Author Archives: chendric

A map of influence of #etmooc

I’m marginally participating, here and there, in #clmooc: Making Learning Connected MOOC. I would participate more, but for the past few weeks I’ve been: (1) finishing up ds106 (and yes, I know it’s never really finished! Most of my ds106 projects are posted on a tumblr, here), (2) moving out of my apartment in Melbourne, Australia where I’ve lived for a year on sabbatical, (3) travelling, (4) making the journey home to Vancouver (I’m still on #4 right now, waiting in an airport with a delayed flight).

At any rate, one of the projects in #clmooc for this week is to make a map–a map of anything you want. I chose to make a mind map of what I’ve been doing over the past few months, as a result of my participation in #etmooc, the Educational Technology and Media MOOC that took place Jan-March 2013. #etmooc had a profound impact on me and my work, which I wanted to capture in a mind map.

After doing a search for free mind mapping software, and finding ,this Wikipedia page I decided to give Mindmup a try. I liked that it is open source and free, and that it seems pretty easy to start using. It doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles, but it’s quick to learn how to use and to make a map. You can include links just by typing in the URL, and it automatically turns it into a link. Apparently you can add attachments too, though I didn’t try that.

The one thing I wanted to do but couldn’t was to add a “parent” to the main parent in the middle, which is #etmooc itself. I wanted to just say that I heard about #etmooc through Twitter, through my PLN. But I couldn’t figure out how to do that. Oh well; I’m happy with it otherwise.

You don’t have to create an account to create a map, though I don’t know how you can save it on their site w/o an account. I saved it to Google Drive, but you can also save it to GitHub if you want.

You can get an embed code for your site if you save it on Mindmup (which you can ALSO do after saving it on Google Drive or GitHub). That’s what I used below. I like how it works on the blog–you can resize it and move around it…nice!

#ETMOOC: Educational Technology and Media MOOC, Jan-March 2013 http://etmooc.org on MindMup

Evaluating a cMOOC using Downes’ four “process conditions”

This is the third in a series of posts on a research project I’m developing on evaluating cMOOCs. The first can be found here, and the second here. In this post I consider an article that uses Downes’ four “process conditions” for a knowledge-generating network to evaluate a cMOOC. In a later post I’ll consider another article that takes a somewhat critical look at these four conditions as applied to cMOOCs.

Mackness, J., Mak, S., & Williams, R. (2010). The ideals and reality of participating in a MOOC. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Networked Learning 2010 (pp. 266–275). Retrieved from http://eprints.port.ac.uk/5605/

Connexion, Flickr photo by tangi_bertin, licensed CC-BY

In this article, Mackness et al. report findings from interviews of participants in the CCK08 MOOC (Connectivism and Connective Knowledge 2008; see here for a 2011 version of this course) insofar as these relate to Downes’ four process conditions for a knowledge-generating network: autonomy, diversity, openness, interactivity. In other words, they wanted to see if these conditions were met in CCK08, according to the participants. To best understand these results, if you’re not familiar with Downes’ work, it may be helpful to read an earlier post of mine that addresses and tries to explain these conditions.

Specifically, the researchers asked: “To what extent were autonomy, diversity, openness and connectedness/interactivity a reality for participants in the CCK08 MOOC and how much they were affected by the course design?” (271). They concluded that, in this particular course at least, there were difficulties with all of these factors.

Data

Data for this study came from 22 responses by participants (including instructors) to email interview questions (out of 58 who had self-selected, on a previous survey sent to 301 participants, to be interviewed). Unfortunately, the interview questions are not provided in the paper, so it’s hard to tell what the respondents were responding to. I find it helpful to see the questions so as to better understand the responses given, and be able to undertake a critical review of the interpretation of those responses given in an article.

Results

Autonomy

The researchers note that most respondents valued autonomy in a learning environment: “Overall, 59% of interview respondents (13/22) rated the importance of learner autonomy at 9 or 10 on a scale of 1-10 (1 = low; 10 = high)” (269). Unfortunately, I can’t tell if this means they valued the kind of autonomy they experienced in that particular course, or whether they valued the general idea of learner autonomy in an abstract way (but how was it defined?). Here is one place, for example, where providing the question asked would help readers understand the results.

Mackness et al. then argue that nevertheless, some participants (but how many out of the 22?) found the experience of autonomy in CCK08 to be problematic. The researchers provided quotes from two participants stating that they would have preferred more structure and guidance, and one course instructor who reported that learner autonomy led to some frustration that what s/he was trying to say or do in the course was not always “resonating with participants” (269).

The authors also provide a quote from a course participant who said they loved being able to work outside of assessment guidelines, but then comment on that statement by saying that “autonomy was equated with lack of assessment”–perhaps, but not necessarily (maybe they could get good feedback from peers, for example? Or maybe the instructors could still assess something outside of the guidelines? I don’t know, but the statement doesn’t seem to mesh, by itself, with the interpretation).  Plus, the respondent saw this as a positive thing, whereas the rhetorical aspects of the interpretation suggest it was a negative, a difficulty with autonomy. I’m not seeing that.

The researchers conclude that the degree of learner autonomy in the course was affected by the following:

levels of fluency in English, the ‘expertise divide’, assessment for credit participants, personal learning styles, personal sense of identity and the power exerted, either implicitly or explicitly, by instructors through their communications, status and reputation, or by participants themselves….” (271)

In addition, there were reports of some “trolling” behaviour on the forums, which led some participants to “retreat to their blogs, effectively reducing their autonomy” (271). The authors point out that some constraint on autonomy in the forums through discouraging or shutting down such behaviour may have actually promoted autonomy amongst more learners.

Diversity

The researchers note that learner diversity was certainly present in the course, including diversity in geography, language, age, and background. They give examples of diversity “reflected in the learning preferences, individual needs and choices expressed by interview respondents” (269).

However, diversity was also a problem in at least one respect, namely that not all learners had the “skills or disposition needed to learn successfully, or to become autonomous learners in a MOOC” (271). This is not so much of a problem if there is significant scaffolding, such as support for participants’ “wayfinding in large online networks,” but CCK08 was instead designed to have “minimal instructor intervention” (271). In addition, in order to promote sharing in a network like a cMOOC, there needs to be a certain amount of trust built up, the authors point out; and the more large and diverse the network, the more work may need to be done to help participants build that trust.

Openness

CCk08 was available, for free, to anyone who wanted to participate (without receiving any university or other credits), so long as they had a reliable web connection. The interview data suggests that participants interpreted “openness” differently: some felt they should (and did) share their work with others (thus interpreting openness as involving sharing one’s work), some worked mostly alone and did not do much or any sharing–thereby interpreting openness, the author suggest, merely as the idea that the course was open for anyone with a reliable web connection to participate in. The authors seem to be arguing here that these differing conceptions of openness are problematic because there was an “implicit assumption in the course was that participants would be willing or ready to give and receive information, knowledge, opinions and ideas; in other words to share freely” (270), but that not everyone got that message. They point to a low rate of active participation: only 14% of the total enrolled participants (270).

They also note that amongst participants there was no “common understanding of openness as a characteristic of connectivism” (270), implying that there should have been. But I wonder if conscious understanding of openness, and the ability to express that as a clear concept, is necessary for a successful connectivist course. This is just a question at this point–I haven’t thought it through carefully. I would at least have liked to have seen more on why that should be considered a problem, as well as whether the respondents were asked specifically for their views of openness. The responses given in this section of the paper don’t refer to openness at all, making me think perhaps the researchers interpreted understandings of openness from one or more of the other things respondents said. That’s not a problem by itself, of course, but one might have gotten different answers if one had asked them their views of openness directly, and answers that might have been therefore more relevant to concluding whether or not participants shared a common understanding of openness.

Finally, Mackness et al. argue that some of the barriers noted above also led to problems in regard to participants’ willingness to openly communicate and share work with others: this can be “compromised by lack of clarity about the purpose and nature of the course, lack of moderation in the discussion forums, which would be expected on a traditional course, and the constraints (already discussed in relation to autonomy and diversity) under which participants worked” (272).

Interactivity

 There were significant opportunities for interaction, for connecting with others, but the authors note that what is most important is not whether people did connect with others (and how much) as what these connections made possible. Respondents noted some important barriers to connecting as well as problems that meant some of the interactions did not yield useful benefits. As noted above, some participants pointed to “trolling” behaviour on the forums, and one said there were some “patronising” posts as well–which, the respondent said, likely led some participants to disengage from that mode of connection. Another respondent noted differences in expertise levels that led him/her to disengage when s/he could no longer “understand the issues being discussed” (271).

The researchers conclude that connectivity alone is not sufficient for effective interactivity–which of course makes sense–and that the degree of effective interactivity in CCK08 was not as great as it might have been with more moderation by instructors. However, the size of the course made this unfeasible (272).

One thing I would have liked to have seen in this analysis of “interactivity” is what Downes focuses on for this condition, namely the idea that the kind of interactivity needed is that which promotes emergent knowledge–knowledge that emerges from the interactions of the network as a whole, rather than from individual nodes (explained by Downes here and here, the first of which the authors themselves cite). This is partly because if they used Downes’ framework, it would make sense to evaluate the course with the specifics of what he means by “interactivity.” It’s also partly because I just really want to see how one might try to evaluate that form of interactivity.

Conclusion

Mackness et al. conclude that

some constraints and moderation exercised by instructors and/or learners may be necessary for effective learning in a course such as CCK08. These constraints might include light touch moderation to reduce confusion, or firm intervention to prevent negative behaviours which impede learning in the network, and explicit communication of what is unacceptable, to ensure the ‘safety’ of learners. (272)

Though, at the same time, they point to the small size of their sample, and the need for further studies of these sorts of courses to validate their findings.

That makes sense to me, from my unstudied perspective of someone who has participated in a few large and one small-ish open online courses, one of which seemed modeled to some degree along connectivist lines (ETMOOC). There was some significant scaffolding in ETMOOC, through starting off with discussions of connected learning and help with blogging and commenting on blogs. There wasn’t clear evidence of moderating discussions from the course collaborators (several people collaborated on each two-week topic, acting in the role of “instructors” for a brief time), except insofar as some of the course collaborators were very actively present on Twitter and in commenting on others’ blogs, being sure to tweet or retweet or bookmark to Diigo or post to Google+ especially helpful or thought-provoking things. We didn’t have any trolling behaviour that I was aware of, and we also didn’t have a discussion forum. But IF there were problems in the Google+ groups or in Twitter chats, I would have hoped one or more of the collaborators would have actively worked to address them (and I think they would have, though of course since it didn’t happen (to my knowledge) I can’t be certain).

Some further thoughts 

If one decides that Downes’ framework is the right one to use for evaluating an open online course like a cMOOC (which I haven’t decided yet; I still need to look more carefully at his arguments for it), it would make sense to unpack the four conditions more carefully and collect participants’ views on whether those specific ways of thinking about autonomy, diversity, openness and interactivity were manifested in the course. The discussion of these four conditions is at times rather vague here. What, more specifically, does learner “autonomy” mean, for example? Even if they don’t want to use Downes’ own views of autonomy, it would be helpful to specify what conception of autonomy they’re working with. I’ve also noted a similar point about interactivity, about which the discussion in the paper is also somewhat vague–what sort of interactivity would have indicated success, exactly, beyond just participants communicating with each other on blogs or forums?

I find it interesting that in his most recent writing on the topic of evaluating cMOOCs (see the longer version attached to this post, and my discussion of this point here (and the helpful comments I’ve gotten on that post!)), Downes argues that it should be some kind of expert in cMOOCs or in one of the fields/topics they cover that evaluates their quality, while here the authors looked to the participants’ experiences. Interesting, because it makes sense to me to actually focus on the experiences of the participants rather than to ask someone who may or may not have taken the course. That is, if one wants to find out if the course was effective for participants.

Still, I can see how some aspects of these conditions might be measured without looking at what participants experienced, or at least in other ways in addition to gathering participants’ subjective evaluations. The degree to which the course is “open,” for example, might have some elements that could be measured beyond or in addition to what participants themselves thought. Insofar as openness involves the course being open to anyone with a reliable internet connection to participate, without cost, and the ability to move into and out of the course easily as participants choose, that could be partly a matter of looking at the design and platform of the course itself, as well as participants’ evaluations of how easy it was to get into and out of the course. If openness also involves the sharing of one’s work, one could look to see how much of that was actually done, as well as ask participants about what they shared, why, and how (and what they did not, and why).

I just find it puzzling that in that recent post Downes doesn’t talk about asking participants about their experiences in a cMOOC at all. I’m not sure why.

[I just read a recent comment on an earlier post, which I haven’t replied to yet, which discusses exactly this point–it makes no sense to leave out student experiences. Should have read and replied to that before finalizing this post!]

 

 

ds106–audio assignments

In case any readers of this blog are interested in what I’m doing for ds106 lately, all my audio work from the last week can be found here, including a radio play written and produced by a great group of open online participants in ds106!

Downes on evaluating cMOOCs

In my previous post I considered some difficulties I’m having in trying to figure out how to evaluate the effectiveness of cMOOCs. In this one I look at some of the things Stephen Downes has to say about this issue, and one research paper that uses his ideas as a lens through which to consider data from a cMOOC.

Stephen Downes on the properties of successful networks

This post by Stephen Downes (which was a response to a question I asked he and others via email) describes two ways of evaluating the success of a cMOOC through asking whether it fulfills the properties of successful networks. One could look at the “process conditions,” which for Downes are four: autonomy, diversity, openness, and interactivity. And/or, one could look at the outcomes of a cMOOC, which for Downes means looking at whether knowledge emerges from the MOOC as a whole, rather than just from one or more of its participants. I’ll look briefly at each of these ways of considering a cMOOC in what follows.

The four “process conditions” for a successful network are what Downes calls elsewhere a “semantic condition” that is required for a knowledge-generating network, a network that generates connective knowledge (for more on this, see longer articles here and here). This post discusses them succinctly yet with enough detail to give a sense of what they mean (the following list and quotes come from that post).

  • Autonomy: The individuals in the network should be autonomous. One could ask, e.g.: “do people make their own decisions about goals and objectives? Do they choose their own software, their own learning outcomes?” This is important in order that the participants and connections form a unique organization rather than one determined from one or a few individuals, in which knowledge is transferred in as uniform a way as possible to all (this point is made more explicitly in the longer post attached here).
  • Diversity: There must be a significant degree of diversity in the network for it to generate anything new. One could ask about the geographical locations of the individuals in the network, the languages spoken, etc., but also about whether they have different points of view on issues discussed, whether they have different connections to others (or does everyone tend to have similar connections), whether they use different tools and resources, and more.
  • Openness: A network needs to be open to allow new information to flow in and thereby produce new knowledge. Openness in a community like a cMOOC could include the ease with which people can move into and out of the community/course, the ability to participate in different ways and to different degrees, the ability to easily communicate with each other. [Update June 14, 2013: Here Downes adds that openness also includes sharing content, both that from within the course to those outside of it, and that gained from outside (or created by oneself inside the course?) back into the course.]
  • Interactivity: There should be interactivity in a network that allows for knowledge to emerge “from the communicative behaviour of the whole,” rather than from one or a few nodes.

To look at the success of a cMOOC from an “outcomes” perspective, you’d try to determine whether new knowledge emerged from the interactions in the community as a whole. This idea is a bit difficult for me to grasp, and I am having trouble understanding how I might determine if this sort of thing has occurred. I’ll look at one more thing here to try to figure this out.

Downes on the quality of MOOCs

Recently, Downes has written a post on the blog for the “MOOC quality project” that discusses how he thinks it might be possible to say whether a MOOC was successful or not, and in it he discusses the process conditions and outcomes further (to really get a good sense of his arguments, it’s best to read the longer version of this post, which is linked to the original).

Downes argues in the longer version that it doesn’t make sense to try to determine the purpose of MOOCs (qua MOOCs, by which I think he means as a category rather than as individual instances) based on “the reasons or motivations” of those offering or taking particular instances of them. This is because people may have varying reasons and motivations for creating and using MOOCs, which need not impinge on what makes for a good MOOC (just like people may use hammers in various ways–his example–that don’t impinge on whether a particular one hammer is a good hammer). Instead, he argues that we should look at “what a successful MOOC ought to produce as output, without reference to existing … usage.”

And what MOOCs ought to produce as output is “emergent knowledge,” which is

constituted by the organization of the network, rather than the content of any individual node in the network. A person working within such a network, on perceiving, being immersed in, or, again, recognizing, knowledge in the network thereby acquires similar (but personal) knowledge in the self.

Downes then puts this point differently, focusing on MOOCs:

[A] MOOC is a way of gathering people and having them interact, each from their own individual perspective or point of view, in such a way that the structure of the interactions produces new knowledge, that is, knowledge that was not present in any of the individual communications, but is produced as a result of the totality of the communications, in such a way that participants can through participation and immersion in this environment develop in their selves new (and typically unexpected) knowledge relevant to the domain.

 He then argues that the four process conditions discussed previously usually tend to produce this sort of emergent knowledge as a result, in the ways suggested in the above list. But, properties like diversity and openness are rather like abstract concepts such as love or justice in that they are not easily “counted” but rather need to be “recognized”: “A variety of factors–not just number, but context, placement, relevance and salience–come into play (that is why we need neural networks (aka., people) to perceive them and can’t simply use machines to count them.”

So far, so good; one might think it possible to come up with a way to evaluate a MOOC by looking at these four process conditions, and then assume that if they are in place, emergent knowledge is at least more likely to result (though it may not always do so). It would not be easy to figure out how to determine if these conditions are met, but one could come up with some ways to do so that could be justified pretty well, I think (even though there might be multiple ways to do so).

MOOCs as a language

But Downes states that while such an exercise may be useful when designing a course, it is less so when evaluating one after the fact–I’m not sure why this should be the case, though. He states that looking at the various parts of a course in terms of these four conditions (such as the online platform, the content/guest speakers, and more) could easily become endless–one could look at many, many aspects of a MOOC this way. But I don’t see why that would be more problematic in evaluating a course than in designing one.

Instead, Downes suggests we take a different tack in measuring success of MOOCs. He suggests we think of MOOCs as a language, “and the course design (in all its aspects) therefore as an expression in that language.” This is meant to take us away from the idea of using the four process conditions above as a kind of rubric or checklist in a mechanical way. The point rather is for someone who is already fluent in either MOOC design or the topic(s) being addressed in a MOOC to be able to look at the MOOC and the four conditions and “recognize” whether it has been successful or not. Downes states that “the bulk of expertise in a language–or a trade, science or skill–isn’t in knowing the parts, but in fluency and recognition, cumulating in the (almost) intuitive understanding (‘expertise’, as Dreyfus and Dreyfus would argue)” (here Downes refers to: http://www.sld.demon.co.uk/dreyfus.pdf).

So I think the idea here is that once one is fluent in the language of MOOCs or the “domain or discipline” of the topics they are about, one should be able to read and understand the expression in that language that is the course design, and to determine the quality of the MOOC by using the four conditions as a kind of “aid” rather than “checklist”. But to be quite honest, I am still not sure what it means, exactly, to use them as an “aid.” And this process suggests relying on those who have developed some degree of expertise in MOOCs to be able to make the judgment, thereby making the decision of successful vs. unsuccessful MOOCs come only from a set of experts.

Perhaps this could make sense, if we think of MOOCs like the product of some artisanal craft, like swordmaking–maybe it really is only the experts who can determine their quality, because perhaps there is no way to set out in a list of necessary and sufficient conditions what is needed for a successful MOOC, like it’s difficult (or impossible) to do for a high-quality sword (I’m just guessing on that one). Perhaps there are so many different possible ways of having a high quality MOOC/sword, with some aspects being linked to individual variations such that it’s impossible to describe each possible variation and what aspects of quality would be required for that particular variation. It may be that no one can possibly know in advance what all the possible variations of a successful MOOC/sword are, but that these can be recognized later.

But I’m not yet convinced that must be the case for MOOCs, at least not from this short essay. And I expect I would benefit from a closer reading of Downes’ other work, which might help me see why he’s going in this direction here. It would also help me see why he thinks the process conditions for a knowledge-generating network should be the ones he suggests.

Using Downes’ framework to evaluate the effectiveness of a cMOOC

This is a bit premature, as I admit I don’t understand it in its entirety, but I want to put out a few preliminary ideas. I’m leaving aside, for the moment, the idea of MOOCs as a language until I figure out more precisely why he thinks we should look at them that way, and then decide if I agree. I’m also leaving aside for the moment the question of whether I think the process conditions he suggests are really the right ones–I haven’t evaluated them or the reasons behind them and thus can’t say one way or the other at this point.

The four process conditions

One would have to figure out exactly how to define Autonomy, Diversity, and Openness, which is no easy task, but it seems possible to come to a justifiable (though not final or probably perfect) outline of what those mean, considering what might make for a knowledge-generating network. It might be a long and difficult process to do so, but at least possible, I think. Then, it would be fairly straightforward to devise a manageable (and only ever partial) list of things one could ask about, measure, humanly “recognize” (in the sense of not using a checklist mechanically…though again, I’m not entirely sure what that means) to see if a particular cMOOC fit these three criteria. Again, I have no idea how to do any of this right now, but I think it could be done.

But I am still unsure about the final one: interactivity. This is because it’s not just a matter of people interacting with each other; rather, Downes emphasizes that what is needed is interaction that allows for emergent knowledge. So to figure this one out, one already needs to understand what emergent knowledge looks like and how to recognize if it has happened. I understand the idea of emergent knowledge in an abstract sense, but it’s hard to know how I would figure out if some knowledge had emerged from the communicative interactions of a community rather than from a particular node or nodes. How would I tell if, as quoted above, “the structure of the interactions produce[d] new knowledge, that is, knowledge that was not present in any of the individual communications, but [was] produced as a result of the totality of the communications”? Or, to take another quote from the longer version of the post Downes did for the “MOOC quality project”, how would I know if “new learning occur[red] as a result of this connectedness and interactivity, it emerge[d] from the network as a whole, rather than being transmitted or distributed by one or a few more powerful members”?

I honestly am having a hard time figuring out where/how to look for knowledge that wasn’t present in any of the individual communications, but emerges from the totality of them. But I think part of the problem here is that I don’t understand enough about Downes’ view of connectivism and connectivist knowledge. I knew I should take a closer look at connectivism before trying to tackle the question of evaluating cMOOCs! Guess I’ll have to come back to this after doing a post or two on Downes’ view of connectivism & connective knowledge.

Conclusion

So clearly I have a long way to go to understand exactly what Downes is suggesting and why, before I can even decide if this would be a good framework for evaluating a cMOOC.

In a later post I will look at two research papers that look at cMOOCs through the lens of Downes’ four process conditions, to see how they have interpreted and used these.

I welcome comments on anything I’ve said here–anything I’ve gotten wrong, or any suggestions on what I’m still confused about?

 

 

Difficulties researching the effectiveness of cMOOCs

As noted in an earlier post, I have submitted some proposals for conference presentations on researching the effectiveness of connectivist MOOCs, or cMOOCs (see another one of my earlier posts for what a cMOOC is). I am using this post (and one or two later ones) to try to work through how one might go about doing so, and the problems I’ve considered only in a somewhat general way previously. I need to think things through by writing, so why not do that in the open?

I had wanted to think more carefully about connectivism before moving to some research questions about connectivist MOOCs, but for various reasons I need to get something worked out about possible research questions as soon as I can, so I’ll return to looking at connectivism in later posts.

The general topic I’m interested in (at the moment)

And I mean general. I want to know whether we can determine whether a cMOOC has been “effective” or “successful.” That’s so general as to mean almost nothing.

What might help is some specification of the purposes or goals of offering a particular cMOOC, so one could see if it has been effective in achieving those. This could be taken from any of a number of perspectives, such as:

  • If an institution is offering a cMOOC, what is the institution’s purpose in doing so? This is not something I’m terribly interested in at the moment.
  • What do those who are designing/planning/facilitating the cMOOC hope to get out if doing so, for themselves? This is also not what I’m particularly interested in for a research project.
  • What do those who are designing/planning/facilitating the cMOOC hope participants will get out if it? There are likely some reasons, articulated or not, why the designers thought a cMOOC would be effective for participants in some way, thus they decided to offer a cMOOC at all. This is closer to what I’m interested in, but there’s a complication.

The connectivist MOOC model as implemented so far by people such as Dave Cormier, Alec Couros, Stephen Downes and George Siemens encourages participants to set their own goals and purposes for participation, rather than determining what these are to be for all participants (see, e.g., McAuley, Stewart, Siemens, & Cormier, 2010 (pp. 4-5, 40); see The MOOC Guide for a history of cMOOC-type courses, and lists of more recent connectivist MOOCs here and here). As Stephen Downes puts it:

In the MOOCs we’ve offered, we have said very clearly that you (as a student) define what counts as success. There is no single metric, because people go into the course for many different purposes. That’s why we see many different levels of activity ….

Further, just what a cMOOC will be like, where it goes, what people talk about, depends largely on the participants–even though there are often pre-set topics and speakers in advance, the rest of what happens is mostly up to what is written, discussed, shared amongst the participants. The ETMOOC guide for participants emphasizes this:

What #etmooc eventually becomes, and what it will mean to you, will depend upon the ways in which you participate and the participation and activities of all of its members.

Thus, it’s hard to say in advance what participants might get out of a particular cMOOC, in part because it’s impossible to say in advance what the course will actually be like (beyond the scheduled presentations, which are only one of many parts of a cMOOC).

Some possible directions for research questions

Developing connections with other people

Photo Credit: Graylight via Compfight CC-BY

I at first thought that perhaps one could say cMOOCs should allow participants to, at the very least, develop a set of connections with other people that are used for sharing advice, information, comments on each others’ work, for collaborating, and more. As discussed in my blog post on George Siemens’ writings on connectivism, what may be most important to a course that is run on connectivist principles is not the content that is provided, but the fostering of connections and skills for developing new ones and maintaining those one has, for the sake of being able to learn continually into the future.

And even though I understand what Downes and others say about participants in cMOOCs determining their own goals and deciding for themselves whether the course has been a success, cMOOCs have been and continue to be designed in certain ways for certain reasons, at least some of which most likely has to do with what participants may get out of the courses. Some of those who have been involved in designing cMOOCs have emphasized the importance of forming connections between people, ideas and information.

Stephen Downes talks about this in “Creating the Connectivist Course” when he says that he and George Siemens tried to make the “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge” course in 2008 “as much like a network as possible.” In this video on how to succeed in a MOOC, Dave Cormier emphasizes the value of connecting with others in the course through commenting on their blog posts, participating in discussion fora, and other ways. The connections made in this way are, Cormier says, “what the course is all about.” Now, of course, Cormier states at the beginning and end of the video that MOOCs are open to different ways of success and this is just “his” way, but the tone of the video suggests that it would be useful for others as well. Cormier says something similar in this video on knowledge in a MOOC: participants in a MOOC “are [ideally?] going to come out with a knowledge network, a network of people and ideas that’s going to carry long past the end of [the] course date.”

So it made sense to me at first to consider asking about the effectiveness or success of a cMOOC through looking at whether and how participants made connections with each other, and especially whether those continue beyond the end of the course. But again, there are some complications, besides the important questions of just how to define “connections” so as to decide what data to gather, and then the technical issues regarding how to get that data.

Would we want to say that the course succeeded more if more people made connections to others, rather than less? Or how about the question of how many people each participant should ideally connect with–I don’t think more is necessarily better, but where do we draw the line to say that x number of people made y number of connections with others, so the course has been a success?

This is getting pedantic, but I’m trying to express the point that when you really dig into this kind of question and try to design a research project, you would have to address this kind of question, and it’s kind of ridiculous. It’s ridiculous because there are so many different ways that connecting with other people could be valuable for a person, and for one person, having made one connection ends up being much more valuable than for another who has made 50. So much depends on the nature and context of those connections, and those are going to be highly individual and likely impossible to specify in any general way.

Further, what if some participants are happy to watch a few presentations and read blogs and lurk in twitter chats but don’t participate and therefore don’t “connect” in a deeper sense (than just reading and listening to others’ work and words). Should we say that if there are a lot of such persons in a cMOOC, the course has not been successful? I don’t think so, if we’re really sticking to the idea that participants can be engaged in the course to the degree and for the reasons they wish.

One possibility would be to ask participants to reflect on the connections they’ve made and whether/why/how they are valuable. One might be able to get some kind of useful qualitative data out of this, and maybe even find some patterns to what allows for valuable connections. In other words, rather than decide in advance what sorts of connections, and how many, are required for a successful cMOOC, one could just gather data about what connections were made and why/how people found them valuable. If done over lots of cMOOCs, one might be able to devise some sort of general idea of what makes for valuable connections in cMOOCs.

But would it be possible to say, on the basis of such data, whether a particular cMOOC has been successful? If many people made some connections they found valuable, would that be more successful than if only a few did? Again, this leads to the problems noted above–it runs up against the point that in cMOOCs participants are free to act and participate how they wish, and if they wish not to make connections, that doesn’t necessarily have to mean the course hasn’t been “successful” for them.

Looking at participation rates

photo credit: danielmoyle via photopin CC-BY

One might consider looking at participation rates in a cMOOC, given that much of such a course involves discussions and sharing of resources amongst participants (rather than transferral of knowledge mainly from one or a few experts to participants). As this video by Dave Cormier demonstrates so well, cMOOCs are distributed on the web rather than taking place in one central “space” (though there may be a central hub where people go for easy access to such distributed information and discussions, such as a blog hub), and this means that a large part of the course is happening on people’s blogs, on Twitter, on lists of shared links, and elsewhere. So it would seem reasonable to consider the degree to which participants engage in discussions through these means. How many people are active in the sense of writing blog posts, commenting on others’ blog posts, participating in Twitter chats and posting things to the course Twitter hashtag, participating in discussion forums (if there are any; there were none in ETMOOC) or in social media spaces like Google+, etc?

This makes sense given the nature of cMOOCs, since if there were no participation in these ways then there would be little left of the course but a set of presentations by experts that could be downloaded and watched. Perhaps one could say that even if we can’t decide exactly how much participation (or connection, for that matter) is needed for “success,” an increase in participation (or connection) over time might indicate some degree of success.

But again, we run up against the emphasis on participants being encouraged to participate only when, where and how they wish, meaning that it’s hard to justify saying that a cMOOC with greater participation amongst a larger number of people was somehow more effective than one in which fewer people participated.  Or that a cMOOC in which participation and connections increased over time was more successful than one in which these stayed the same or decreased (especially since the evidence I’ve seen so far suggests that a drop off in participation over time may be common).

Determining your own purposes for participating in a cMOOC and judging whether you’ve reached them

Another option could be to ask participants who agree to be part of the research project to state early on what their goals for participating in the cMOOC are, and then towards end, and even in the middle, perhaps, ask them to reflect on whether they’re meeting/have met them.

Sounds reasonable, but then there are those people–like me taking ETMOOC–who don’t have a clear set of goals for taking an open online course. I honestly didn’t know exactly what I was getting into, nor what I wanted to get out of it because I didn’t understand what would happen in it. And as noted above, even though there may be some predetermined topics and presentations, what you end up focusing on/writing about/commenting on in discussion forums or others’ blogs/Tweeting about develops over time, as the course progresses. So some people may recognize this and be open to whatever transpires, not having any clear goals in advance or even partway through.

For those who do set out some goals for themselves at the beginning, it could easily be the case that many don’t end up fulfilling those particular goals by the end, but going in a different direction than what they could have envisioned at the beginning. In fact, one might even argue that that would be ideal–that people end up going into very different directions than they could have imagined to begin with might mean that the course was transformative for them in some way.

Thus, again, it’s difficult to see just how to make an argument about the effectiveness of a cMOOC by asking participants to set their goals out in advance and reflect on whether or not they’ve met them. Perhaps we could leave this open to people not having any goals but being able to reflect later on what they’ve gotten out of the course, and open to those who end up not meeting their original goals but go off in other valuable directions.
This would mean gathering qualitative data from things such as surveys, interviews or focus groups. I think it would be good to ask people to reflect on this partway through the course, at the end of the course, and again a few months or even a year later. Sometimes what people “get out of” a course doesn’t really crystallize for them until long after it’s finished.

Conclusions so far

It seems to me that there is a tension between the desire to have a course built in large part on the participation of individuals involved, and the desire to let them choose their level and type of participation. In some senses, cMOOCs appear to promote greater participation and connections amongst those involved, while also backing away from this at the same time. I understand the latter, and I appreciate it myself–that was one of the things that made ETMOOC so valuable for me. I was encouraged to choose what to focus on, what to write about, which conversations to participate in, based on what I found most important for my purposes (and based on how much time I had!). There are potential downsides to this, though, in that participants may not move far beyond their current beliefs, values and interests if they just look at what they find important based on those. But overall, I see the point and the value. I expect there are some good arguments in the educational literature for this sort of strategy that I’m not aware of.

Still, this is in tension, to some degree, with the emphasis on connecting and participating in cMOOCs. Perhaps the idea is that it would be good for people to do some connecting and participating, but in their own ways and on their own time, and if they choose not to we shouldn’t say they are not doing the course “correctly.” It might nevertheless be possible/permissible to suggest that, given the other side of this “tension,” looking at participation or connection rates could be considered as part of looking at the success of a cMOOC? Honestly, I’m torn here.

[Update June 7, 2013] I just came across this post by George Siemens, in which he doubts the value of lurking, at least in a personal learning network (PLN). There are likely differences of opinion amongst cMOOC proponents and those who offer them, on the value of letting learners decide exactly how much to participate.

It is, of course, possible that the whole approach I’m taking is misguided, namely trying to determine how one measure whether a cMOOC has been successful or not. I’m open to that possibility, but haven’t given up yet–not until I explore other avenues.

I had one other section to this post, but as it is already quite long, I moved that section to a new post, in which I discuss a suggestion by Stephen Downes as to how to evaluate the “success” of MOOCs. In that and/or perhaps another post I will also discuss some of the published literature so far on cMOOCs, and what the research questions and methods were in those studies.

 

Please comment/question/criticize as you see fit. As you can tell, I’m in early stages here and am happy for any help I can get.

 

“I can read tv” book cover–Time Enough at Last (ds106zone)

For the second week of ds106zone, the Summer 2013 edition of ds106, we were working in part on design assignments. I had a few ideas of things I wanted to do, but only managed to get one thing done because it took me so long. I decided to take on a difficult assignment, knowingly, because I wanted to force myself to learn about more things in GIMP to do it. That definitely worked–the learning about stuff part. The final product is not quite what I wanted, but it’s pretty close, which I’m happy about.

I thought about doing the “Wait, where’d that guy come from?” assignment, which I thought I could do fairly easily in GIMP, or the “Lyric typography poster,” which would give me a chance to play around with fonts, but decided that what would be most challenging, and therefore would push me most to learn lots of things, is the “I can read movies” book cover assignment. That requires looking at & choosing fonts, as well as adding things into images, and more, so it is a bunch of things I wanted to learn rolled into one. It is also quite difficult to pull off well.

I looked at Spacesick’s original “I can read movies” covers, and most of the ds106 versions on the assignment page, and decided I wanted to go with a black background with a couple of colours. It reminded me of a kind of 60s/early 70s aesthetic that I thought would work for my idea to do a Twilight Zone episode version.

Here’s the finished product.

What I was trying to do:

  • I wanted to capture an idea, a feeling, or a scene in 2-3 images, and when I first thought of this assignment what came to mind was the scene where Bemis’ glasses have just fallen off and broken, and he is reaching down to them. He doesn’t yet know they’re broken, and his vision is completely blurred, just like it will be for the rest of this life. It’s the moment just before he finds out, and I find that powerful. I originally created the rectangles to represent rubble–I was thinking of those skeletal remains of buildings you sometimes see in rubble, with just some beams left over. But later, I thought they could also be book spines, perhaps–a jumble of them.
  • I included “Series 1” and the number “8” to fit the season/episode.
  • I wanted to include a tv icon on the top left, instead of the movie icon that Spacesick used for the book covers.
  • I wanted to make it look old and worn, and somewhat “paper-y,” as it’s supposed to be a paperback, and one that was printed decades ago.

What I’m happy with

  • The design of the three images–hand, glasses, rubble–turned out almost exactly as I meant it to. It’s what I pictured. Except for some details, as noted below.
  • I like the fonts I found for the “I can read tv” (Dream Orphanage) and the “Time Enough at Last” (Diamante Fresko). I wanted them to look like they’d fit a book from the 60s. I’m not 100% happy with them, but I think they work all right. I tried to find one that fit The Twilight Zone original font, and the closest thing I found was I Still Know. It’s pretty good, but “The Twilight Zone” on the book doesn’t quite look how I wanted (see below).
  • I think I managed to make the book look dusty and a bit worn, which I’m happy with. I wanted to do some other things to make it look more worn, though, as noted below.

What I’m not happy with

There are a number of things I’d like to change, but I just needed to finish this so I could move on to week 3!

  • The thing I worked hardest at was dealing with the pixelation of the glasses and hand. As you can see, I didn’t end up managing to fix it. The rubble ended up pixelating too, which was weird b/c I drew that myself. Saga on all that below.
  • I’m not happy with the colour of the tv icon at the top left. I struggled with what colour to make it, as I wanted this to have only a couple of colours beyond black/white/grey (given the b/w of the original show). I didn’t want anything really bright, as again, I wanted to stick fairly close to a b/w feeling (that’s why the colours that are there are pretty dark). The problem was I had to colour this thing by hand, as discussed below.
  • I think the font for the “Series 1” at the top, and the “A story created from the original script” at the bottom (both are Liberation Sans) doesn’t really fit the rest. It’s too modern-looking.
  • I’d like to have more spacing between the lines of “The Twilight Zone,” so the three words are separated a bit more. But when I hit “return” after each word in the “text” tool, the spacing was too large. Beyond putting each word on a separate layer and moving them, I don’t know how to fix this. I decided not to put each on a separate layer and move, but just leave as is.
  • I didn’t manage to make the book look as old and worn as I wanted, nor to look like it was made of paper. I like the look of the one on the assignment page for this assignment, with the light pixels on the edges that makes it look like the top part of the paper is flaking off a bit. See below for how I tried to do this, without a lot of success.

The process

Since this was a complicated process, the discussion will be a bit long. As with my post on selective colourization, mostly I’m documenting this in such detail for my own future reference, and for anyone else who is very new to GIMP like me.

Creating the hand and glasses

I got the hand and glasses from The Noun Project site. They were svg (scalable vector graphics) files, as are all the files on that site. I had watched the presentation on design for ds106zone and learned that svg files are useful because they don’t pixelate when scaled. So I thought: hey, great! I’ll put them in my image and scale them up a bit and they’ll look fine. 

No. I didn’t watch the presentation carefully enough. Tim Owens and Jim Groom noted that when you import svg files into GIMP they get turned into something else (jpegs, I think), and so when you try to scale them up they DO pixelate. Tim suggested we could import them into GIMP as bigger images (you can choose the pixel size when you open them in GIMP) and scale down, and they’d look okay. Which I did, and they did.

But the problem came when I tried to colour the svg files from The Noun Project. They were black to begin with, and I needed them white. It was when I coloured them that they pixelated. I used the “fuzzy select” tool and then the bucket tool to colour them white, and I got weird pixels. I don’t know any way to fix this except to use an svg editor like Inkscape (thanks to Brian Bennett for suggesting that to me via Twitter). But I just didn’t want to try to figure out a new image editor at this point. So I lived with the pixels.

I drew an arm to attach to the hand with the lasso tool and filled it with with with the bucket tool. I then wanted some kind of colour on the glasses, so I tried colouring them entirely red, but I didn’t like the look. So I used “stroke selection” to do an outline on them, Which was also pixelated b/c they were pixelated. I used the pencil tool, I think, to draw in some “cracks” on the glasses lenses.

To break the glasses in half, I selected one half of them and used “cut” and then “paste” to get a floating layer. Then I created a new layer and anchored the floating layer to it (if I remember correctly). Then I could move that half of the glasses separately from the other half. I know Henry Bemis’ glasses didn’t break in half in the episode, but I did this to emphasize their brokenness.

Creating the rubble

I drew rectangles with the rectangle select tool, and filled them in with grey. But they were all vertical, and I wanted them rotated a bit. This turned out to be difficult, because when I used the rotate tool I got white where the bars used to be. I didn’t know what to do, so I started trying to paint black over that white part, which was a pain. I can’t remember exactly where the bars were–I think on the background layer, rather than on their own separate layer. I did an extensive web search to solve the problem, and finally found an answer here. I discovered I could put the rectangles on a floating layer and then move them, either using a combination of key strokes or “cut” then “paste” to create a floating selection. I can’t recall if I could rotate them on the floating selection or whether I had to anchor them to a new layer first.

I originally made the rubble just grey (to fit the b/w show, and grey seems a good colour for rubble), but it looked really flat. So I used the “gradient” tool in GIMP to add a darker/lighter gradient–picking the foreground and background colours and making the gradient go from one to the other.

Creating the top of the image

I just used the rectangle select and bucket fill tools to do the red lines at the top. The tv icon was also from The Noun Project, and was also black to begin with. When I used the fuzzy select tool to try to recolour it, the pixelation was really, really bad. It looked awful. So, I used the lasso tool and selected around each part of it and then used the bucket fill to change the colour. I tested a few colours and decided on grey. It took awhile to hand select and colour in the whole icon, so when I was done and didn’t like the colour I couldn’t bring myself to do it again.

Adding the dust

At first I tried the following. I first downloaded some new brushes, from the Deviant Art site. I downloaded some texture brushes and some “grunge” brushes. Then I created a new layer and coloured it white, lowering the opacity. Then I used the eraser tool and played around with some of the texture and grunge brushes to erase away parts of the white layer. This looked pretty good, except that there was then no “dust” on the white parts of the image. I realized I needed to add grey “dust” to make the white parts look a little old and worn as well.

So I used some of the texture and grunge brushes and painted on a grey colour. I played around with the colours and the opacity, as well as the brush characteristics, including size, spacing, dynamics, and more. Here is a nice tutorial on brushes that I found very helpful.

As noted above, I wanted to try to make the book cover look like parts of the paper were flaking off because it was old. I tried to do this with the “dissolve” mode on various brushes, playing with the colour and opacity, and the best I could do is at left and below. I used white at first, but it just looked weird, so I went with grey. It’s okay, but it looks like grey speckles rather than flaking paper. 

I tried a few different ways of doing the speckles, with different colours and opacities, and here’s one with brighter speckles. I still don’t think it looks like paper flaking off. Not sure what else I could have done.

 

Well, I think that’s it for process. I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out, but it took me a LONG time because I still don’t know that much about GIMP. But doing this project taught me a whole lot of things I didn’t know before, so I’m very happy about that!

 

 

 

Connectivism–Siemens’ arguments

I have submitted a proposal to two different conferences, for a session in which we would discuss the possibility and methods of researching the effectiveness of cMOOCs. One of those conferences is still considering the proposal, but as soon as decisions are made there I’ll post the proposal itself here on my blog. The proposal was accepted for a poster presentation at one conference, but I’m still waiting to hear from the other.

If the session gets accepted, I’ll need to give some background to cMOOCs in the way of talking about connectivism. And I want to dig my way through connectivist ideas anyway, so I’m going to do so here on the blog. That’s the way I think through things best–writing about them (or teaching, but I’m on sabbatical at the moment and not teaching).

I have read a number of articles and blog posts by George Siemens on connectivism, and have bookmarked quite a few others by Stephen Downes. Here I’ll discuss Siemens’ arguments, at least those I’ve found so far. I will not address the question of whether this is really a “new” learning theory, or whether it’s a learning theory at all, which are some issues that have been discussed in the research literature. I’m also not going to comment on the relationships between connectivism and constructivism, behaviourism, and cognitivism, as I have a woeful lack of knowledge of such theories. I’m just going to try to figure out some of (not all of) the basic ideas/arguments in what Siemens has written, and give my comments.

Context for the view

Siemens argues that connectivism makes sense for a context in which people have relatively access to a very large amount of information (through, e.g., the world wide web–not saying that everyone does have such access, but for those who do, Siemens is claiming, connectivism makes sense), can use technology to store that information rather than needing to have it in their own heads, and in which what counts as “knowledge” changes rapidly such that it becomes obsolete relatively quickly compared to past centuries and even decades (Siemens, 2005a). He claims we need a new learning theory, a new way of understanding how learning and knowledge work, within this sort of context.

Learning as a process of forming connections

To me, this is one of the fundamental ideas in connectivism, and the one I’m most interested in. I want to pick apart some of what Siemens says about it, in order to understand it better.

Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources. (Siemens, 2005a)

I perceive learning as a network formation process. (Siemens, 2006b)

To really get at what is going on here, one would probably need to know more about learning theory than I do (as in, something about it, which I don’t). But the general idea is that when one learns something, what happens is that one makes connections between…what? Nodes. What counts as a “node”?

photo credit: jared via photopin CC-BY

Siemens explains that networks have both nodes and connections, and “a node is any element that can be connected to any other element. A connection is any type of link between nodes” (Siemens, 2005b). He notes in (Siemens 2005a) that nodes can be, e.g., “fields, ideas, communities,” among other things. He also speaks of people as nodes. In this presentation posted by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (starting at around 7 minutes), Siemens describes teaching a course as a process of directing the formations of connections for students–when we given them particular course content, particular texts, particular theories to study and discuss, we are guiding how they form connections. The scope of “nodes” is very wide:

Virtually any element that we can scrutinize or experience can become node. Thoughts, feelings, interactions with others, and new data and information can be seen as nodes. (Siemens, 2005b)

Thus, connections can be made between nodes as persons, as ideas, as sets of data, as texts (or other media, such as videos), as groups, and more. So if I learn something, I make a connection (in my mind?) between myself and, say, a text, and between ideas I already have and those I’m getting from the text. I think that’s right, but I’m not absolutely certain, especially about the location of the connections–can some connections be located in thoughts, others outside? Siemens is clear that “[l]earning may reside in non-human appliances” (Siemens, 2005a), so clearly he thinks the connections don’t have to be only internal. But can they be internal at all? I’ll return to this question below.

First, briefly: How can learning reside in non-human appliances? If learning is a process of making connections, then appliances such as computers, and the software that runs on them, as well as the whatever that nebulous thing is that is sometimes called the “web,” could be considered as facilitating the making of connections. I make connections between myself and other persons, between my ideas and theirs, between my ideas and new information, quite often these days through the medium of these non-human entities. I suppose it is in that sense that learning, as a process of connection formation, can “reside” in non-human appliances. In a blog post entitled “What is the Unique Idea in Connectivism?”, Siemens explains the role of technology a bit further:

… technology plays a key role of 1) cognitive grunt work in creating and displaying patterns, 2) extending and enhancing our cognitive ability, 3) holding information in ready access form (for example, search engines, semantic structures, etc). (Siemens, 2006d)

Under (1), technological appliances like computers and software can create links and patterns, but also (2) extend our cognitive ability, which to me means that we can think through and understand many things more quickly and easily when we can quickly see and read and watch a number of resources about them. (3) is related to this too–the information is stored and readily accessible (well, sometimes readily…sometimes it’s quite hard to find) so that we don’t have to store it in our own, individual minds. The latter is true of textual technology like books, too. So if learning is a process of forming connections, then non-human entities can be and often are an important part of that process.

One might want to object that the appliances merely make possible these connections, that the connections themselves occur, somehow, mostly internally to individuals. One might think of the connection between some ideas I have already and some new ones I am introduced to in this way–the connection between these, however that might be characterized (and that’s a big question), seems to be localized in my own mind.

But what about the “connection” between myself and someone I communicate with entirely through the internet and the applications that allow me to do so? In what does it consist? Is it an abstraction in my mind? A feeling I have that I am linked to someone? Perhaps it makes more sense to think of this connection in terms of thoughts, feelings, plus tangible evidence of the connections in the form of emails, posts to social networks like Twitter, Google+, Facebook, video chats on Google Hangout or Skype, work that is collaboratively produced, and more. Some of these connections can be traced and visualized, such as connections on twitter being tracked and visualized through Martin Hawksey’s Twitter Archiving Google Spreadsheet (TAGS). Here’s a spreadsheet I made through TAGS for the #ds106zone Twitter hashtag, for May 23-31, 2013. And here’s the visualization of the connections on that hashtag for those seven days.

Thus, connections could, I think, be both in an individual’s mind in some way (however one might understand connections between ideas), and also located outside an individual as well.

Learning and knowledge

In reading some of Siemens’ articles and blog posts, I found myself getting confused as to the exact meanings of these tw0 terms, so I want to explore them further here. Learning is discussed briefly above as the process of making connections between nodes. What about knowledge?

Knowledge is defined as a particular pattern of relationships and learning is defined as the creation of new connections and patterns as well as the ability to maneuver around existing networks/patterns.

Our knowledge resides in the connections we form – where to other people or to information sources such as databases. (Siemens, 2006d; emphasis mine)

Siemens here suggests that while learning is a process of creating connections and patterns (as well as the ability to move around existing ones…though frankly I’m not quite sure what that means), knowledge is a particular pattern itself. In “Connectivism: Learning theory or pastime of the self-amused?” he states that knowledge “resides in a distributed manner across a network,” rather than being only in the mind of an individual (Siemens, 2006a, p. 10).

This “externalization of our knowledge,” he states in the same article, “is increasingly utilized as a means of coping with information overload” (p. 11):

Most learning needs today are becoming too complex to be addressed in “our heads”. We need to rely on a network of people (and increasingly, technology) to store, access, and retrieve knowledge and motivate its use. (Siemens, 2006c)

We have access to and can use so much information that we must externalize it through various means, such as storing it in handwritten notes, printed papers, or digital works such as texts, images, videos.

But what does it mean, exactly, to say that knowledge is a certain “pattern” of connections? The best way I can make sense of this for myself is with an example. Let’s say I know how to make an animated gif. We’ll ignore for the moment how it is I know that I know this, if I’m just trying to figure out the theory that would explain knowledge in the first place. How did I learn how to do this? I connected to a course called “ds106” (Digital Storytelling 106), which connected me to the instructor (Jim Groom), who connected me (through Twitter) to two tutorials on how to do it–a wiki page and a video. What/where is my “knowledge” of how to do this? Partly in my head, but partly not because I can’t (yet) remember each step. So partly it’s in the tutorials and the links I have to those on my computer, and partly in my link to the instructor whom I could ask questions of, and partly in my links to the other participants in the course who could help me as well. I can see, then, why one might say that the “knowledge” is not just what’s in my head, but also in some way “in” these connections. Of course, I could get to the point where I remember how to make an animated gif and so don’t need to access those connections for the basic procedure, but I would need to access the people and/or a web search if I wanted to do anything more advanced with gifs (which I did with the one linked above).

But what I’d like to see is some clearer and more detailed arguments on what counts as “knowledge” to justify why I should think of these connections I have to information on the web and to other people as part of my knowledge set. I am not an epistemologist, and haven’t studied epistemology since grad school, so I can’t go very far in criticizing this view from a philosophical perspective. I would, nevertheless, like to see a more fully worked-out argument for this view of knowledge.

In the connectivist view according to Siemens, then, it seems that learning is the process of creating patterns through developing connections, and knowledge is a resulting pattern within a network. Both, I think, can have both internal and external elements (knowledge can be a pattern of connections as abstract ideas and their logical links, e.g., as well as a connection stored in a computer text or video file).

But I get confused reading some of Siemens’ texts, because at times these words are defined slightly differently. For example, in Siemens (2006a), learning is stated to be the network itself: “The learning is the network” (p. 16), whereas I was thinking of learning as the process of making connections and then knowledge residing in the network thus created. He says the same thing in a blog post:  “The network itself becomes the learning” (Siemens, 2006c). Perhaps this ambiguity is just the result of working this view out over a series of writings, which would be completely understandable. Blog posts, after all, may be treated by their authors as drafts of ideas, working through one’s views over time (I certainly view mine that way). 

“The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe” (Siemens, 2005a)

This claim reflects the idea that since what counts as our “knowledge” is not only in our own heads but also outside of us, in a pattern of connections that is located partly in our own minds (and neurons!), partly in connections stored on computers, on paper, or technology (as discussed above), and partly in the links we have to other people, then what is most important is not what we have in our minds at any given moment, but the nature of these connections. When we have a problem we need to solve, for example, we don’t have to turn to the knowledge stored in our brains, but can turn to a web search, to people we’re connected with, to a course, or other sources to get the information/skills we need. “As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses,” so “[n]urturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning” (Siemens, 2005a).

This, of course, has implications for teaching and learning: if we were to follow the connectivist view as teachers, we would not emphasize providing content to students. As many of us have already realized, at least some of the content we could provide is readily available to students on the web (This depends on the course, of course; I would say that my own interpretations of philosophical texts are not readily available, even though students could find others’ interpretations on the web pretty easily. But then again, if I post my interpretations as lecture notes on the web, then it would be available to them already.) Instead, the instructor could spend time with the class discussing, criticizing, asking and answering questions, etc.

And we could also help them with their “connectivist” skills–for lack of a better term (my term). We could help them with finding and evaluating information and information sources, for example, and with forming a network of people that can help them (and that they can help) in regards to a particular topic/field. Siemens (2008) provides a summary of various activities and roles for “connectivist” educators.

My current thoughts

Besides some slipperiness in terminology, the basic idea here makes sense. We could think of learning as a process of making connections, and knowledge as the patterns of connections thus made (if, that is, I’ve got the view right, which I might not of course). And in a context in which the internet makes information fairly easy to access (recognizing the problems with search engines filtering results in various ways) and connections to other people fairly easy to make (recognizing that people are most likely going to connect to others who are connected to who they already know, and those they tend to agree with most), I can see that the ability to make and access connections would be more important than what one “knows” in the sense of having information stored in one’s brain. One could also think of all learning as a matter of connecting things, whether it be making a connection to a book, a web page, a person, a video, etc., one might say that I am learning through making connections. I am also learning through adding the new information and skills I get thereby to my existing set, and making connections in that way as well.

I’m not convinced that this is the best way to think of learning and knowledge, at least not yet. The main problem is that I know nothing of learning theory, so I don’t know the other options. Another problem is, as noted above, I don’t think Siemens has a clearly worked-out, detailed epistemological view in the articles and blog posts I’ve read (as a philosopher I want many more specific and clear arguments supporting this view of knowledge). So while I think it makes some sense, I’m not convinced at the moment that I should accept Siemens’ view of connectivist understandings of learning and knowledge.

I think, however, that Stephen Downes has more arguments about connectivist epistemology in his writings, so that is who I’ll turn to next, in an upcoming post.

Your thoughts

Have I done justice to Siemen’s arguments about connectivism? What do you think of them? Please let us know in the comments!

Works cited

Siemens, G. (2005a). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 1(2). Retrieved from http://itdl.org/journal/jan_05/article01.htm

Siemens, G. (2005b). Connectivism: Learning as network-creation. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/networks.htm

Siemens, G. (2006a). Connectivism: Learning theory or pastime for the self-amused? Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism_self-amused.htm

Siemens, G. (2006b, April 6). Learning, assessment, outcomes, ecologies. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=57

Siemens, G. (2006c, June 21). Constructivism vs. connectivism [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=65

Siemens, G. (2006d, Aug. 6). What is the unique idea in connectivism? [Web log post] Retrieved from http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=116

Siemens, G. (2008). Learning and knowing in networks: Changing roles for educators and designers. IT Forum. Retrieved from http://itforum.coe.uga.edu/Paper105/Siemens.pdf

Cmdr Hendricks’ final transmission

I have not been doing any ds106 “daily creates” for a few days, so I figured it was time to get back to them. Today’s was a lot of fun. Here’s the text of today’s daily create (actually yesterday’s, for me here in Australia…by the time I get the daily create announcements (the next day here) it’s already much of the way through that day over in N. America!):

Review the photos fromthe Daily Create of May 21, 2013 “Take a picture of where you are right now from a weird point of view, like an ant, an alien, or a ghost.” Pick one image, and write up a report to headquarters from the creature that was observing one of these humans. Be sure to include the URL of the image so HQ can verify your observations.

You can see all the submissions here, including mine. But I goofed bigtime. I pasted the link to the wrong image! Or rather, I pasted a link to a blog post I had in my “clipboard,” and didn’t realize I had failed to copy the link I wanted into the clipboard until after it was submitted. And you can’t edit post submission.

So here it is, with the correct image link. It will make more sense if you go look at the image!

—————————————————————-

Investigation file #562-9945x-00y

Regarding the disappearance of Cmdr. Hendricks

Contents:

  1. transcript of Cmdr. Hendricks’ last transmission
  2. last image sent by Cmdr. Hendricks before transmission ended: http://www.flickr.com/photos/71428177@N00/8776588388/

 [This is a selection of the last transmission, showing the last few minutes before the transmission ended abruptly. The entire transmission can be found in file #562-9945x-00z]

 

HQ: Sorry, we couldn’t hear that; too much interference. Please repeat. Over.

Cmdr. H: [speaking softly] I have somehow been beamed into an extremely hostile area. Coordinates must be mistaken. This is not, repeat, NOT the experimental garden. It is full of artificial structures, not plant life. Over.

HQ: We triple-checked the coordinates and are doing so again as we speak. We need to figure out where you are. Please describe your surroundings. Over.

CH: [speaking softly] I just escaped from a huge, round metal structure with steep sides. There was a hostile inhabitant who was using an enormous stream of water that is pushing me towards a hole in the bottom of the metal structure. I managed to climb out using a long, wooden, cylindrical item that resembles a log with the bark stripped off. I am hiding at the moment behind a giant, black box. Over.

HQ: Stay put, Hendricks, until we can lock onto your position. Over.

CH: Damn, I think the creature has seen me. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH  NOOOOOOOOOOOO  [muffled sounds]

HQ: Cmdr. Hendricks? Cmdr. Hendricks? Do you copy? Come in, Cmdr. Hendricks. Over.

[there are a few moments of radio silence]

CH: [out of breath] [whispering] The creature grabbed hold of me and tried to stuff me inside the giant black box through a swinging door on the front of it. It had several buttons and dials. I have no idea what the box does, but given the hostility shown me so far I can only guess the creature meant to do away with me by putting me inside. I wriggled free and am hiding near a large metal field with a grid across it. I am going to try to cross the beams on the grid. Over.

HQ: We just checked the coordinates and someone forgot to account for leap years. You’re in the right place, but the wrong time. We are firing up the transporter and just need to get your current coordinates. We’re working as fast as we can, but it will take 5 minutes. You need to find a way to keep safe. Over.

CH: [whispering] I am crossing the black beams over the metal field. The field is strange…it has circular patterns with holes… Oh *&#$!!! This is a death trap! The creature has ignited flames in the holes, heating up the entire grid! I’ve got to make a run for it! [3 seconds of breathing hard] Okay, I’m safe for the moment behind a tall, shiny metal box. Over.

HQ: Just 4 more minutes and we’ll have you. Hang on. Over.

CH: Wait; I’ve climbed up the tall, shiny box to get a look inside, and I think I can shut this whole area down. It’s just like HAL in here, and if I can get it powered down, the creature can’t use any more of these weapons until you get me out. I’ll just climb in for a closer loo…[end of transmission]

 

 

 

Street art — selective colourization (#ds106 assignment)

I’m participating in ds106 at the moment, as an open, online participant. It’s a crazy, compacted summer course for students taking it on campus at the University of Mary Washington–just see what they need to do for week 1 (which has just finished). Here’s the full syllabus for the on campus participants.

As an open participant, I’m free to do what I want (a lot) and have time for (not much). I’ve managed to do two assignments so far, an animated gif assignment and the one discussed here. Plus, I did quite a few “daily creates” from last week, which are posted in my daily create set on flickr. But this is a tiny fraction of what many people are doing. I have to cram all my ds106 work into 2-3 hours after my son goes to bed at night, and I’ve been staying up pretty late to get even these things done. Having a blast doing them, though.

The image below was done for the “Focus on one colour” assignment: “Either in your room or a room in your house [take a photo] and use gimp or any other photo editor to focus on one color in the room.” Well, looking around the apartment I’m renting in Melbourne, Australia right now, most of the rooms are really dull in colour–white, grey, brown. Not much colour happening here. So I decided to use a photo of some street art I had taken earlier and do selective colourization on that. I realize it doesn’t quite fit the assignment, but I doubt anyone will mind much.

Here’s the original image:

Street art in the Fitzroy neighbourhood, Melbourne, Australia

 

And here’s the selectively colourized version:

 

Street art selectively colourized

There were quite a few colours in the image, so first off I had to choose which one to focus on. I picked the yellow first, because: it was spaced pretty evenly over the image, there was enough of it to stand out (not so with some of the colours), there was not too much of it (which was important too, because it woudn’t stand out from the greyscale as well if there were a lot of it; this would have been the case if I did all the shades of blue, for example), and I thought it would look pretty nice against the greyscale image. Of course, the pink could have worked too, or just the light shade of blue alone. I didn’t do red because there just wasn’t that much of it.

I was just going to do the yellow, but thought the orange would look nice with it as a colour (and much of the yellow was close to an orange shade anyway). Plus, doing the orange too  would highlight a couple of other areas in the image that I thought would provide a nice balance. So not only did I not follow the assignment instructions for taking a photo of a room, I also didn’t follow them for picking one colour.

Process

I did this the hard way, I think. I used GIMP and wanted to work a bit more with layer masks, which I had only tried once before. So even though there are lots of tutorials like this one about how to do selective colourization with GIMP using the eraser tool, I thought I’d try to do it with a layer mask. Which meant I came up with a process on my own (partly because I couldn’t easily find a tutorial on selective colourization with layer masks, and partly because I wanted to see if I could figure it out on my own). If there are easier ways to do this with a layer mask, or better ways for some reason, please let me know!

I’ll be explaining in detail, because I don’t yet really understand all this and need to explain it in detail to firm it up in my own mind. It might also be helpful for other total novices like me!

First I created a duplicate layer of the original image; actually, I created two duplicates so I always had the original image without touching it, just in case I messed something up with the two layers I was going to use (most people won’t need to do this, and it’s probably unnecessary, but I wanted to make sure I could always go back to the original easily, w/o having to do “undo” a bunch of times). I turned off the original layer (or whatever it’s called: I clicked the “eye” button next to the layer so it’s not visible) so I just had two layers with the same image.

On the top layer I created a layer mask. I’m pretty sure I did this backwards: I had the top layer coloured and the bottom layer greyscale (I used Image>desaturate to make the bottom one greyscale), and then I used a layer mask on the top image to make transparent all the colours except the yellow and orange–thus the greyscale from beneath would show through and the yellow/orange would stay from the top layer. Here’s a screenshot of my layers:

It would have been more intuitive, probably, to have the top layer greyscale and create a mask so that the only the yellow/orange parts were transparent and thus showed through from the bottom image. But it ended up working fine.

Here’s a screenshot of my layer mask, with white for the stuff that’s opaque (the yellow and orange) so that the greyscale from beneath doesn’t show through, and black for the transparent stuff that ends up greyscale.

I could have used the paintbrush tool to paint white all of the stuff I wanted to be coloured–the yellow & orange bits–or I could have used the lasso tool to select those bits. But I wanted to play around with the fuzzy select and colour select tools, so I used those instead. The colour select selects everything in the image that is the same colour as what you click on, and the fuzzy select selects everything that is that colour that is also contiguous to that colour. That was a LOT of work, as it turned out, because what seems like one colour is actually many different colours, so when you use either of these tools you only get a small portion of the “yellow” or “orange” sections. There was a whole lot of clicking going on to get all of it, and I still missed some of the edges of the colours. So really, the paintbrush or lasso tool would have been better. But I’m not yet proficient at using the lasso tool with a mouse for detailed work.

I would have liked to have selected some of the yellow right below the street sign in the original image, near the tree part of the painting, but it was really fuzzily blended with the pink on top of it. I didn’t know how to do a fuzzy selection where it blends into the next section. I would have gotten this hard line where there isn’t a hard line. Can anyone help me with getting a more fuzzy line for my selection? Or is that only possible if I used the paintbrush to paint the white parts rather than a selection tool?

I then created a layer mask on the top, coloured layer and set it to “selection.” It automatically made the selection white and the background black, which is what I wanted, but I think you can invert that pretty easily if you want it to be the opposite (haven’t tried, so not sure how–anyone know how?).

And that was it, really–I had two layers, coloured on top with a mask that had white on the yellow and orange bits so they were opaque, and black for the rest so the greyscale image below showed through.

Happy to hear any comments on the image or process!