As we say goodbye to 2013, the year after The Year of the MOOC, I remain unable to adequately define the acronym that graces this blog’s header. This year Oxford Dictionary gave it the old college try, creating a definition more inclusive than exclusive and in doing so adding even more confusion to a rhetorical landscape littered with LOOCs, HOOCs, cMOOCs, xMOOCs, urMOOCs, SPOCs and other -ooc misfit acronyms. …
Tag Archives: Distance Education
Behind the Scenes of Academic Partnerships’ First International Partner
Academic Partnerships International (API) “develops global student recruiting capabilities through partnerships with international higher education institutions.” Now partnering with approximately a dozen international institutions, API’s first international partner is Colombia-based Fundación Universitaria de Ciencias de ……
The SJSU/Udacity MOOC Hiatus – A Crisis of Rhetoric
San Jose State University has pressed the pause button on its MOOC partnership with provider Udacity, and Internet response to the hold has largely viewed the development as a setback for MOOCs, one that might signal the end of the hype cycle and the beginning of the end of the model.…
MOOCs: Where’s the Lit Review?
One of the purposes of research is to establish a foundation of prior knowledge for future experiments to engage and extrapolate before proposing a new design that will further the field. This is important; without an understanding of what came before, research runs the risk of reinventing the wheel, or even (worse yet) coming up with something more rudimentary than the wheel.…
2013 – An African making sense of signals and noise in higher and distance education (#etmooc)
Disclaimer: I write this overview of some of the challenges facing higher and distance education in Africa in 2013, from the specific context of my location in South Africa. I cannot, however, speak on behalf of Africa. Even my identity as an African is continuously contested and rejected on grounds of my skin colour (white) and gender (gay). …