Worlds collide: #etmooc #msloc and more

an #etmooc participant blog post published on
see all syndicated posts from this blog

I thought I was nuts. But apparently I am not alone. And may even be a bit of a slacker.

Late last year, I recognized the opportunity that January 2013 represented: To mashup my participation in two MOOCs with teaching my course on organizational knowledge sharing and technology at the Master’s Program in Learning & Organizational Change (MSLOC) at Northwestern University.

What made me think I was nuts is that I am not a total stranger to MOOC participation. I took advantage of Change11, the 2011/2012 MOOC covering the field of instructional technology and facilitated by George Siemens, Dave Cormier and Stephen Downes. I also mostly lurked through Hybrid Pedagogy’s excellent MOOCMOOC in August 2012. And I signed up for (and dropped out of) one Coursera course. Lesson learned. MOOCs (ok, learning) take(s) energy. Be prepared.

Then several weeks ago I noted that two really intriguing MOOCs were kicking off in January covering technology, learning, digital culture and digital literacies: #etmooc and Coursera’s E-Learning & Digital Cultures. And they are based on two entirely different models: etmooc is connectivist (cMOOC), Coursera is broadcast oriented (xMOOC). I took a deep breath. At the same time I begin teaching MSLOC 430, which looks at organizational knowledge sharing through the lens of digital collaboration and (increasingly) personal learning networks. It’s taught in a traditional classroom setting but using both a private social network platform for student collaboration (Jive) as well as Twitter, blogs and Google+.

Networks. Connection. Openness. Culture. Literacy. Connectivist vs. broadcast models. Private vs. public networks and connections. January – March. Wow. I’m in. (Deep breath again).

Turns out, I am not the only one who is MOOC-ing out in this January – March timeframe. Among the people I follow on Twitter, a larger number are sharing the same stories. Tackling multiple interesting MOOCs along with their normal routines. See for example:

So I may be nuts, or a slacker compared to others. I really have no idea how I am going to do this. Or what it will lead to. But this is the space where I hope to share the story.

I am already finding the professional/research and personal benefits I anticipated. I was fortunate enough to be able to sneak in among the planning crew for Alec Couros‘ #etmooc thanks to Alison Seaman, who is now a key part of my personal learning network and who I met via Change11. (Etmooc begins with orientation on Jan. 13.)

Couros has pulled together a diverse group of collaborators who have been engaged in design and planning discussions for some time. I joined in December and am struck by two things:

  • How people who do not necessarily know each other can, in reality, effectively deal with ambiguous challenges (e.g., just how do you design an effective cMOOC?). Alec does a great job of facilitating dialogue and there are clearly members of the planning team who know each other and have worked with each other in the past. But still. It’s a diverse group, some who are new, some with strong voices, yet all seem to rally around a dedication to a exploring (and implementing) a connectivist vision. I just find this kind of virtual collaboration fascinating in light of the issues we all experience in our day-to-day, face-to-face “team” projects.
  • How the dialogue in the planning group moves fluidly between task-oriented items (how do we handle Twitter lists?) and conversations about larger issues (what are the foundations of “open?”) or general issues of interest. I observe this same phenomenon within the private social network at MSLOC. When the online environment is healthy, it is this delicious soup of sharing points-of-view, knocking out half-baked thoughts, getting stuff done, pointing to resources and more.

It is not lost on me that there is a connection between these two things. One of the intriguing questions to explore.

Filed under: etmooc, MOOC, Personal learning networks Tagged: #etmooc, MOOC, MSLOC