George Siemens tells us "Tony Hirst shared a new initiative via OU UK: UK universities embrace the free, open, online future of higher education powered by the open University. From a Times HE release: 'Futurelearn will carry courses from 12 UK institutions (see list), which will be available to students across the world free of charge.'" Siemens comments, and I echo: "I’m more dismayed now, however, than I was in July and the anemic vision and response by Canadian universities. Higher education is facing a changed landscape. Even if MOOCs disappear from the landscape in the next few years, the change drivers that gave birth to them will continue to exert pressure and render slow plodding systems obsolete (or, perhaps more accurately, less relevant)." He's quite right. Institutions in this country are so afraid they might be making the wrong move they end up making no move whatsoever. And yes, I include my own institution in that. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Great Britain, Canada]

George Siemens raises the question of how we support Ed Tech journalists and while on the subject makes a pitch for readers to support Audrey Watters by donating through her PayPay window. There's an interesting discussion between Siemens and Scott Leslie on the subject of network-supported work in the comments. I often think about how I would fund my own work if not gainfully employed (contrary to what you read in the media, there is no job security in the civil service). I think the PayPay donation route is a good avenue; I've considered using one to cover my own expenses. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Networks, Security Issues]

In case you haven't seen it elsewhere, George Siemens writes: "On Monday, Oct 8, we kick of the Current State/Future of Higher Education open online course. This course will run for six weeks, covering these topics. We’re using Desire2Learn as a platform, in addition to the gRSShopper software (developed by Stephen Downes and used in our open courses since 2008)." If you want to join, registration is open: http://edfuture.mooc.ca/cgi-bin/login.cgi?action=Register. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Traditional and Online Courses, RSS]

Another presentation from George Siemens (I wish he would record the audio of his talks, so we could listen to them). The presentation asks how learners develop a deep and nuanced understanding of how concepts are related when learning occurs in fragments. It's a good question - I remember the English teachers objecting when we structured courses into modules at Brandon Adult Learning Centre in 1998. Some learning objectives, the said, cover entire courses. OK, so it's Siemens, so the answer will be formulated in terms of complexity and networks. He writes, "within complexity and networks we seek coherence and relatedness." Then we're off into a discussion of the need to understand the relatedness of things (probably within a theoretical structure or model). Oh it's all so unsatisfying! I want a transcript I can address directly. Because, to me, it's not about understanding the connections, no more than undertsanding a brick is about understanding its constituent atoms. Knowing that the knowledge is composed of connections doesn't mean that understanding the concept is the same as understanding the connections. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Networks, Learning Objects, Online Learning, Audio]

George Siemens fires an open letter at Canadian universities. "Canadian universities are squandering an opportunity to reply meaningfully to Coursera and EDx. I’m aware of at least two major Canadian universities that are negotiating to join Coursera. Why give not develop your own? Why not create an active experiment in a Canadian context that allows you to build your understanding of emerging learning models?" Fair enough, but I think it's rather hopeful to expect change to come out of the university system. But hey, should they change their minds and actually fund an initiative, I would be happy to work on that initiative (nay, to lead it! why be modest?) and develop a truly Canadian approach based on gRSShopper and a PLE and a connectivist model of MOOC. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, RSS, Canada]

George Siemens introduces the next open online course(aka MOOC though some people don't like the term) that we are participating in (by 'we' I mean George and myself, Dave Cormier and Bonnie Stewart, the Gates Foundation, EDUCAUSE, Desire2Learn, UBC, SOLAR, CETI, and a spare kitchen sink we found by the roadside). It will be short and intense, quite unlike our previous effort. George writes, "Today, the university as a system is under the microscope. It is now the entity that we no longer understand. We need to adopt a researcher’s mindset in coming to understand what is happening to higher education and what type of system today’s society needs." Everyone wants disruptive change, he writes, which isn't going to appen in such a large and entrenched system. Maybe so. But for my part, I do intend to be disruptive, and to let the change fall where it may. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Traditional and Online Courses, EDUCAUSE]

George Siemens presents slides and text from a presentation describing eight underlying principles for MOOCs. Among these, he says, MOOC are basdsed on connectivist pedagogy, the idea that knowledge is generative, learner-formed coherence, self-organization and resonance, and autonomous and self-regulated learners. Many of these contrast with the manner in which the big university MOOCDs anre design; as Siemens describes them, "their MOOCs are based on a hub and spoke model: the faculty/knowledge at the centre and the learners are replicators or duplicators of knowledge." He admits that the characterization is a bit unfair - but I would say, it's only a bit unfair, and if I were Siemens I would make the point rather than spend time apologizing for making it. Related tho this (and linking to it) is a post from Audrey Watters on what lies underneath the MOOC. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Linking and Deep Linking]

George Siemens offers a longish post on the Education Innovation Summit, another proud product sponsored by the Gates Foundation and a bunch of publishers. He says he'll be back again; they'll probably invite him if he keeps saying things like "entrepreneurship is a good thing in education" and "Many parts of the education system are in horrible shape." That said, if you read through to the bottom (and get past the horrible one, two or three word paragraphs - they're becoming a trend and education writers have got to stop using them) you begin to see his doubts: "Summit attendees are building something that will impact education. I’m worried that this something may be damaging to learners and society while rewarding for investors and entrepreneurs." This, I guess, is the difference between myself and Siemens: I start with the doubts, having seen so much evidence that they're warranted, and don't apologize for having them. But the entrepreneurs don't want to hear such doubts. "The conference was mono-voiced," as Siemens says. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Books, Online Learning]

Still more discussion on the nature and future of MOOCs. But as George Siemens says, it certainly appears as though it's MOOCs 4TW! I think we've bridged a conceptual gap, or crossed a threshold of social awareness. The temptation to measure them against existing programs is immense, but as Siemens says, "It is important to realize that MOOCs are not (yet) an answer to any particular problem. They are an open and ongoing experiment. They are an attempt to play with models of teaching and learning that are in synch with the spirit of the internet." See Rob Reynolds, meanwhile, who discusses MOOCs as a centrifugal force in education. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Online Learning]

One of the reasons we (George Siemens, Dave Cormier and myself) feel we've found something in MOOCs is that we have been hearing this sort of thing a lot over the last three years: "The best learning of my life." Laura McInerney writes, "There was just so. much. learning. And it was awesome in the literal sense of the word – for the entire hour I was in awe of how much information I was able to take in and make sense of in so many different ways." [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism]

George Siemens has released a set of slides on the massive open online course. "In a recent interview by Tamar Lewin for NYTimes," he writes, "I stated that while you could call Udacity, Coursera, and Codeacademy examples of MOOCs (Massive open online courses), they are largely instantiations of existing educational practices. Their primary innovation is scaling. (See Jim Groom’s comments on this post…or Alan Levine’s thoughts on scaling in moocs)." [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Traditional and Online Courses]

Notes and thoughts by George Siemens on the topic of openness from a presentation he gave at TEDxEdmonton (or as I call it, TEDmonton). "My argument," writes Siemens, "is that openness has not been oversold and that increased openness (of content, teaching/learning, analytics, policy, data, and technology) is really the only path forward for reform." As most people can imagine, I am in agreement with that sentiment. In particular, argues Siemens, there is a need for open analytics. He writes, "A few months ago, we released a concept paper on open learning analytics (.pdf). The goal of this paper is to draw attention to the need for algorithmic transparency in order to ensure that context and the needs of individual learners are reflected in teaching and learning." [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Research]

George Siemens links to this report which says there isn't much innovation in online education in Canada. The report states, "Online education, particularly in Canada, has often been perceived as a poor fit with education and training needs... lack of Canadian data and strategy, lack of collaboration, and lack of resources targeted to online university education remain barriers." In particular, says the report, "Canada has weak national innovation indicators... Online education’s ability to foster workplace innovation and STEM growth is not being maximized... (and) Canadian online innovations (virtual environments, integrated learning systems) are ad hoc." Moreover, "The United States is demonstrating leadership in online education innovation thanks to broad‐based national and philanthropic support... Canadian shared e‐resource development projects tend to be provincial (limited) in scope... Open Education Resources offer the potential for cost and utility benefits, but face challenges related to support, resourcing, and systems."

From where I sit, a lot of innovation is happening in Canada. As Siemens notes, "On a personal note, I was pleased to see that University of Manitoba listed the work Stephen Downes and I have done with massive open online courses (MOOCs) as an innovation (p. 31)." But what usually happens is that the innovation is not recognized until it is adopted elsewhere. And I think the report does have a point about the lack of financial and institutional support (not that I believe a 'national strategy' would change that). Well, meanwhile, there's a whole lot of free learning going on. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Traditional and Online Courses, Project Based Learning, United States, Leadership, Canada, Online Learning]

George Siemens writes, "I’ve been a bit frustrated in the past (actually, I still am) that the history of open courses has not been fully reflected in conversation about the Stanford AI class. People like David Wiley, Alec Couros, Stephen Downes and others have been running open courses since 2007 (this insidehighered article does touch on the history). Audrey Watters captures my thinking when she states: 'What does it mean — culturally, pedagogically, politically, financially — that Stanford garners so much buzz for its free online courses while other MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) go unheralded?'."

This is not - contra George - just a question about ego. There are deeper issues. I tried to capture some of them when I talked about the nature of free software and free content during a debate earlier this year: "I find it a point well worth making that there is an entire history of open source and open licensing that originated outside the Berkeley-Stanford-Harvard nexus that is now regarded as authoritative." The result of attributing the concept of free software to people working in this nexus is that it acquired the nature of commodity and the essence of commercialization. Agree or disagree, it's hard to argue that the appropriation of the concept didn't change it into something more palatable to a certain crowd. And that's what's happening here. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Traditional and Online Courses, Open Source, Online Learning]

George Siemens writes, 'While on the surface openness is gaining traction through scholarship and publication, content providers and journal publishers are starting to push back. During the talk, he used the image below (from this article – .pdf) to argue that journal publishers have a monopoly. The surface progress of openness belies a deeper, more dramatic period of conflict around openness that is only now beginning." [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Books, Project Based Learning, Open Access]

George Siemens has blogged our call for papers for an edited book on MOOCs. This is the academic counterpart to The MOOC Guide (IMO). He also posts the duplication theory of educational value: "if something can be duplicated with limited costs, it can’t serve as a value point for higher education." [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Books, Web Logs, Google, Academia]

Slides and a brief commentary from George Siemens's presentation in South Africa. "We need some degree of centering in order to gain coherence in a topic," he writes. "We (mistakenly) assume that if the educator provides that coherence in the form of a course, students will acquire it. But coherence is a personal thing – it’s about how *we* connect information elements and how we use artifacts and narratives to share that coherence." [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Information, Networks, Africa]

George Siemens posted this item, provoking a flurry of discussion on various lists about what counts as a MOOC. The Stanford University Artificial Intelligence is being offered as an open online course, he writes. But as people examined the course - and the required textbook costing around $150 - questions began to emerge. Was it open? Could all people participate equally? Or how about this window box farming site - is it a MOOC? This post makes the case that we need a more precise definition of what constitutes a MOOC. But of course, as always, the sticking point is around what counts as 'open'. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Traditional and Online Courses, Books]

As readers know, I've always had a distant relationship with social media. My focus has always been on this website, rather than my Twitter presence or my Facebook profile. It's a stance that has come with some criticism, and has sometimes cost me readership. But it's no matter. I've never been a mainstay in the cocktail party circuit (if you're looking for me at one, I'll be the large guy in the corner nursing a drink and planning my escape). Social media is, as George Siemens says, secondary media, and while it's useful to keep in touch, at least to a certain degree, the important things happen outside, at the edges, where real people are having real experiences. And like Siemens, I find almost intolerable "the shallow platitudes and self-serving 'look at me!' activities of social media gurus whose obsession is self-advancement." But you know, this is how it works. You can make change at the edges, or take credit for it at the centre. See also Graham Attwell, John Connell, Clarence Fisher, Paul Rudman. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Twitter, Books, Experience]

I have clashes with journal editors over the subject of literature reviews (which, for the most part, I do not provide, and eschew as irrelevant). Siemens writes (and I agree) "A literature review is a paint-by-numbers scheme that tells us what has been done and gives us a sense of which little areas our research can fill in. In times of change, we need a blank canvas to guide our thinking, not a largely-filled in 'normal science' view of the world." [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Research]

I've already started what will be several days of interesting discussions with George Siemens and others in the ed tech community in Edmonton. In this post Siemens reflects on directionality in connectivist courses (Terry Anderson today also asked, "what is instructional design in connectivist courses?") and specifically the need for "more than self-directed learning." I have long commented that working in a network does not mean working on your own, even if at the same time it does not mean working under the direction of an instructor or working collaboratively. Siemens writes, "learners need to be network-directed, not self-directed learners... network-directed learning is not a 'crowd sourcing' concept. Crowd sourcing involves people creating things together. Networks involve connected specialization – namely we are intelligent on our own and we amplify that intelligence when we connect to others." [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Networks]

George Siemens notes, "Recent funding cutbacks to this movement in the US – see Death of Open Data? – indicate that, in spite of commonsense and democracy, there is nothing inevitable about openness." Indeed. See also yhe Open Knowledge Foundation's overview of open data. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism]

If you haven't been following the learning analytics conference you've been missing out on a treat. You can get some sense of it from these presentations. You'll want especially to view Terry Anderson's and Jon Dron's presentations, which depict connectivism as a 'third wave' of distance learning development, and which postulate a 'fourth wave' consisting of analytics and 'soft' learning support. It's an elegant theoretical move and one well worth pondering. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Online Learning]

Today's online session in the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course was one of those where new ideas emerge from the interplay of ideas. In this case, the new ideas were the twin concepts of 'social lock-in' 'connective lock-in':
- Social lock-in – where we are reluctant to move to new social networks because all of our friends/colleagues are part of our current social network service.
- Connective lock-in – where we have lost control of our ability to define and shape connections
Tracy Parish also has a summary with links of today's session, including Jenny Mackness's coverage of attacks on Connectivism. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Networks, Online Learning]

As George Siemens writes, we are offering Connectivism and Connective Knowledge for the third time starting Monday. As he notes, " We are doing away with the central-space of Moodle – our final break from the LMS and will be using only the commenting feature within gRSShopper. While it might not seem like a huge change on the surface, it is probably our most significant experiment to date... In CCK11, we are still providing a centering-like structure (gRSShopper), but the format will push more of the conversation to blogs and other environments. Rather than being the course centre, gRSShopper will be more of a conduit – pushing discussion into spaces owned and controlled by learners." If you want to register, sign up here. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Traditional and Online Courses, Web Logs, RSS]

Veorge Siemens has posted the draft syllabus for his Learning Analytics course. This course starts the week of January 10. The following week we will begin offering Connectivism and Connective Knowledge - the syllabus will be posted next week, but if you want to register sight unseen the site is up here. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Google]

The concept of activity streams, as described here by George Siemens, is a fairly natural progression from the idea of the personal learning environment, and the diagram (above) makes that clear, as we have the same usual suspects - blogs, photo sites, chats, etc. - feeding into a personal system. The major different is in how the system is portrayed, and (if I may wax sceptically for the moment) and this portrayal is firmly in step with the now vogue notions of data and analytics. Not that there's nothing to these, but wrapping up the old idea in the new terminology isn't a great advance. So, if we are in some way going to learn from activity streams, we want a story of what we will learn and how the activity streams help us do this. What we get here is, "splicing information and social interactions is critical to making sense of activity streams... the need for mechanisms to order that information and flow soon becomes evident." We need more. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Interaction, Web Logs, Chatrooms]

So here's another new open course announcement: "We (Jon Dron, Dave Cormier, Tanya Elias, and [George Siemens]) [are] happy to announce an open course on Learning & Knowledge Analytics. If you're interested, please join this group LAK11. All updates on the course will be posted there. The course is offered in preparation for the Learning and Knowledge Analytics conference." [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Traditional and Online Courses, Google]

As George Siemens notes, "Soon to be offered MOOCs include: CCK11 (Stephen Downes/George Siemens, Learning Analytics (George Siemens/Jon Dron/Dave Cormier), Digital Storytelling (Jim Groom), Open Education (Rory McGreal/George Siemens), and Personal Learning Environments (Wendy Drexler/Chris Sessums). There are likely others" (and we'll list them on the newly launched mooc.ca.

In the meantime, we (Alec Couros, Jim Groom, George Siemens, Dave Cormier, and I) are had a discussion Monday afternoon on Elluminate to talk about our successes and failures delivering MOOCs over the last couple of years. Here's a link to the Elluminate recording. Lisa M. Lane adds to the discussion with her post, Got MOOC? following the discussion.

George Siemens writes about "what's wrong with (M)OOCs" and while he identifies some of the common criticisms - high drop out rates and declining participation, the need for technical skills, learners expressing their frustration at feeling disconnected and lost - I think that the main problem with them is that they are in fact courses, isolated islets in a sea of disconnected meaning. The people who are disconnected, unskilled and drop out are people who have spent their entire lives being given content on a platter to memorized, and we don't do it that way. I think our approach is the right approach, but that it will take time to establish as something like the norm. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Audio Chat and Conferencing, Attrition, Personal Learning Environment]

Will online lectures destroy universities? No, of course they won't. It will take a variety of factors, including something like an 'open credentials' system to counter the current credentials that Scott Leslie notes are "bound up very tightly with the capitalist economies that fund them." George Siemens is here responding to a Telegraph article that suggests "the education most universities provide isn't worth the money. If they don't have world-class reputations – and only a few do – then they need to change fast, or watch an exodus of students away to cheaper, better alternatives." And that conclusion, not the hyperbole of the headline, is better founded. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Online Learning]

George Siemens takes a stab at defining 21st century learning (agreeing with Dave Cormier that it's not limited to the 21st century). The skills include technical competence, experimentation, autonomy, creation, play, and capacity for complexity. He adds, "the pendulum-thinking mindset that is evident in Robinson's view is damaging in the long term. If a view of educational reform is defined by the current reality that it is reacting against, rather than a holistic model of what it will produce in the future, then we're playing a game of short-term gains, planting in our revolution the seeds for the next revolution that will push back against gains that we make now." I agree. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Gaming, Connectivism, Paradigm Shift]

George Siemens is "firmly convinced" of the following (slightly abridged):
1. Learners should be in control of their own learning. Autonomy is key.
2. Learners need to experience confusion and chaos in the learning process.
3. Openness increased the random connections that drive innovation
4. Learning requires time, depth of focus, critical thinking, and reflection.
5. Learning is network formation. Knowledge is distributed.
6. Creation is vital.
7. Making sense of complexity requires social and technological systems.
I don't agree with some of the stuff I've abridged from the principles. For example, I would say "navigating the chaos" instead of "clarifying" it. I wouldn't mention "ingesting new information," because that's not how it works. I am more likely to say educators "model and demonstrate" rather than "initiate, curate, and guide." But you know, these core seven principles, yes, I can get behind these.

And like George Siemens I am no longer interested in - and have not been for some time, which explains their complete absence from these pages - questions like "Is online learning more or less effective than learning in a classroom?" and "What role do blogs or microblogging [insert tool in question] play?" and "How can educators implement [whatever tool] into their teaching?" They're irrelevant. So is the learning styles question, but I carp about that because it has been used to make political points about learning which are wrong. Oh, and don't miss Karyn Romeis's postscript. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Learning Styles, Web Logs, Networks, Experience, Online Learning]

George Siemens writes, "what is not economically valuable in education takes a back seat in funding and attention." I agree, and in particular with this observation: "Because these individuals are currently working in jobs with skills "below their degrees" doesn't mean that they have not become better members of a democratic society. Would society be better off if those 17 million (in the US) had not received a degree?" The purpose of an education is to improve a person's life, not to extract the greatest economic benefit from that person. And when a government says it will focus exclusively on, say, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education, it is saying that people have value only so far as they contribute to industry. I reject that point of view. I reject it out of hand. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism]

In the PLENKosphere recently we've been talking about the concept of the extended web (or xWeb) and of course xLearning. The idea of xWeb/xLearning is that it is a web (or learning) that extends beyond thew browsers, beyond the computer, beyond the web, even, in a variety of interesting and important ways. We're still waiting for Tim O'Reilly to trademark the term; meanwhile we've been fleshing it out. George Siemens provides a useful contribution that that effort with this article, in which he describes the role of linked data in xWeb. "Unlike the semantic web, which most people will benefit from but will never see or directly interact with, the xWeb has a direct impact on users. Essentially, the xWeb is a blurring web, reducing distinctions between physical/digital worlds through mobiles, location-based services, augmented reality, internet of things, and digital graffiti." [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Semantic Web, Copyrights]

George Siemens extracts an audio recording of he and I talking about the distinction between connectivism and constructivism (let's see if the new enclosure feature in the Newsletter is working...). Image via ZaidLearn.
Enclosure: files/audio/excerpt-george-stephen.mp3 Size: 7428137 bytes, type: audio/mpeg [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Audio Chat and Conferencing, Constructivism, Audio]

George Siemens extracts an audio recording of he and I talking about the distinction between connectivism and constructivism (let's see if the new enclosure feature in the Newsletter is working...) [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Audio Chat and Conferencing, Constructivism, Audio]

Presentation from George Siemens on "how complex problems that involve distributed knowledge (solving problems facing society or, more personally, learning how to play guitar or participate in an open course) require a networked theory of learning." There's an Elluminate recording available. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Audio Chat and Conferencing, Networks]

I depend on email, and my main issue is not with the formal but that it's hard to integrate into the rest of my work (I want a nice email-to-database integration). George Siemens mentions Greplin, which is "a service for searching across multiple platforms: gmail, twitter, facebook, dropbox, etc." And email is being touted as a service with "platform capability". Well - that's too much. The only reason there's a "platform capability" is that email has really failed to merge with any other application. I want to see a "merge capability". So my email becomes part of my data, generically. It'll happen; give it time. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Google]

"Learning analytics," writes George Siemens, "is the use of intelligent data, learner-produced data, and analysis models to discover information and social connections, and to predict and advise on learning. EDUCAUSE's Next Generation learning initiative offers a slightly different definition 'the use of data and models to predict student progress and performance, and the ability to act on that information'." My own interest in learning analytics is pretty minimal (let's get AI right before working on applied AI) but a lot of people are very enthused about it. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, EDUCAUSE, Wikipedia]

I would never be allowed to make a presentation to such a company because there's no way in the world I would ever be so obsequious as to promise not even to mention the name of the company. Just saying. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism]

Online learning is making clear the contradiction between equity and elite institutions. This contradiction is especially apparent when the things that define an institution as "elite" have nothing to do with learning. The real objection is loss of faculty control, as University of California staff argue that e-learning "not only degraded education but centralized academic policy that undermines faculty control of academic standards and curriculum as well as campus autonomy…a picture emerges of undergraduates jammed through a mediocre education and ladder rank faculty substantially removed from both control over and involvement with undergraduate education." If faculty showed any interest in keeping costs down,reaching more student, or even making academic papers openly accessible, I'd have more sympathy with their desire for control. But the relation between the professors and their entitled students is symbiotic - they need each other, to reenforce the idea that they deserve to be there, that they are better than other people. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Accessibility, Online Learning, Academia]

George Siemens points to this open Spanish course being taught using the Connectivist model. "Whenever I see initiatives like this," he writes, "an adaptation and an augmentation of an open course – I'm reminded of the tremendous potential openness has for generating unintended learning opportunities. When Stephen and I first started with CCK08, our focus was on sharing our ideas in as open a format as possible. The decision for openness has generated many unintended adaptations of both the course content and model. I'm convinced that openness is largely about distributing creativity." [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Traditional and Online Courses]

I agree that we can't ever say "conclusively" about such a study, but games do influence attitudes. "But there's no point in being naive about it: experiences and activities influence our views, thoughts, and beliefs (duh). Even the US Army recognizes the value of games in developing skills (mindsets?) of future soldiers." [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Video, Experience]

The overnight crisis continues to mount, and George Siemens notes the lack of sympathy for universities. "Most comments are negative, critical of universities and faculty as out of touch with reality. These critical views are hardly confined to this newspaper – every article criticizing universities that I've read in major newspapers reveals a similar pattern of comments. Universities appear to be facing an identity and a relevance crisis in the eyes of much of society." [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism]

Video recording o George Siemens's talk in Oslo. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Video]

George Siemens is moving to Athabasca University. How this impacts projects I have on the go with him, I don't know yet. But I'm sure he'll make the most of this new opportunity and he joins an all-star team at the Alberta university. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Project Based Learning]

In case you were wondering... in OLDaily, you are reading at level 4 (that is, if I don't presume too much when I suggests that this is a source you trust)... (Oh, and Siemens says "The model emphasizes the role of curators (slightly related: curatorial teaching) in support of aggregation." But no. There are no curators here. There are multiple instances of level 3, multiple instances of level 4, and (significantly) they are self-selecting, not anointed appointed. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Schemas, Semantic Web]

More from the (non-)series on critical thinking. "When learners have greater control, they also require greater command of critical thinking skills. Why? Well, if I'm taking a course under the direction of an instructor, I will hopefully be able to learn from the instructor modelling these skills." [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: none]

Reprise of the Postman and McLuhan questions we should ask of media. Things like "What is the problem to which this technology is a solution?" and "What does it extend, enhance, accelerate, intensify or enable?" These days, we need to ask different, less naive, questions. Like: "who owns it?" And "how is it that they came to own something you used to own before?" And "what does it use as a source for 'truth'?" And "who can abuse it to extend their own power?" And "how much will it cost me if it becomes essential? And "Can I trust it? Or anyone over it?" And "Can I do things (say things, reach people) I couldn't before?" And finally, "will people be able to use it to spam me?" [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Spam]

I have had the same problem as George Siemens. "After the presentation, a VP (in charge of training and development) approached me and stated that simple messages are preferable. I assumed this to mean that I had delivered a presentation that was too complex." And I ask with him, "when did leading thinkers in corporate learning conclude that their audience can not handle complex subjects?" or, with even more concern: how is it that our institutions promote people who cannot understand complex concepts to positions of leadership? Isn't that tantamount to mismanagement? [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Leadership, Online Learning]