Part of the reason for the spike in these mentoring and advice as well as the rising number of career related inquiries that people like myself are getting lately is that there more options for someone graduating today that there were 23 years ago when I graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. One area where those options are particularly obvious is in teaching. Today, one can teach online fulltime or part-time. One can teach blended. And you can alternate between online, blended, and face-to-face teaching. Such online teaching opportunities will only increase in the coming decades.

9. The Digital Scholar: As part of the movement to online environments for teaching and learning, the Web also offers many news ways to be a scholar or should I say, to be a digital scholar. You can also build a career with your podcasted interviews, wiki-generated books, blog postings, open access research articles and conference papers, Twitter posts, and Webcasted lectures. As I mentioned in my blog post a few days ago (A Close Up Look at an Upcoming May MOOC), during the month of May, I will be doing a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for CourseSites people who are part of Blackboard. In just a little over a week, over 1,000 people have expressed interest in this course. Keep in mind that the official sign up is not until tomorrow. A MOOC was never part of my teaching or career plans when I graduated from Wisconsin back in 1989. Those teaching in a MOOC or open teaching type of situation are clearly going to require extensive advice and a bit of handholding. And so will their department chairs and deans.

10. Preparation and Confidence: If you know your colleagues and others in your field are reading these advice columns, then there is a feeling that you must as well. Reading as much as you can and discussing with others your perspectives and insights from these articles will help one feel better mentally about the current situation or possible places to apply or target. The more you are prepared, the better you will be. Four years ago, I blog posted about the types of questions one might be asked at an face-to-face, phone, or Skype interview as well as the types of questions that the interviewee might ask (it had 30 of each; Bonk's 30-30 Rule: Questions for Higher Education Faculty Job Interviews). I also wrote a series of blog posts with writing tips (a particularly popular one was on Writing Tips for Starting an Academic Career).

Final Thoughts: There are assorted other reasons for this rise in the need for career mentoring, advice, and support. Nearly everyone seeks a high quality of life. Nearly everyone I know in academia seeks to perform at the highest level possible. Nearly everyone has questions about their next move as well as their long term personal and professional life plans. Getting advice from online articles (such as the 10 from Chronicle Spring posted above) or from a personal coach or mentor can help one find a potential path to success. What will be your path? What will you be reading during the final month or two of spring and on into the summer? And who will you be talking to about what you read or heard about?

Enjoy spring 2012--i.e., "Chronicle Spring." As part of it, I hope to see some of you at the May MOOC. I will try to show what is now possible in this open educational world. The world is now wide open for learning, teaching, mentoring, coaching, etc. Eventually, we might call this Massive Open Online Mentoring (MOOM). I hope to see that day.

Barack Obama Visits Bloomington--Links to Open Learning World

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 21:41:00 +0000

Sorry...I was fixing my blog this afternoon and this post from late April 2008 got reissued by mistake. It said draft and so I said publish. You can ignore it. Sorry about that. I almost deleted it. But I think it is still relevant four years later. Some of this was written but never used) for my World is Open book a couple of years ago.

The World is Open to Politicians
It is the last day of April 2008. I have just returned home from attending a speech from Senator Barack Obama at Assembly Hall at IU. His speech ended a mere 20 short minutes ago but feels so long ago now. Seems every politician and their immediate family is showing up in cornfields of Indiana these days. I heard Bill Clinton give one of his patented stellar speeches in the same room a few weeks earlier on behalf of his wife and her election bid. Hillary Clinton spoke in there just five days before her opponent and daughter, Chelsea Clinton, was here exactly one month before her mother on March 25th. They have all paraded before us one-by-one. Why? Well, the democratic nomination remains up for grabs and Indiana is one of the key remaining states yet to vote. Our turn is May 6th. And the two democratic candidates each firmly believe that they will be the one who wins in November and brings us some positive change.

Obama gave a thoughtful, humorous, and highly engaging speech for more than an hour tonight in our basketball stadium, which, in effect, is hallowed ground. An exhilarating level of energy was felt for two full hours before he arrived. And the room was packed with what I guess was more than 10,000 people. Much more than Bill Clinton drew. As I alluded to, Obama is running on a platform of change and the continual chanting of “Yes, we can.” When addressing the issue of why he is running at what some consider a young age of 46, he referenced Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1964 book, “Why We Can’t Wait,” and said “we cannot wait and that is why I am running right now for president.” When it came to education, what he said was telling. Obama detailed many social, political, and economic problems facing us and a few gut wrenching stories of those he has visited in Indiana who lacked jobs or health insurance. He then argued that it is an excellent educational system on which our future depends. Education underlies any economic might.

I am a former accountant and corporate controller so I have had one foot firmly planted in the business world. However, what I have come to realize is that there is no chance for innovation and creativity, cooperative teamwork, insightful problem solving, and intense competition for the best products without high quality education. Obama had it right. He explicitly stated that the U.S. needed high standards to be able to compete with the kids growing up today in China, India, and other countries. When Thomas Friedman discusses the 10 flatteners of the world, these are mainly economic ones. We need to open the world of education before we can think about flattening the world economically including the normal corporate hierarchies.

Like Bill Clinton said 16 years before, Obama was fighting and struggling for a better life for young people. It gave him a purpose. But the learning avenues today are much different than they were in 1992 when Clinton first ran for the White House. While he did not mention the Web of Learning once during his talk, Obama did argue for the need for increased broadband access. With access kids today can quickly obtain information from online dictionaries, thesauruses, and encyclopedias. They can also find a wealth of resources in online portals with information wars, species of animals, chemistry experiments, diseases, and famous poets. You name it, there is likely free educational content on it. They might also listen to an expert discuss a topic of interest in a podcast or online audio file. Expert comments and ideas can also be found in a blog posting. At the same time, online video lectures or Webcasts might be available from other experts presenting additional information or different viewpoints. There might also be free online books or documents from these experts that were posted to the Web. And the accumulated knowledge from these learning quests might be posted to a class wiki project site.

Young children are not the only ones impacted by open educational resources and other online tools and resources. Take adults voting in this education. Their learning vehicles are much different from 1992 when we elected Bill Clinton to the White House for the first time. Back then people like me had to rely on newspaper and magazine articles as well as books to find out about the candidates. Powerful stuff indeed, but today there are so many more options. I can now write an email to someone from the Obama campaign with my questions or perhaps Obama himself and get a quick reply from his hotel room laptop or mobile device. I can watch online videos of Barack Obama giving similar speeches in other cities and perhaps see how his ideas shifted during the long months of this campaign. I might download articles he has authored or reviews of his two books. Or I might browse his early life and career, personal life, educational background, presidential campaign, and books in his Wikipedia page. When done, I can scan the Web for PDF documents of his work or podcasts that I might listen to from his supporters and detractors. I can even read blog posts related to his ideas. And if the Web is down that day, I can simply read his books.

I am just scratching the surface. My point is that the educational system of a decade or two ago was much different from what we have today. Today we can no longer look at school buildings or physical locations as places for improving learning. Today much of our learning is online and it is open and free. The world is much more open, not just a bit flatter. Will anyone recognize it? Will anyone do anything about it?

A Close Up Look at an Upcoming May MOOC

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 03:58:00 +0000

Wow. Seems this week is filled with news of online education start-ups and the beginnings of universities that offer massive open online classes (MOOCs). Here are three such articles from the past two days alone.

1. Online-Education Start-Up Teams With Top-Ranked Universities to Offer Free Courses, by Nick DeSantis, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 18, 2012.

2. Online Education Venture Lures Cash Infusion and Deals With 5 Top Universities, by John Markoff, NY Times, April 18, 2012.

3. MIT and others launch a tech education revolution: Four programs deliver traditional -- and nontraditional -- education options for techies, by Patrick Thibodeau, Computerworld, April 19, 2012.

With all the announcements lately about open education and free online courses, I thought I should do one too. Well, actually, I was asked to do one and I had to think it over for a few weeks before saying "yes." Such decisions are never easy; especially, given the two books projects I intend to complete this summer.

Well anyway, here is the news. CourseSites from Blackboard is having me teach a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in May to thousands of online instructors around the world. It will last 4-5 weeks in May.

This course will be free and open to anyone with Web access. Who doesn't want free professional development? Feel free to share with friends, colleagues, students, administrators, etc. Those who attend will get badges of completion. See below for details.

Blackboard Note related to the event: According to Blackboard, "As a free resource for individual educators, CourseSites has removed a common barrier of access to teaching and learning technology. First, all CourseSites instructors can now choose to make courses available for open enrollment. We believe this will opens up a new realm of Open Education possibilities and opportunities. Second, we are proud to launch our Open Course Series: Empowering Learning through Community with our first open course on “Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success” led by Dr. Curtis Bonk and the CourseSites team. We invite you to try this new feature and join us for our first open course."

Per Blackboard: Announcing a Free, Open Course With Dr. Curtis Bonk

Course Title: Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success

Link to the landing page: Interest Form

Blog Announcement: Empowering You Through Openness and Choice

CourseSites Blog

MOOC Host: CourseSites (from Blackboard) announces a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)

Audience: Thousands of Blackboard, CourseSites, and other online and blended learning instructors around the world. Again, feel free to share this information with anyone.

Course Description: Motivating students and creating community within blended and online learning environments is crucial to academic achievement and success. This open course will provide both theoretical concepts and practical tools for instructors to improve motivation, retention, and engagement within blended and online courses.

Enrollment: Open Enrollment begins Monday April 23, 2012. Please fill out the interest form to learn more.

Course Duration: April 30th to June 4th (A total of 5 weeks). In actuality, the five sessions will take place each Wednesday at 4 pm EST in May. See below.

Course Objectives:
• Identify and apply relevant motivational strategies and instructional techniques
• Construct thinking skill options for different types of learners and subjects
• Design and share innovative thinking skill activities as well as unique cooperative learning
• Map and apply instructional models and ideas to online learning tools

Scheduled Sessions: Wednesday May 2, 9, 16, 23, and 30 at 4 pm EST (see below)
1. Motivation and retention online (TEC-VARIETY model): Wednesday May 2nd; 4 PM EST (Hour #1 Bonk Presents; Hour #2 Q&A)

2. Addressing Diversity and Learning Styles (R2D2 model): Wednesday May 9th; 4 PM EST (Hour #1 Bonk Presents; Hour #2 Q&A)

3. 50 Hyper-Engaging Ideas: Critical, Creative, Cooperative : Wednesday May 16th; 4 PM EST (Hour #1 Bonk Presents; Hour #2 Q&A)

4. Question and Answer (Q&A) Session: Wednesday May 23th; 4 PM EST (Up to two hours of Q&A)

5. Blackboard/CourseSites Overview: Wednesday May 30th; 4 pm EST

Twitter Note: The Twitter hashtag will be: #bonkopen

About Dr. Curtis Bonk:
Curt Bonk is Professor of Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University and President of CourseShare. Drawing on his background as a corporate controller, CPA, educational psychologist, and instructional technologist, Bonk offers unique insights into the intersection of business, education, psychology, and technology. A well-known authority on emerging technologies for learning, Bonk reflects on his speaking experiences around the world in his popular blog, TravelinEdMan. He has coauthored several widely used technology books, including The World is Open, Empowering Online Learning, The Handbook of Blended Learning, and Electronic Collaborators.

Final Thoughts: This experience will build on my previous efforts to make learning open and free to the extent possible. For instance, I have already created a set of 27 free videos on how to teach online. Second, I teach a course on the open learning world. In fact, my tentative fall 2012 syllabus is already posted (yes, I have my fall 2012 syllabus already drafted...and it is open to the world...all 55+ pages of it). Third, last summer, I helped Ray Schroeder from the University of Illinois at Springfield with his MOOC on Online Learning Today and Tomorrow. In fact, I interviewed my good friend Ray on the MOOC experience in an earlier blog post back in July. Those are but a few examples.

Finally, I should note that I will be speaking at the Blackboard World Conference in New Orleans on Wednesday July 11th. The MOOC in May (or May MOOC) will hopefully lead to a great event in July (where people signing up for the MOOC can meet face-to-face and chat about various topics). Hope to see you there in New Orleans or online in May at the MOOC or both. If you come to my session in New Orleans or online at the MOOC, please say hello.

Meeting Arnie Duncan at SXSWedu in Austin while attending the SITE Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 22:17:00 +0000

Below are some unedited notes from Arnie Duncan's special talk at the SWSEedu conference today. I am hopping on a plane here in Austin and will edit and refine them if and when I get home (we are delayed in Austin (1 hour). I later was delayed another 5-6 hours in Memphis and got home at 4 am).

I was at the SITE conference in Austin this week. In particular, I was at SITE to run a special 2 hour symposium on Tuesday March 6th with Dr. Mimi Miyoung Lee from the University of Houston. The title of the symposium was: "Emerging Technologies for Informal Learning: Transforming Traditional Education from the Inside and the Outside." Hour #1 was on "Mobile Learning, Gaming, and Digital Books" and Hour #2 was on "Nontraditional, Adventure, and Extreme Learning." I spoke in the second part on my new research area of Extreme Learning. It went very well. My good friend, Paul Kim from Stanford and Seeds for Empowerment, gave an exceptionally great performance in Hour #1. So did everyone else.

Symposium on “Emerging Technologies for Informal Learning: Transforming Education from the Inside and the Outside”

SITE Symposium Presenters:

Hour #1: Mobile Learning, Gaming, and Digital Books , (Session Chair, Joan Hughes, University of Texas at Austin)
1. Scott Warren, University of North Texas.
2. Priya Nihalani and Michael Mayrath, GetYa Learn On (GYLO), LLC.
3. Paul Kim, Stanford University.
4. Ke Zhang, Wayne State University.

Hour #2: Nontraditional, Adventure, and Extreme Learning. (Session Chair, Paul Resta, University of Texas at Austin)
5. George Veletsianos (homepage), University of Texas at Austin and Brant Miller and Justin Hougham from the U of Idaho.
6. Curt Bonk and Justin Whiting Indiana University.
7. Ana-Paula Correia, Iowa State University.
8. Mimi Miyoung Lee, University of Houston, Discussant.

However, today (Thursday the 8th) I had to leave SITE in the morning since I had to take the place of Paul Resta from UT Austin at the SXSWedu conference. I was a panelist at a session on disruptive education (“Where is the Disruption: Panel of Experts Discuss.” After my talk, Jane McGonigal talked about gaming. Michael Mayrath from GYLO (Get Ya Learn On) invited me to be on the panel with him. Dr. Paul Resta from UT Austin was supposed to be on it but he had to help run the SITE conference (see pictures with Michael below).

And then we all went over to Arnie Duncan’s invited talk. Note are below.

After the talk, Arnie Duncan went across the street to the Hilton. I got a couple of pictures of him on the way.

He went to a private room on the 2nd floor to meet with people from the Austin Chamber of Commerce. Thanks to a friend, I got to meet Arnie Duncan at this private meeting. Standing behind me was Karen Cator, a former Apple executive who is director of educational technology for the United States Department of Education. I had seen Karen at the NSF Cyberlearning Summit in DC back in January at National Geographic. Fortunately, she recognized me.

I guess I stuck out since I had a one day temporary badge (their badge printing machine was not working when I checked in). I also kinda stuck out since I was taking his picture as he spoke and I was not from the Chamber of Commerce in Austin. Still, before I knew it, I got to ask him a question about open education (I asked about the $2 billion OER initiative at the high school and community college levels that was announced back in June 2009). It was around that time that some folks standing behind me were wondering who I was (secret service?). Smile. Karen Cator recognized me and I got to stay. Arnie Duncan, in fact, answered the question--new developments are coming in the next week or two. A picture from the intimate session is below.

Though I did not realize it at the time, standing next to me was Geordi LaForge (i.e., actor LeVar Burton) from Star Trek Next Generation. He was also Kunta Kinte from Roots (back when he was around 20) and the host and executive producer of Reading Rainbow. Very cool. On the other side of me, were some venture capitalists and other high ranking Austin officials. In addition, I met a well known VP at PBS. His name is Rob Lippincott, Senior Vice President of Education for PBS. He was really interesting. Here is a picture with him and my friends Michael Mayrath and Priya Nihalani from GetYaLearnOn (GYLO). GYLO is pushing ahead in the digital book and mobile learning space.

Here are my quick unedited notes from Arnie Duncan's Keynote at the SXSWedu conference in Austin. I should point out that this conference had 3,000 people this year in just its 2nd year (Year #1 last year had 1,000 people). That is some huge growth.

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Arnie Duncan's Speech at SXSWedu:

These are my notes (the exact transcript from the U.S. Department of Education can be found at ED.gov from the U.S. Department of Education: The New Platform for Learning; March 8, 2012).

Per Arnie Duncan: I should tell you that my wife and kids laughed when he got asked to speak at a technology conference. I am known as a dinosaur in terms of technology (at least in the past I was). But, at least to some degree, that has changed. I have had to change. No doubt about it, technology is a game changer in education.

Technology offers many things including greater personalization of learning. It also eliminates geographic barriers to knowledge. It replaces the bubble test. Technology is the new platform for learning. And technology competency is not an option any longer. Progressive educators are using technology in bold ways to change educational possibilities. Take, for example, Marks Edwards, Superintendent, from Mooresville, South Carolina (as an aside, see this NY Times article; it may require a password; here is a PBS news story and interview as well as video that does not require a password--very interesting).

Duncan continues...He gave students in grades 4-12 a laptop. It increased readings, retention, and math test scores. Mark’s teachers are roaming conductors. The teachers (and the technology) can challenge student 1 on 1. Cost not prohibitive. It only costs a dollar or so a day to do this in terms of their technology costs per students. They are not spending more than other districts; instead, they are spending smarter.

Here are some more successes. The Open High School in Utah--they are adopting all digital content and no physical textbooks which are quite expensive. The Florida Virtual School—they have close to 100,000 students attending virtual schools. Then there is Idaho which is making huge strides in offering online classes to all students (see Idaho Digital Learning--as an aside, I spoke at their online conference last summer). I should also mention Joplin, Missouri (see March 7, 2012 article in Edudemic); this includes $500,000 donated by the UAE by the way. After the tornado tradegy, students came back to school and got their own laptop. Finally, at the School of One in NY which I visited, all students have technology and are engaged in their own learning.

In terms of initiatives at the federal level, in 2010, we issued a comprehensive technology plan (National Education Technology Plan 2010; more info here). Some 47 states have adopted. With this plan, there is hope to tailor information to student needs as well as parents and teachers. Using technology, students (and teachers) can become more productive. I need to mention Karen Cator who is on my team in the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education. Karen can you stand up. Please give her a round of applause.

The list of panels at this conference is evidence of change—-thhere are sessions on interactive art, game design for STEM, etc. I see one session on "Supersizing the classroom" with some 3,000 students and beyond. I do not recommend such supersizing in most educational settings. But it can definitely change college introductory courses. Clearly, there is tremendous creativity here. While education moves slowly, the world is changing.

There is much potential with these changes. Keep in mind that K-12 ed is a $650 billion industry. And higher education is over a 1 trillion industry. As a result, there are loads of decisions about what and how to teach that we will face in the coming years.

Khan Academy is offering hope for kids and changing how they learn. Sal Khan is creating opportunities for kids to learn when and where they want.

In addition to the Khan Academy, there are many great partnerships emerging that are pushing states to be more friendly in the use of technology in education. Former Governors, Bob Wise from West Virginia and Jeb Bush from Florida, involved in that.

The Obama Administration has done much including $4 billion in Race to the Top monies. In addition, much attention is now placed on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). There is also the Recovery Act and a push to increase broadband access. Of course, we are trying to close the digital divide. Targeting low income opportunities to connect to the Web.

In higher education, we have done much. For instance, Pell Grants have gone from 6 million to 9 million in 3 years. And, as we all know, community colleges are bursting at the seams with more and more students. Some community colleges have 12,000 students on their campus in a single day (I think that is the number he said).

All told, educational technology can provide educational equity and level the playing field. It definitely gives a boost to students with disabilities. Technology helps teacher leaders in tough schools. We must continue to de-privatize education (I really do not know what he meant by that). (A pic is below).

Technology can individualize teacher training programs. Technology can help in many aspects of education. Assessment is behind everything—but education lags behind in this area (i.e., assessment). Technology must make learning interactive, effective, engaging, and fun. More that the classroom mimic the real world, the more engaged kids will be in learning.

Superintendent Edwards talks about the engagement and creativity—with one click you can go beyond your classroom and community. It challenges kids to think critically. College kids can access open access books and articles to reduce costs. All the curricula that they are trying to create are open source and open access.
Sal Khan has 2,700 video and 190 million downloads since he started and it is free. MIT, Yake, Tufts, and others are doing this. China, India, Brazil, etc. American entrepreneurs need to lead the change. I am here today to plead with you to support technology to change education.

We must educate our way to a better economy. We need both teachers AND computers. Great technology can transform the lives of many people. Next week, much cutting edge music will be here in Austin. People coming will have cell phones, iPads, mobile devices, etc., and will share their work in countless ways. People are sharing and recording in countless ways. So many ways that the sharing of music happens today. Still technology cannot write “Born to Run” or “Let it Be.” Technology is a critical tool to learn and to teach.

We must educate our way to a stronger economy. Technology tells us so much about ourselves and others. Yet, we come to Austin since there is no substitute for FTF interaction. The future of American education includes access to technology. But a great teacher is still needed to inspire us and help us. Teachers take your products from the drawing board to the classroom. Our kids are waiting for it and wanting it to happen now.

Thank you so much and I am happy to take your questions.

(Note: The above text is not a direct quote or perfect transcript as I added my interpretation and transitions as well as linkages to associated Web resources and articles. Nevertheless, it is pretty close to what he actually stated.

Again, if you want the exact transcript, see ED.gov from the U.S. Department of Education: The New Platform for Learning; March 8, 2012.)

Question and Answer from the audience at SXSWedu...

Person #1. What about college costs: Working on ways to reduce costs.

Per Arnie Duncan: This past year, 40 states reduced funding to higher education. Our priorities are out of whack. Universities must try to maintain costs or reduce costs. In budget proposal, there is $5 billion of incentivize states. There are real challenges on the higher education side. We need a college scorecard—for actual costs. Both states and universities must step up.

Person 2. What is the role of for-profit gaming companies and video companies in education?

Per Arnie Duncan: I believe that both for-profit and non profit organizations are very important; especially for STEM. (Note: this was a very weak answer. There were no creative ideas offered about how the for-profit industry could work with different educational sectors...I wanted to hear more about potential joint research and development, awards and recognitions, incentives, partnerships, proposals, etc. Nothing. Just, ya, "I believe that both are important.")

Person #3. Teacher satisfaction and morale is low. What to do?

Per Arnie Duncan: The Recovery Act saved hundreds of thousands of jobs. The status of the teaching profession has been beaten down. Technology cannot do it by itself. Teachers are way underpaid. I think that we need to double the salary. We lose too much talent. As a country, our values must change. The vast majority of teachers are high performing. In Korea, they treat teachers as Nation Builders. That is how they are viewed in Korea. I would like teachers in the USA to be treated more like that.

Person #4. In terms of building connectivity, in all of your travels to other ministries and departments outside of the USA, what would you like to see here?

Per Arnie Duncan: The jobs go to where the knowledge workers are. We have the 2nd education summit coming up. In Singapore, 90 percent of people are not allowed into teaching. They screen out the lower performers. And they compensate teachers better. There is a high bar to entry. More support and respect. And better compensation. Such an approach will change the country here. Talent matters. We need to attract great talent. That talent will transform this country.

Person #5. What about the “Learn to Earn” act. Tell me about it…?

Per Arnie Duncan: I am a huge fan of entrepreneurship. Not just theoretical and book learning. We must encourage it. Gives relevancy in the community. (Again, not much of an answer here. So, for more on the Learn and Earn Act, see this article in a Policy Forum Blog. This blog post from Lynn Miller Associates is even better; apparently, the goal is "implement high quality entrepreneurship programs in communities all across the country.")

Person #6. I am a public high school teacher in Texas. Thanks for your words of wisdom. I would like to know how you can account for the cognitive dissonance between No Child Left Behind and what kids need in the real world.

Per Arnie Duncan: Are you from Texas? I am going to meet with your governor (Rick Perry of Texas) to talk to him about a waiver for NCLB. There are 11 states with such a waiver already. (Some laughs, snickers, and applause.)

Person #7. Mass communication student who works in the non-profit sector. I no longer have subsidized loans. I used to have them but then I was suddenly cut off. What gives? I was given no notice. What can I do?

Per Arnie Duncan: I would like help you. See my people here and ask them to check into it...and I assure you that they will. (Again, more snickers and faint applause.)

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It was great to meet him:

The end. More soon when I land. Well, my plane did not land until 7 hours after it was supposed to. I got home to Bloomington at 4 am and had to drive up the following day to keynote the Midwest Scholars Conference in Indianapolis which was run by Indiana Wesleyan University.

Ok, I have updated this blog post 3 days later (Sunday March 11, 2012). Hope it is improved. Time for a run.

Pushing Off for the Philippines: Presentations, Papers, and People, and

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 12:06:00 +0000

I am sitting in the Indianapolis Airport. I am on my way to the Philippines for the first time. Tried to get here a couple hours early to catch an earlier flight to Atlanta but they cannot change my flight. Ug. Got economy comfort for most of the floght except from Altanta or Narita, Japan. That will be a long haul cramped up like a sardine.

As per usual on such flights, I will have the fun and lovely experience of grading papers from my R546 class on instructional strategies. This is a Saturday class from 8 am to 1 pm that I teach each spring for 8 weeks. Yesterday, we met twice in order for me to go. Super ug! But we made it through. I had the Indiana Teacher of the Year, Stacy McCormack, present during the 2nd session, She is a real dynamo. And she is a role model for my students as she illustrates how creativity + hard work can land you a trip to the White House and a photo-op with President Obama. Stacy teaches chemistry and physics, both of which are critical areas targeted by the federal governnment. No textbooks or boring lectures for Stacy. Nope, she believes in highly active and interactive lab experiences.

Anyway, as I said, I am heading to a conference in the Philippines. You can always get my current (and previous news and travels off my homepage. I will give a plenary talk on Thursday at 1st International Conference on Open and Distance Learning. The theme is creating spaces and opportunities. They expect about 300 people. Color PDFs of my talks (including a 3-part masterclass on Wednesday) as well as my plenary session are posted to my archived talks in TrainingShare.com. You will also find my new paper on Extreme Learning there. I wrote this in a day...think it came out ok (stole much from a recent NSF grant proposal; actually from sections that we had to delete due to page length limitations). Extreme Learning is my new research focus (see team and mission and such).

Please send me a note if you will be in Manila for the conference this week Wednesday to Friday. It shoud be great.

I will also do talks at 2 universities south of Manila (Feb 21 and Feb 28). I'll be back on the 29th. Color PDFs of my 8 talks can be found at my archived talks in TrainingShare.com as well. I will speak at the University of Batangas . After it, I will get a couple of days at Boracay Beach. Boracay beach is ranked top 10 in the world). My speaking will end at the University of the Philippines Open University on Tuesday February 28th. And then I fly back on the 29th.

My friend Dr. Melinda (Mel) Bandalaria from the UPOU is arranging it all. Sweet. She is so great. Back in 2008, she was among a group of about a dozen people who helped me run a symposium on e-learning in Asia at the E-Learn conference. Those presentations later became articles in a special issue of the International Journal of E-Learning and then a print-on-demand book with AACE. It will be fanstic to catch up with Mel and meet many new friends in the Philippines. I know my friend Dr. Kumiko Aoki from the Open U of Japan will be there as I just got an email from her.

I will update this blog from the Philippines. When I return, I will attend the annual IST conference in my department at IU March 2nd and then the SITE conference in Austin, Texas March 6-8th (see our special back-to-back symposium in Austin on emerging learning technologies that Mimi Lee from the U of Houston and I are arranging there). Finally, I will keynote a conference for Indiana Wesleyan on March 9-10 in Indianapolis. Wow.

Time to board for Atlanta.

Cracking the Whip: FEDx Videos from the NSF Cyberlearning Research Summit at National Geographic in DC

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:20:00 +0000

So, is NSF cracking the whip to better understand how to impact learning with technology? I think so...well, actually, what I detail below was a quite friendly, informative, and engaging event. Much life. Much energy. Much passion. And dozens of exciting visions of the future of learning.

What am I talking about? A couple of weeks ago (January 18, 2012), I had the extreme pleasure to present in the Grosvenor Auditorium at National Geographic during the Cyberlearning Research Summit for the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Washington, DC. This event, which was organized by people from Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and Lawrence Hall of Science along with NSF, was one of the most unique and engaging events of my life. In additon to NSF, organizations like the Gates Foundation were among the sponsors. Not surprisingly, the audience was packed with interesting people to meet.

People flew, drove, walked, ran, taxied, bused, and subway rode into the event. As a result, I got to see many friends at the event, including Tom Reeves from the University of Georgia, Roy Pea from Stanford, Sarah Haavind from Leslie University, YaTing Teng from Adobe, Michael Wenger formerly of Sun Microsystems, and I finally got to physically meet with Christine Greenhow who is now at Michigan State University (we have met in the cyberworld of conference event planning a couple of years back). Both Tom Reeves and Mike Wenger have chapters in my 2006 Handbook of Blended Learning, so it was great to introduce them to each other. In addition to the folks mentioned above, my fantastic friend, Dr. Sherry Hsi from Lawrence Hall of Science was among the main organizers. Here is a list of the organizers.

Organizers
Summit Chairs
Jeremy Roschelle, SRI International, Menlo Park
Sherry Hsi, Lawrence Hall of Science, UC Berkeley

Advisory Committee, Reviewers, & Editors
Chad Dorsey, Concord Consortium
Daniel Edelson, National Geographic Society/National Geographic Education Foundation
Judi Fusco, SRI International
Chad Lane, University of Southern California
Linda Polin, Pepperdine University
Mimi Recker, Utah State University
Patricia Schank, SRI International

As a TED-like event, we each got a short amount of time to make our points. It was NOT TED, however. Given it was for the federal government, I wanted to call these FED talks. Someone else said that they were TED-ED talks. I countered that is was like one of those special TEDx talks, so about FedEx. Ya, like FEDx, the delivery was very fast with mostly on time deliveries. And no one messed up. In the practice session the day before, there were various technology issues and hang-ups. But these were ALL taken care of (Sherry Hsi made sure of that...she cracked the whip...smile Sherry...just kidding my friend. Sherry was awesome in getting us prepared). Thanks to that practice, only one person had a video that would not play and he had a back-up plan so all was well.

There were around 24 speakers that day who each got about 10 minutes to discuss their research and vision of the future for learning with technology. There were also opening Welcoming Remarks from Danny Edelson from the National Geographic Society Janet Kolodner from the National Science Foundation, and Jeremy Roschelle from SRI International. After that, to "Set the Stage," we heard from my friend, Constance Steinkueler Squire from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (who was interviewed and quoted in the USA Today last week in an article on the benefits of video games and what the White House is currently doing in this area to promote gaming). The day ended with a closing reflection from Karen Cator from the US Department of Education. I enjoyed her quick comments and insights. I should also point out that Jeremy Rochelle acted as the host for the day and introduced each sections of talks. He too did a marvelous job.

The Cyberlearning Summit speakers were all nominated and then they had to put in a proposal. Only a few were selected (I was most lucky). Do check out the amazing speakers and their bios, the program, location, the topics, the graphics and videos of the talks, and more information exists in the About section. The also had a scrolling list of quotes from many researchers, scholars, and educators that played throughout the day.

For those like me who have a preference for visual representations of ideas, they hired a graphic facilitator to draw out our talks (here is a sample...a visual was drawm for each set of 4-5 speakers; mine is not yet posted). How cool is that! I has only happened to me once before (back in February 2011 in Saudi Arabia). The artist was Jim Nuttle. I highly recommend him.

Here is part of the description in the Cyberlearning Summit wiki:

"The Cyberlearning Research Summit was a high-profile gathering in Washington DC, featuring top quality research-based speakers who shared visions for the future of learning with emerging technologies. In the style of the TED conferences, speakers aimed to:

Discuss big ideas on at the intersection of emerging technology and research on learning;

Articulate the “transformative potential” of a direction or approach;
Communicate a sense of the broad research on this topic;

Engage, inspire, and stimulate thinking in this new program area.

Building on those visions, participants gathered as birds-of-a-feather to crystallize a sense of the unique opportunities that should be the focus of the research community now. We seek a community sense of how to couple the learning sciences with related fields of innovation to leverage new technology affordances for the deepest learning outcomes. Through the contributions of diverse participants, the summit sought to exemplify the “transformative potential” of cutting edge research and development to dramatically advance learning – and is expected to be influential in identifying promising directions for advanced R&D efforts."

There is now a YouTube Channel with these talks. My talk, "Stretching the Edges of Technology-Enhanced Teaching: From Tinkering to Tottering to Totally Extreme Learning" was just posted. This talk summarized explained the casual informal learning settings brought about by technologies such as Wikipedia as well as those deemed more extreme. See the new Extreme Learning website that my team is in the midst of designing.

I hate watching myself speak and, so, I have only watched a few seconds of my talk, but others say they like it. You can find it here. As you will see, I eventually found my way into my Indiana Jones (i.e., Indiana Curt) outfit, but did not feel comfortable enough to crack the whip during the 10 minutes (where were my friends, Aaron Doering and Charlie Miller from the University of Minnesota, when I needed them?). I did, however, get the audience to shout "WE-ALL-LEARN" a couple of times (based on my World is Open book) and jump up and down. You will have to watch to see I guess. I cannot watch it.

There are many brilliant talks from that day on mobile learning, robotics, virtual humans, cyber-civics, big data visualization, and complexity models of different kinds. One of my favorites was William (Bill) Swartout's talk, Virtual Humans for Learning. It is a definite must see! See also my old friends Elliot Soloway and Cathie Norris discuss mobile, "Yes We Can-Now: All K-12 Teachers Enacting Learn-by-Doing."

How might you use? Here are 10 quick ideas off the top of my head.
1. Create a complete course around these videos on emerging technology for learning. As part of this, you might interview 1-2 of the presenters each week.
2. You might crack the whip and assign your students to watch ALL of the videos for one week of a semester.
3. Require students to read the research of particular presenters and then watch their video or vice versa.
4. Assign your students watch each of the 5 Talk Sets for themes.
5. Have your students select their favorite presenter and write to him or her.
6. Have your students engage in a role play related to different presenters, perhaps in a class symposium session (this is what I like to do).
7. Have your students create a wiki glossary of the key points of each presenter.
8. Organize virtual discussions of 1 or more the various presentations and ask the presenter to come in and lend feedback on the points made.
9. Assign different students to blog on each session.
10. Have students reorganize the session presentations for the day in a way that makes most sense to them.

There is much you might find useful from that day.

What a totally cool day! They need to do this again. Perhaps an annual event.

Of course, when we were done, there was a free reception (and drinks) in a wonderful open rooom at National Geographic. Oh my, what a day. We got on the bus at 7:15 am and got back at 10 pm or so. When I got to my hotel, my dear friend Paul Kim from Stanford University and Seeds for Empowerment arrived for a chat. He just happened to be in town for a meeting intended to change the world (I thought I had just attended one such event but Paul's was equally world changing). As an aside, Paul and my son Alex Bonk (Jabonk Productions) go to Tanzania this week to work with teachers and students there using mobile devices. Alex will do some facilitation of the training but is mainly there for his photography and filming skills. I think if NSF does another one of these events that Paul Kim should be first on their list to present. That guy is phenomenal.

I took 4 or so pages of notes from the NSF Cyberlearning Summit. Perhaps I will blog post all of that. Is anyone interested in reading?

In the meantime, watch some of the videos from January 18th. Or do I have to crack the whip?

CQR Pro or Con?: Should schools use as much digital technology as they can afford?

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 02:47:00 +0000

Sorry no blog postings for a while. Been a rough semester, first of travel, and now of trying to complete an NSF grant.

One shiny moment occurred today. A special issue of the Congressional Record Quarterly (CRQ) came out today (Note: You may need a subscription to view it...sorry about that). The issue is devoted to technology in the K-12 schools and higher education. It is titled "Digital Education." The issue looks great; in fact, many people and projects from the "Extreme Learning" arena that I am researching are mentioned in it. For example, Aaron Doering from the University of Minnesota who has helped found Earthducation and Polar Husky. There is Paul Kim from Stanford who founded Seeds for Empowerment (he is quoted on page 1008). My son, Alex Bonk, is currently working with Paul on his Seeds for Empowerment project.

Congressional Quarterly Researcher (CQR) homepage; Entire issue: CRQ,
Digital Education (Note: It will be listed at the homepage only until the night of December 8, 2011), December 2, 2011 • Volume 21, Issue 42, Can technology replace classroom teachers?, By Marcia Clemmitt

There are many other superstars in this issue. James Gee from Arizona State University of Arizona is asked about the skills learned from game-based learning on pages 1004 and 1005. Paul Resta from UT Austin is also interviewed on page 1005. He mentions the inadequate teacher training that often surrounds technology purchases in schools. Gee, Resta, Kim, Doering. Wow.

But wait, there is more! After Paul Kim (p. 1008) mentions how live teachers might support student technology needs when and where needed online, Chris Dede from Harvard is asked about the benefits of interactive games like "River City" which he helped develop. After that, my friend Barry Fishman from the U of Michigan comments on his goals in studying the motivational principles of games. A few pages later (p. 1014), Fishman is back to discuss the educational benefits of mobile apps. The following paragraph signals the return of Aaron Doering and his ideas about adventure learning and student-generated knowledge from these adventures. Also on page 1014, my friend Christine Greenhow from the University of Maryland discusses the benefits of social networking. And there are many more learning technology experts quoted in this issue.

It is great to see so many of my friends and colleagues whom I highly respect quoted in this issue. Their work is an inspiration to me. Therefore, it was an honor to be asked to author the Pro side of the op ed piece that CRQ people gave me on the technology spending debate in schools. The exact debate is: "Should schools incorporate as much digital technology as they can afford." My response and the entire issue is freely available for a week or until the night of December 8th, 2011.

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Pro and Con. Note: I wrote 538 words. My article, however, had to be reduced to 400 words. My original longer version is below. See what you think.

Congressional Quarterly Researcher (CQ) Researcher, op-ed on Computers in K-12 education.

Position of Advocate: Should schools incorporate as much digital technology as finances allow?, p. 1117

Curt Bonk, Indiana University (2011, December 2, p. 1017). Op Ed (Pro side--expanded version--a shorter 400 word version appeared in CQR) (Note: Paul Thomas from Furman University has the con side.)

We have entered a unique moment in history. Learning technologies have far outstripped learning theory. There is a ceaseless churning out of digital technologies for schools and teachers to consider. At the same time, budgets are being slashed. What to do? This is no time to ban, control, restrict, limit, or passively ignore possible uses of technology in teaching and learning. Instead, it should be an age filled with heavy doses of learning technology experimentation and creative initiatives.

School administrators, educational experts, teachers, and other stakeholders should map out reasonable scenarios on technology use and learning outcomes. With proper planning, foresight, discussion, and evaluation, there is much that technology dollars can afford, even for the smallest or most impoverished school or district.

A couple of years ago, I authored the book, “The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education.” In it, I detailed many free and openly available resources for learning. With careful planning of one’s technology dollar, technologies such as laptops, tablet computers such as the iPad, or other hardware can be acquired with a wide range of free tools and applications for learning basic mathematics, spelling, grammar, or scientific concepts. Not content? Why, then, perhaps you might have students explore learning portals containing the great works of Shakespeare, Darwin, Einstein, Jane Austin, Jane Goodall, the Dalai Lama, and most major historical figures and leaders one can name from the past few millennia. And such contents are often created by NASA, the U.S. Federal Government, the Smithsonian, National Geographic, the United Nations, MIT, Berkeley, the British Library, UNESCO, and many other reputable and expert-reviewed sources.

Learners can collect data with online survey tools, manipulate and analyze it with spreadsheet and statistical applications, and report it with various presentation and communication tools. Critical thinking, problem solving, and synthesis are all skills that can be enhanced using digital technologies. Why not extend your budgets toward such ends? Thoughtful integration of technology necessitates that we push to the edges of all perceived limitations; this includes pedagogical limitations, access limitations, time limitations, complexity limitations, and cost limitations. Learners today can spend their entire middle and high school years learning with free resources. Now top it off with hardware, software, and administrative costs that situate students in authentic contexts analyzing real world data and interacting with their global peers about the results of their investigations. If this requires a cheap $20 membership in some service that fosters such expert advice or interaction, that is $20 well spent.

Digital technologies offer so much hope today. Students can be inspired by mentors and role models from all corners of the Earth. Feedback on one’s ideas can be received in the early morning hours or late at night. E-books can be loaded into mobile devices that can represent events through simulations, animations, videos, and hyperlinked text.

Effective learning requires an environment be designed for multiple paths to success. In the twenty-first century digital technologies—social networking, e-books, shared online video, mobile applications, virtual worlds, collaborative tools, etc.—enhance the learning opportunities for untold millions of learners. The maximization of technologies in the learning space, in effect, provides a distinct advantage for learning. Now is the time to move ahead, not retrench or retrace.

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Hope you enjoyed it. What is you opinion? Should schools use as much digital technology as they can afford? I think the operational word here is "use" not "afford." But that would need to be a longer argument.

Of course, I wish I had the space to write twice as much. With that, I could have embedded a few more specific examples. Reminder: the entire CQR special issue will only be listed on the homepage until December 8th, 2011 and may require a subscription by your university or organization to be able to view it. The Pro-Con debate I was in may end up available later on as there is a portal to all previous Pro-Con debates in CQR.

Enjoy the weekend and the football games; especially my alma mater Wisconsin Badgers vs. Mich State.

The “Explainer” Explains His Creative Process: A Close-Up Discussion with Michael Wesch

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 01:01:00 +0000

Visit to Kansas State and Interview of Michael Wesch:

I wrote about Michael Wesch from Kansas State University in my World is Open book. He became known for several YouTube videos on the digital generation that went viral during the past few years. And that has brought a ton of attention to the anthropology program at Kansas State as well as to Michael who is now an associate professor of Cultural Anthropology. Michael’s Digital Enthography blog is also high read and referenced and his channel in YouTube is watched by millions.

Several of his more popular videos are listed below.

1. Web 2.0…The Machine is Us/ing Us; 11,477,707 views, posted January 31, 2007.

2. A Vision of Students Today, 4,424,863 views, posted October 12, 2007.

3. The Visions of Students Today 2011 Remix One (Trailer), 19,713 views, posted January 26, 2011.

4. An anthropological introduction to YouTube, 1,715,085 views, posted July 26, 2008, the Library of Congress, recorded June 23rd, 2008.

5. Rethinking Education, 33,145 views, posted January 24, 2011 (Note: this is the one I perhaps like the most since there are many Web 2.0 stars in this one. Watch it and see who you recognize.).

Now Back to My Story...
Michael and I had a chance to sit down and reflect when I was at K-State back on October 4th to 6th. I was in town to keynote the 6th annual Axio Learning Community Conference at the K-State University Alumni Center. It was a lovely place in which to present. I had a great time at the conference as well as dinner afterward with David Young (my host) and several others.

As you can see from the pics below, K-State is a lovely place.

I was honored to have Michael Wesch attend my talks; especially since he is on sabbatical this year. Michael is a fantastic person. As a result, seems everyone in Manhattan knows him, from 4 year old kids we walk by on the streets to emeritous faculty members on campus.

After my talks were over on the 5th, Michael and I walked to the house he just purchased and is in the process of remodeling as well as building bike trails in the back. It certainly is a lovely place to live...both his house and Manhattan. Michael has some wonderful plans for that house and yard.

Shortly after I got back from Kansas, questions starting pouring into my head that I wanted to ask Michael. It was impossible to get back on a plane and pop over to Manhattan and ask him, so I sent him a few questions about living in Manhattan, Kansas State, but more importantly, I wanted to know about his creative process. Amazingly, Michael found a few spare moments of time as he was headed out the door for perhaps his top invited talk ever, the Future of State Universities Conference in Dallas. Other speakers included Tony Blair, Clayton Christenson, John Howard (the former prime minister of Australia), Salman Khan, Arne Duncan, Martha Kanter, etc., and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush was a moderator. Wow.

Nevertheless, he found some time. Thanks Michael! You are one excellent human being. As you will see, Michael Wesch's answers to my six interview questions provide a fascinating glimpse into the creative process of a perpetually innovative scholar and highly engaging and thoughtful individual. Read on.

The “Explainer” Explains His Creative Process: A Close-Up Discussion with Michael Wesch

Curt Question #1. Hey Mike. You are known for your unique videos that explain new media in education and how education might better address the youth culture. Seems every time I turn around you are producing something fascinating for me to watch, read, or listen to. Can you describe your creative process? What might be some takeaway principles, environmental conditions, or environment components of becoming such a highly creative person?

Michael responds: My creative process begins by trying to quiet all the "should" voices rattling through my head. We all have people (and perhaps more importantly, large and menacing social, bureaucratic, and economic structures) telling us that we Should do this or that, that this is the way things Should be done, that real professors Should do X, Y, and Z, etc. It is an ongoing battle to silence those Shoulds. The Shoulds hold most of the keys to traditional tenure & promotion. They put food on the table. And they have ways to make us feel good when we do as we Should.

But in an environment of constant change, the Shoulds are almost always wrong. This is where you might expect me to rehash that old cliche that we have to silence the Shoulds, listen to our own hearts, get in touch with our core and lead from within - but that's not how I work. I do almost completely the opposite. The only voice that is more distracting than the Shoulds is my Self - so it has to be silenced too. And so I'm left just trying to listen to the world as it is, and listen for what it needs. This is a long process that is really more like a life practice. I just spend hour after hour gathering information, thinking about it, processing it, thinking about it again, questioning my earlier ideas, looking for my taken-for-granted assumptions and trying to challenge those, and on and on for years until there is a breakthrough moment.

People often ask me how long it took me to create “The Machine is Us/ing Us,” which is probably my best-known work. It's hard to answer that question. The actual labor of putting the video together took about 3 days and no more than15 hours of actual work time, but the idea itself came to me even faster - in an immeasurable micro-second.

The entire vision was just there for me one morning and I immediately set out to turn that vision into a reality. But another way of answering that is to say it took over one year (actually, close to 2 years), because that's how long I had been thinking about (and desperately struggling to write about) the core ideas that are expressed in that video. My mom overheard me answering this question to somebody once and she interrupted saying, "Mike, you were working on that your whole life" - which is really more true than any answer I ever had. It is the culmination of decades of work. Things I was doing over 20 years ago when I was 12 are directly relevant to the work.

We're all that way, and that's the real beauty of the creative process. Whatever you create, will in some way, be the culmination of a lifetime of creativity and exploration, and therefore unique and something only you could say in the way in which you have said it.

Curt Question #2. How do you know when an idea might work or when one of your video ideas might go viral? Are there any key steps or aspects to a project that others can learn from?

Michael responds: A great academic video starts with a keen observation. From there it is a matter of relaying that observation by using a pacing that underlines the central emotion and feel you are trying to create, moving the story along with "economy," which is to say you must never tell too much or too little to tell the story. You have to master the subtle art of rhythm, in which every clip and transition matches the emotional & musical rhythm of the piece. The pacing and rhythm help to create a rich texture, and all of this must resonate with profound authenticity - as something more real than real because it reconnects us with the real that we are constantly letting slip right past us in our everyday lives. In this way, video does not really have to make a logical "point" in the manner of an academic paper. Instead it allows us to show the world to others in a new way. My most successful works go on to be used by others to make very different, often contradictory points, which is fine with me. My purpose is to create an artifact that focuses or refocuses important conversations.

Curt Question #3. Perhaps there is a link between exercise and creativity. Apparently, you love riding your bike. Do you jump on a bike to purposely reflect on a new idea or is it your chance to get away and veg out? Have any of your video ideas been designed in your head while riding your bike? By the way, how many bikes do you have? How long are your routes?

Michael responds: I love biking, but it is really just a small part of my larger interest in livable, engaged, participatory communities. The energy I apply in my classrooms trying to create inspiring authentic connections I carry over into my everyday life, and part of that is using a bike to get around town. The beauty of biking is not just that you get exercise, it is that you feel more connected to the world and people around you. You are not encapsulated in your car, so you save and say "hi" to people around you. You stop for more conversations. Ride your bike enough and you no longer just feel more connected, you *are* more connected. I live more-or-less car-free in my day-to-day life. I have a wide range of bikes to help me achieve this, including a snow bike, a basic commuter, and my favorite - a Dutch "long john" cargo bike. The cargo bike is a true car-replacement, with tons of storage space to carry 2 kids, groceries, and more. Our town is no more than 5 miles across at its widest point, and most destinations are within 2 miles, so there is really no reason to drive a car under most circumstances.

Curt Question #4. Your Library of Congress talk is a must see for those interested in new media and the potential impact of shared online video and other participatory learning technologies in higher education and other educational sectors. I find the data in it phenomenal and your presentation style highly engaging. How long did it take you to create that talk? Do such talks evolve or fade away after so much time?

Michael responds: There is about 2 years of research behind that talk, most of which took place in an upper-level Digital Ethnography class at K-State. We worked closely together as a class, and in the end each of the fifteen students submitted a 5 minute clip summarizing their piece of the overall research. I then took those 15 clips and edited them into the videos you see during that talk. Some of it is my own original material, and some of it is taken directly from student projects.

That process took me about 6 weeks to complete. I have been asked to give that same talk a few times since then, so I have kept it updated with new materials and a few new insights.

Curt Question #5. You mentioned to me earlier this week that you have always found computer programming interesting and fairly easy for you. When did you first begin to dabble with computers? How has this evolved?

Michael responds: My first computer was a Tandy PC-8 that I received for Christmas when I was 11 years old. It was really just a fancy calculator, but it understood BASIC. I started hacking away immediately. Like any programmer will tell you, there is a magical moment when you setup a list of commands for a machine and it miraculously performs those commands for you. I was hooked, but I was pretty limited by the little16 digit display. I eventually managed to create a little pixilated superman character that could fly across the screen and crash into a wall on the other side. That was enough to inspire my parents to buy me a much larger Tandy with a keyboard and 4-color screen the next year, and I was off and running. In graduate school I started playing around with HTML, JavaScript, and other web-authoring languages, always looking for new ways that we could present and share our ideas.

When I started the work and research on The Machine is Us/ing Us, I had in mind a simple paper explaining to other scholars why Web 2.0 matters. Writing about Web 2.0 was frustrating though. I knew I would have to *show* them, and the idea for that video was born.

Curt Question #6. In what ways does Kansas State support someone like you (i.e., an associate professor of cultural anthropology and digital ethnography) to get to this national stage related to teaching and learning with technology and the creation of active learning environments or "anti-teaching" as you call it?

Michael responds: While Kansas State has provided plenty of support for my work, I think it is more important to note what they have *not done,* which is get in the way. Nobody has ever said "you can't do that" to me, which has really surprised me considering some of the things I have done. For example, when I published "A Vision of Students Today," which shows some of the worst of K-State (large out-of-date classrooms and disengaged students trudging through an Intro class), I expected some reprimanding. But even after the Chronicle of Higher Education ran it with the headline, "K-State Students report reading less than half of what they are assigned," I still received nothing but praise and encouragement. I imagine some schools would have asked me to pull it off YouTube after that, but it stayed, and went viral. The video garnered over 4 million views, was featured on ABCnews.com, and we became the center of a national debate on college education. We benefited greatly throughout all of this, and have been able to generate some exciting positive momentum towards reforms that are already in place just a few years later.

[Note: here are some pics I took 2 weeks ago when visiting K-State and the classroom Michael taught in and used for his video]

[Note also that there are also new classroom spaces being built at K-State like this one.]

Michael Continues...Kansas State has a long record of big successes, with more national Professor of the Year award winners than any other research university in the US, and our students have received more of the big-name scholarships in the past 25 years (Rhodes, Marshall, Truman, etc.) than any other state university. Overall, we rank 6th, amidst the Ivy League schools. It is a remarkable accomplishment for an "out of the way" place like this, but I think it may be precisely because we are out of the way, we stay out of each others' way, and yet also provide a sense of community where people feel inspired to find their way.

Curt Question #7. (Note: All creative people need nurturance and support for their ideas. Having just visited Michael at Kansas State, I could see that K-State is a highly supportive environment and one that would be easy to settle into and work. KSU and Manhattan are a lot like IU and Bloomington here in Indiana. I heard Manhattan is expecting huge growth during the coming decade. I wanted to know what it was like to work there.)

So I asked him, “You have become an international celebrity in what previously might have been considered a remote part of the world. Why might someone getting their Ph.D. today place the Manhattan's and Bloomington's of the world high on their list instead of San Francisco and Boston?”

Michael responds: I like living in a smallish town because it gives me a constant sense of connection and significance. By "significance" I don't mean that I feel like "a big fish in a little pond." Rather, I feel like everybody's a big fish here. We all matter. I think of Manhattan, Kansas as a "heads up" town, a town where you walk with your head up and greet everybody you meet. You do this because there is a good chance you know the people you see, and if you don't, there's a good chance somebody you know knows them, and that you will meet them later. In contrast, there is that other Manhattan in New York, which tends to be a "head down" town - a place where people tend to keep their head down and dart off to their next appointment. I have some good friends in that other Manhattan, like Daniel Latorre, that are trying to change this through better public spaces, but there is nothing like the feel of a town like Manhattan, Kansas, where everybody matters.

Being a little bit off the map is also liberating. I feel a bit more free to do my own thing and explore the world in my own way.

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I hope you enjoyed the interview with Michael Wesch. During my brief stay in Manhattan, I saw many of the things Michael mentioned. I visited the classroom “A Vision of Students Today.” I also saw everyone in town greet Michael as a personal friend. He is fun, creative, unique, and inspiring. Now perhaps we know a bit more about the Explainer!

I hope to see some of you at E-Learn in Hawaii during the coming week.

Interview with Amy Burvall and Herb Mahelona: A bit of history of "History for Music Lovers"

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 02:26:00 +0000

An Interview with Amy Burvall and Herb Mahelona (History for Music Lovers):

Last month, Amy Burvall and Herb Mahelona were announced as invited speakers at the E-Learn 2011 conference in Hawaii next week. I was excited since I had read about them in the Washington Post and many other places. Yesterday I got even more excited when they agreed to keynote the conference next Wednesday morning (as a late replacement for someone else).

Who are Amy Burvall and Herb Mahelona you ask? They are some of the most innovative people I have ever encountered. And I will get to meet them in 6 days. Among his many skills, Herb is choir director choir at the Kamehameha Schools Hawaii Campus. Amy is known as a leader in educational technology professional development programs at both St. Andrew's Priory (where she taught for 8 years) and Le Jardin Academy International Baccalaureate School. Amy also teachers Theory of Knowledge and World History at Le Jardin Academy. There conference talk is titled "TechnoTroubadours and Teacherpreneurs" (see their bios). Their talk is very impressive as I got a glimpse and so can you. See their prezi presentation with embedded videos. It will be great to have K-12 teachers keynote E-Learn 2011. Fortunately, they are located in Hawaii, though Herb must fly in from the big island.

Amy and Herb are known from their musical creativity with their History for Music Lovers channel in YouTube. Superfantastic stuff. I am amazed by their historical song parodies. I really like their version of Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" as a way to remember the Trojan War. Another one I sing along with at least once a week is Mansa Musa (i.e., "I'll Tumble 4 Ya" by Culture Club). When you land on the History for Music Lovers homepage, you see highly creative song about the history of India, "The Mahabharata" (i.e., "Abracadabra" by the Steve Miller Band). Nearly 600,000 people have seen Amy sing about The French Revolution to "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga. I find it hard not to cry when listening to some of their oldie songs such as the Battle of Agincourt ("As Tears Go By" by Marianne Faithful).

Check their channel out; there are dozens of songs to listen to and learn world history. If someone ever asks you were e-learning can make an impact, well, this is a prime example--mashing up history and music and making it open source for kids all over the planet to listen to and learn from. How cool is that? Very cool! If only my high school such teachers. Perhaps we soon will be turning kids on to not only history but geography, biology, etc., with music.

The lyrics are highly inventive and catchy. I read somewhere that Amy has songs pop into her head when driving home from school and just has to write them down. I understand that since I sometimes experience that when on a plane or a train. Unfortunately, I cannot play music like they can. If Amy and Herb ever go on tour, I think I could listen to them all afternoon and evening at a summerfest stage in Milwaukee. They are highly talented and fun. I think we are going to get spoiled next week and want them at every e-learning conference.

Ok, I need to introduce them next week at the conference so I decided to interview them via email. With permission, below are their responses to this interview. I list Amy first since she was the one I corresponded with.

Curt Question #1. Do you see yourself in the e-learning field when you create a video?

Amy (and Herb): I think at first, not particularly. But certainly after we started posting to You-Tube and responding to fans (mostly teachers, students, and history buffs) and doing various interviews in the field, we did. There is definitely more pressure now as we work on new projects, but we still try to keep it fun and light-hearted, drawing from our own passions instead of catering to others. We’ve certainly learned a LOT about e-learning on our journey!

Curt Question #2. Did you expect to be celebrities in the e-learning space? What is this like?

Amy (and Herb): Haha no way! It’s surreal. I heard from a friend, for example, who was in a coffee shop in Oregon and heard some college kids singing our “Renaissance Man” song [i.e., "Blister in the Sun" by the Violent Femmes]. One fan wrote he was in a museum in Washington and they were playing some of our tunes in the gift shop! And when my students travel they always tell me they meet other kids who know about us. So bizarre. But what is most boggling is that it’s very rare that someone lets you know when they’ve written a blog post or article about you. We sort of have to google ourselves sometimes. And even more crazy was when I discovered one of our lyrics (fleas on rats) was an actual Twitter hashtag!

Curt Question #3. Which 2 music history videos that you created are your favorites and why?

Amy (and Herb): I really love the look and sound of “Elizabeth I”, to the Zombies’ “She’s not There”. And musically, my favorite is “Canterbury Tales”- plus nothing beats that Middle English rap segment. The way I envision “Guernica”, which is in production, might turn out to be my ultimate favorite. For Herb, I know he is most proud of “Joan of Arc”, because we also tried to parody the original White Stripes video…it took quite a lot of time and effort on his part to edit. As far as lyrics go, I think Herb’s lyrics were genius in “Chinese Dynasties” [i.e., "Mambo #5" by Lou Bega] and “Viva Roma #5” [i.e., "Vogue" by Madonna]…I prefer sticking to really specific topics, but he has a gift for synthesizing the broad topics.

Curt Question #4. What is the process like in creating a new video? Any interesting technology challenge that comes to mind?

Amy (and Herb): The biggest challenge for us is time…and now, geography, since we live on different islands. When either of us is inspired to pen lyrics, we do so, because that surge of creativity doesn’t happen all the time. I can go for months without writing a single line and then spew out 6 songs in weekend. Herb then creates the music, and we schedule a time to record. To me, recording is the most fun, and it really doesn’t take that long (maybe a half an hour for 1 song). He mixes/produces the tracks when he gets the time and then we brainstorm what the video should look like. I can never praise storyboarding enough! When we are ready to film I gather all the costume and make-up pieces and props and we head for a green screen. Herb uses a high def. camera and Adobe Premiere and After FX software. When my students make videos, they use Garageband and iMovie. The editing is the most time-consuming, but the more Herb uses the programs the better he gets. I always want to do crazy things that we probably need a Hollywood studio for, but Herb seems to make them happen. He is also a master at Flash animation, an some of our favorites (Henry VIII, Crete, Renaissance Man) are done completely in Flash.

Curt Question #5. What are your hobbies and interests?

Amy (and Herb): Herb is a classical musician at heart and plays for the Kamuela Philharmonic Orchestra, the University of Hawaii symphony, and the Kona Music Society. He teaches cello and piano privately, and is an experienced arranger and composer, who has even written 3 operas performed by the Hawaii Youth Opera Chorus. He enjoys hiking and has been involved in Boy Scout leadership.

Amy is obsessed with anything relating to design – graphic design, interior design, fashion design, etc. – and typically is involved in some related project. Her creative outlets are singing, writing, and photography, but more recently her attention has been on the use and implications of online curation, personal branding, and social media in education. She is often called to train peers in tech integration, and enjoys presenting on the topic. More recently, her interests have drawn her to the “Gutenberg Parenthesis” theory and the work of media philosophers Marshall McLuhan, Thomas Pettitt, and Alejandro Piscitelli, as well as the “EduPunk” movement.

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Hope you enjoyed the interview. I also hope to see many of you at the conference next week. If you see me, tap me on the shoulder and say hi. See also the blog post below for the E-learn Preconference Summit at the University of Hawaii next Monday afternoon. The program was just announced and it will be worth it.

The E-Learn Preconference Summit at the University of Hawaii at Manoa

noreply@blogger.com (Curt Bonk) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 17:41:00 +0000

The following is not an "unconference" but a "preconference"...more info below.

“The E-Learn Preconference Summit at the University of Hawaii at Manoa”
It is............Free!!!
Date: Monday October 17, 2011
Time: 1 to 5 pm
(with an optional lunch at 11:00 am and potluck pizza dinner at 5:30 pm )
RSVP (and sign up to present): http://tinyurl.com/Elearn-Summit

Are you attending the E-Learn 2011 conference in Honolulu next month? Those arriving early to E-Learn might be interested presenting their innovative research and development efforts in a highly interactive and informal environment (perhaps expanding on ideas or topics that they will later present at the conference). They might also present a totally different project or initiative (perhaps you have an experimental or pilot project that just got funded or a new technology tool that you have developed). Perhaps you have designed a new instructional model or online learning framework. There will be four sessions and four presenters per session. Each presentation will be 9-10 minutes long. A discussant will end each session.

You need not be a presenter to attend this preconference session, Many of you might want to simply listen to the ideas of others and engage in some intense discussions. Still others might want to bring their graduate students to a highly informative and more intimate preconference session. If so, welcome to the E-Learn Preconference Summit at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Your role: sit, observer, share, present, discuss, or whatever you would like.

If you would like to make a short 9-10 minute presentation of your research or development efforts or just plan to attend without presenting, please complete this form: http://tinyurl.com/Elearn-Summit by 5 pm EST on Friday October 7th. All you need is a paragraph or two and a title, of course. Accepted proposals and a final schedule will be announced on Tuesday October 11th.

See below for event coordinators, location, and schedule. Feel free to forward this to interested colleagues, students, and other guests coming to the conference. We hope to see you there. Taxis can be taken from the Sheraton Waikiki to the Willows or the University of Hawaii. Groups might meet in the hotel lobby 30 minutes prior to the event and share a ride.

Event Coordinators and Contact Info:
Curtis Ho, University of Hawaii at Manoa, curtis at hawaii.edu
Peter Leong, University of Hawaii at Manoa, peterleo at hawaii.edu
Tom Reynolds, National University, treynold at nu.edu
Curt Bonk, Indiana University, cjbonk at indiana.edu

Location:
University of Hawaii at Manoa
1776 University Avenue
College Collaboration Center, Wist Hall 135
Honolulu, HI 96822
(upper left corner on this map, http://manoa.hawaii.edu/campusmap/uhmmap.pdf)

Lunch:
The Willows
901 Hausten Street
Honolulu, Hawaii 96826
http://willowshawaii.com/
Enticement: Pics of the restaurant

Note: Cost for buffet lunch is $19.95 plus tax and 15% gratuity (so about $24 should do it). Comes with coffee or tea but drinks are extra.

Tentative Program and Schedule:
11:00 Lunch at the Willows
12:45-1:00 Meet and greet and set up
1:00-1:05 Welcome from Curtis, Peter, Tom, and Curt
1:05-1:50 Session #1 (9-10 minutes for each presenter and brief 4-5 minute discussant at the end of each session)
1:50-1:55 Curt and Curtis lead in brief audience stretching and reflection/interaction activity
1:55-2:40 Session #2
2:40-2:50 Audience questions for first 2 session participants
2:50-3:05 Break and refreshments for 15 minutes (coffee and tea)
3:05-3:50 Session #3
3:50-3:55 Tom and Peter lead audience in brief reflection/interaction activity
3:55-4:40 Session #4 Most Innovative Paper/Idea/Topic Session
4:40-4:50 Audience questions and reflections for sessions #3 and #4
4:50-5:00 Quick comments and reflections from all the presenters, discussants, and hosts
5:30 Potluck Pizza ($5 contributions from those who stay for it)

Final Note: A presentation from Dr. Tom Reeves, University of Georgia, will take place after the potluck pizza. This is free to attend as well.

Second Final Note: Check out the keynote and invited speakers for E-Learn. Among them are Herb Mahelona and Amy Burvall who will give a talk, TechnoTroubadours and Teacherpreneurs, based on their "History for Music Lovers" channel. If you have not seen any of their fascinating history music videos, check them out. Want to hear about the Trojan War song to Soft Cell's "Tained Love" anyone? How about "The Canterbury Tales" to the Mamas and the Papas "California Dreamin?" Ok, then, how about "Elizabeth I" to the Zombies classic "She's Not There"? Seeking something more current, well then, there most viewed music video is "The French Revolution" sung to Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance." There are many more I can recommend. And many topics--Joan of Arc, Napolean, Martin Luther, the Vikings, Julius Caesar, Shakespeare, King Arthur, and so on.

Check em out. Or better yet, come to the E-Learn Conference October 18-21. Better yet, come to the preconference summit on October 17th at the University of Hawaii. It will be highly informative and engaging. The entire week will be a blast.

Third Final Note: By the way, the Sheraton Waikiki is most lovely. And that is where the conference is being held. When E-Learn was last there in October 2006, it was rocked by back-to-back earthquakes like 6.9 and 6.6. The entire building swayed. But it still was a fabulous venure. Some presentation rooms have a view of the ocean as you walk in and out. Gorgeous. I once gave an all-day workshop there (think it was 2003) and I had 100 people in the morning but only 50 for the afternoon. I wondered why. Then, when we took a break I stood at the doorway to my workshop and leaned over and saw 50 people from the morning session waving up from the hotel pool sipping Mai Tai's. This could be you!