Category: ocTEL

My last week as a #DigitalScholar?

Tomorrow is the last live session of the Digital Scholar course. In this post I will share my experience of week 4 and look back briefly at the course overall. So, last week was all about the peer review process and reviewing each others’ course outlines. At the end of the week, we each received the feedback provided by our peers and mine was definitely useful. Some comments were very factual, pointing out a typo or missing information, while others made me think about how a particular section of my proposal could be re-framed or re-ordered to make it clearer. What I found particularly useful:

I know what I am talking about, but will my audience… : I think that is a key benefit from being part of a course with such a diverse group of participants. At least one of my reviewers was completely unfamiliar with what the course I was proposing was about and their comments made me want to improve my outline to make it easier to understand.

Where, what, when… : I have a tendency to repeat things when I write and using 100 words where 20 will do. Some of the feedback prompted me to be more strict about where information was included and where it could be omitted. The Scholar interface and the course rubric also helped with that.

No one knows who you are… : I rarely get blind feedback on work that I produce and as I have a senior position it can be hard for others to give me critical feedback. Even if you try and take a very collaborative approach, those kind of barriers make a difference. So I appreciated my “blind” feedback in particular because it was rather blunt.

Is this the end of my #DigitalScholar journey?
While this week is the last week of the course I am not sure I am ready to leave things behind. I am looking forward to tomorrow’s live learning moment, a meet up which has established itself quickly in my weekly routine as something I look forward to. I’ve also made some good connections with other participants and I hope they will continue to develop beyond the course end date. In terms of the work I did during the course, developing the course outline has been a really interesting undertaking. I think I have a good idea for how to develop it further in a work context, applying some of the ideas to my day job – and I also have come to realise that I have some other ideas, the bread crumb style course I mentioned in a previous post, that I might explore in my own time. Both have helped inspire me to engage directly with open course design and delivery for the first time since my work on the ocTEL course finished.

If you would like to read more, you can find all my previous posts about the course: starting with the first one looking ahead at the course, followed by the week 1 post about meeting the community and joining in, then my post for week 2 which focused on my process of designing the course outline and imaging another and also my post for week 3, which was about the peer review process.

27/07/2016
#DigitalScholar week 2: course structure v a trail of breadcrumbs

I’ve been working on my course outline as part of the #DigitalScholar course I’m participating in. The deadline is on Friday and I have been catching up on the guidance and help provided to get my submission ready. The topic of my course is using reflection as a CPD tool in Learning Technology.

As I mentioned previously, the course is run on Scholar, a new platform for me, and I feel we are gradually making friends. The ‘creator’ tool we are using took some getting used to – but it soon becomes easy to use. I’ve still drafted most of the text in a Google doc in the first instance, but translating the draft into the creator interface was straight forward and I really like the fact that you are creating content in a format which can then be used in different ways, basically working in something like a publishing interface meets back-end content management. Anyway, one of the most useful pieces of guidance provided by the course team is a rubric which sets out what sections you need to include in the outline for your future online course, what kinds of things to consider, what potential participants might need to know and so forth. It’s very helpful as well as thought provoking – in particular when it comes to thinking about possible business models for future courses. My experience on courses like ocTEL for example, was all about delivering an open course without any financial contribution from participants. The #DigitalScholar process makes you reflect on that and what sustainable alternatives might look like. It’s useful and valuable to be challenged to think about this during the initial course design phase I think.

But… yes, there is a but. I think the more I work on my course outline, the more I think about course activities, learning outcomes, accreditation or peer-review or indeed the underlying business model, the more I realise that the kind of course I’d really like to design would be quite different. Only by trying to create something new within a given structure, using the platform provided, have I started to realise what it is that I am actually curious about. It’s still a bit blurry, but some elements are starting to become clear. Here is what I have so far (and keep in mind that this is professional/personal development for me, so I am focused and what I am interested in rather than what I need to deliver at work):

Minimal content. A little like various “thoughts for the day” or “image of the day” creative approaches already happening. Maybe via email or Twitter – but no learning objects as such, mostly just a prompt. Or a trail of breadcrumbs to follow.

One way to curate contributions. That’s probably inspired by what we did with ocTEL, creating a way to use hashtags to collate contributions from across different platforms so that participants can stay within their native environments. It would probably be much harder to balance out the bias of any chosen platform in practice than I imagine, but this is all in my head anyway.

No video. Just words. This is where the story element I am after comes in. Like reading a story, participants should be able to imagine things for themselves rather than being shown.

Any pace. I think my ideal course would have no set pace, no fixed end date. A little like my experience of participating in Dave Cormier’s #rhizo15 course, there would be a no constraints.

Reflect. The main focus of the course would be on reflection. Whether you do that in your head, draw it, write it down or share it wouldn’t matter. Reflection is a personal undertaking and the course wouldn’t need to measure that. It would be up to people participating to decide whether they reflect or how well it worked for them.

Hmmmm. All in all I am not sure what I am thinking about is a course at all. Maybe it’s more an activity others could join in with.

So, that’s my progress report from week 2 of the #DigitalScholar course. Thus far I have made a lot of useful connections, met a new platform, participated in a couple of inspiring online meetings, created a draft course outline and – well, come up with a completely different idea as well. Well worth it, I think!

13/07/2016
#ocTEL in LEGO – reading week project

#ocTEL in LEGO

26/05/2014
Curiosity, badges, new stuff… running and participating in ALT’s open course, ocTEL
ocTEL badge

For the past week I have been involved in running ocTEL, the open course in Technology Enhanced Learning – version 2.0. As well as helping with running the course, I have also done my bit to participate and now that the first few days are behind me, I want to reflect on my expectations of the course as a participant/organiser hybrid… .

So, first up, what am I hoping to achieve by participating? Like everyone else, this has to fit around all the other things I am doing and there are certainly limits to how much time I can spend on it. Still, participating is important to me and in an ideal scenario I would like to:
- explore how the open badges impact on my approach to the course and interacting with it;
- read a few posts each day to gain insight into what other participants are doing and thinking about;
- reflect on how this kind of course and its activities can share my own learning habits.
Thus far, and week 1 has only just started, I have some thoughts on each of these three areas:

First, in regards to the badges, I am finding that I want them! I like looking at who else has earned the same badge and I like the way in which getting a badge or trying to at least makes me more concious about what I am achieving. From a personal point of view then, they work for me – for what I want from the course thus far.

Secondly, reading through the posts of what others have contributed gives me a whole new perspective on what others are up to in regards to using technology for learning, teaching or assessment. It’s inspirational to see how many resources there are that are being shared openly and in particular I enjoy reading contributions from outside the UK and getting a glimpse of the global learning landscape.

Last, but not least, even during this first, at times slightly chaotic week, participating in the course has given me a renewed sense of enthusiasm for learning new things. Exploring random links via Twitter #ocTEL or finding something interesting in a post gives me a sense of shared curiosity. I am enjoying seeing how questions come up and get answered.

So, that’s my thoughts after a week of ocTEL 2.0. For this week, week 1 of the course, I am taking on a tutor role alongside Phil Tubman and others, but I shall still try and get a bit of the participant experience. After that – let the badge quest begin.
05/05/2014
Sound of scale: songs for a MOOC #ocTEL
Tomorrow’s the first day of the #ocTEL open online course that alongside a group of members and staff of ALT I have been working towards delivering over the past 6 months. So while in my professional capacity there are all sorts of things to think about, a more personal question I have on my mind is what such a course sounds like.
Around 900 people have signed up for this course, and while it is not massive compared to some others, there is likely to be a fair number of people around the world, using some sort of device to participate. So whether at desks, in offices, on sofas or on the move, people will be logging in, typing, watching, searching – and listening. But with only about 1 hour of live sound to listen to each week and maybe a few videos to add, what will we be listening to in the meantime except the tapping of keys or fingers?

So, here is my playlist for the next 11 weeks, one song per week:
- Week 0: Road to Nowhere, Talking Heads
- Week 1: Shiny Happy People, R.E.M.
- Week 2: Wild world, Cat Stevens
- Week 3: Lost in the Supermarket, The Clash
- Week 4: That’s Entertainment, The Jam
- Week 5: One Step Beyond, Madness
- Week 6: Bleeker Street, Simon & Garfunkel
- Week 7: Tonight’s the night, Neil Young
- Week 8: Solitary Man, Johnny Cash
- Week 9: Changes, David Bowie
- Week 10: School’s out, Alice Cooper
03/04/2013