Developing a framework for teaching open courses

This post was written jointly with Katia Hildebrandt and also appears on her blog.

Recently, we presented at OER15 in Cardiff, Wales, on the topic of developing a framework for open courses. In our session, we considered our experiences in facilitating MOOC type courses in order to think through and address the challenges that these types of courses present.…

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Alan Levine, #etmooc, and the cMOOC That Would Not Die

We can cut off its head, fill its mouth with garlic, and drive a stake through its body, but we apparently can’t kill a well-designed, engaging, dynamic learning experience and the community of learning it spawns. Nor would we want to.…

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Building Online/Blended Course Environments

I was recently invited to speak with the  #eLearnOnt “Game Changer” series where I discussed various options around building online and/or blended course environments via Google Hangout. I began with traditional LMS options and moved to the more nebulous concept of “Small Tools Loosely Joined” course/environment design.…

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Have MOOCs Helped or Hurt?

InsideHigherEdThis article was originally written by Academic Partnerships Chairman and CEO, Randy Best, for Inside Higher Ed. Click here for the original post.

As the hype around MOOCs has subsided, a frequently asked question in university circles today is: Who have massive open online courses helped or hurt?

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Co-learning, #ccourses, and Keeping the Lights On: #etmooc and the Connected Courses MOOC

We may have a new corollary to one of the most famous lines from the movie It’s a Wonderful Life (“Teacher says, ‘Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.’”): Every time #etmooc is mentioned, a learner gets new learning wings.…

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Learning When No One Is at the Center of the Room: Connected Courses MOOC (#ccourses)

Frequent flyers, at one time or another, have the disorienting experience of having to consciously look for reminders of where we are; our minds simply can’t keep up with the frequent leaps between cities, states, and, occasionally, countries. Frequent learners engaged in co-learning (what Edward Brantmeier describes as the act of changing roles so teachers and learners become “joint sojourners on the quest for knowledge, understanding, and…wisdom”) within the world of connected learning may be facing a parallel challenge in at least a couple of ways; when interacting with connected-learning colleagues, we need to remind ourselves which of our wonderfully overlapping communities of learning we are currently engaging (Is this #etmooc—the Educational Technology & Media massive open online course?…

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FutureLearn CreativeCoding

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FutureLearn is a massive open online course (MOOC) platform founded in December 2012 as a company majority owned by the UK’s Open University. It is the first UK-led massive open online course platform, and as of October 2013 had 26 University partners and – unlike similar platforms – includes three non-university partners: the British Museum, the British Council and the British Library.

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Teachers College, Columbia University – MOOCs: Expectations and Reality

The Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University has published a study that serves as an exploration of the goals of institutions creating or adopting MOOCs and how these institutions define effectiveness of their MOOC initiatives. Academic Partnerships is featured in this study.

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#etmooc: Singing Happy Birthday to a Course

It’s not often that I’m invited to attend a birthday party for a course—but then again, it’s not often that I find myself immersed in a learning opportunity that produces the sort of sustainable community of learning that #etmooc has.

etmoocThat wonderful massive open online course (MOOC)—the Educational Technology and Media MOOC that Alec Couros and others offered to great acclaim in early 2013—was something that many of us heard about from colleagues or simply stumbled across during our general online explorations of MOOCs last year.

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Time Travel, Personal Learning Networks, and Rhizomatic Growth

Let’s engage in some trainer-teacher-learner time travel; let’s revel in a wonderfully and gloriously circular learning moment whose beginning and end have not yet stopped expanding—and won’t if you decide to enter into and further expand this moment as part of a connected educator network.…

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