Write a blog post comparing the courses with regards to technology, pedagogy & general approach and philosophy
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This
is a first pass at an assignment that requires another go at a later date. I am
so new to MOOCs that I found myself having to gather confidence to enter them
at all and, I have to admit, still feel a bit flummoxed by them. But I’m
learning. So far I am at the ‘toe in the water’ stage. I want to return to this
in a few weeks.
What I’ve done
Joined DS106 and
Rhizo 14 I think – the fact I’m not sure is because it seems too easy and I don’t
seem to be able to get the sites to recognise me again, which suggests I never
really joined in the first place. They look interesting. At the moment, I’m
interested in assessment so I have a go at a middling difficulty assignment
from DS106. You can do this without joining. Here is my attempt
– you place it in your own blog with a link.
I signed up with
Coursera – so far so good, Coursera recognises me. I selected a course on
poetry writing (you can see from the above that I need it) I attach materials
from the introduction that tell you about it. To complete registration for spring,
I need to pay £32 but I might even do that, if I want certification. The
leader, Douglas Kearney at California, seems good.
This
comparison then is based on the ‘toe in the water’.
Technology
DS106
is ‘joined’ by you attaching a pre-existing blog, or one made in bespoke fashion for
the course, to the website. I found you can use the OU one with ‘/feed’ after it
but somehow I can’t re-find my original registration, so my attempt at a
written assignment is just attached to their trial page on the ‘Open’ course.
In this sense it seems genuinely to follow connectionist principles, linking
not just to learners, who connect with each other but also connecting together
all the technology used in each members Personal Learning Environment [PLE] (or
at least the digital elements of it). This seems good but I need more time to
reflect although the
description and figures in Stacey 2013 already helped me.
Coursera
is full of gateways and portals but they are much easier to navigate – the hardest
part being the bit when you realise that probably you want credit for doing
this – if only to recognise and remember that fact. So I have some counting up
my pension to do before I go further.
Pedagogy
In
the Kearney course, (A sharpened Vision: A Poetry Workshop) methodologies are
conventional but well tried: ‘talk to camera’, private reading, asynchronous group
discussion in selected weeks and a planned curriculum focused on specifics –
the nature of poetic lines.
The blend of web-page information and video
is seamless and very professional. But it is rather a digital mediation of
things I already knew about: charismatic teaching, rigorous pedagogy and
academic challenge towards the front.
The
curriculum planning, delivery and assessment are all prescribed (see Appendix
1) and very coherent and respectable within the academic discipline they
represent. General learning outcomes – in terms of assessment objects to be
completed – are all there but the assessment criteria to achieve the required
grades (80% on quizzes, 75% on score for poem by peer assessment) aren't clear. The vagueness
of the assessment criteria for these grades isn’t what I’m used to and could
have different meanings for different people. The question remains: does that matter? Must assessment be about 'making a grade'?
DS106
is harder to work out. Look, for instance, at the trial assignment I did (see ‘What
I’ve done’ (1) above: ‘my attempt’ hyperlink). What is this testing? The stress
on emergent outcomes may explain this. What emerges will emerge (if anything)
from interactions and progressions – possible future connections of self to a
new agency in self and to as yet unknown others with, as yet, unknown things to say. I’m
puzzled, excited, a bit frightened but definitely up for it as yet.
General approach and philosophy
The
Coursera offering stresses things near to my heart: the role of tutor and peer
challenge to increased quality of performance in small knowable things –
writing a better line of poetry, for instance. But it stresses that coproduction involves caring too: ‘…. the
same level of care needs to be experienced in this workshop.’ Kearney says the latter
in the video meaning that BOTH
care for others: this is not done by empty
praise but challenging them to meet a yet unseen (by them) potential in themselves. And;
to care for and take responsibility for
poetry and its value: a notion that there are hierarchically established values that distinguish
poems from each other in terms of their absolute worth.
None
of this is stressed in DS106, not, at least, at the Portal. Again the stress is
on the emergent and an emergent that must depend on some unknowable
contingencies. Maybe I will see.
H817 Block 2 Activity 14: MOOC initiation
BLOG
This is a first pass at an assignment that requires another go at a later date. I am so new to MOOCs that I found myself having to gather confidence to enter them at all and, I have to admit, still feel a bit flummoxed by them. But I’m learning. So far I am at the ‘toe in the water’ stage. I want to return to this in a few weeks.
What I’ve done
Joined DS106 and Rhizo 14 I think – the fact I’m not sure is because it seems too easy and I don’t seem to be able to get the sites to recognise me again, which suggests I never really joined in the first place. They look interesting. At the moment, I’m interested in assessment so I have a go at a middling difficulty assignment from DS106. You can do this without joining. Here is my attempt – you place it in your own blog with a link.
I signed up with Coursera – so far so good, Coursera recognises me. I selected a course on poetry writing (you can see from the above that I need it) I attach materials from the introduction that tell you about it. To complete registration for spring, I need to pay £32 but I might even do that, if I want certification. The leader, Douglas Kearney at California, seems good.
This comparison then is based on the ‘toe in the water’.
DS106 is ‘joined’ by you attaching a pre-existing blog, or one made in bespoke fashion for the course, to the website. I found you can use the OU one with ‘/feed’ after it but somehow I can’t re-find my original registration, so my attempt at a written assignment is just attached to their trial page on the ‘Open’ course. In this sense it seems genuinely to follow connectionist principles, linking not just to learners, who connect with each other but also connecting together all the technology used in each members Personal Learning Environment [PLE] (or at least the digital elements of it). This seems good but I need more time to reflect although the description and figures in Stacey 2013 already helped me.
Coursera is full of gateways and portals but they are much easier to navigate – the hardest part being the bit when you realise that probably you want credit for doing this – if only to recognise and remember that fact. So I have some counting up my pension to do before I go further.
Pedagogy
In the Kearney course, (A sharpened Vision: A Poetry Workshop) methodologies are conventional but well tried: ‘talk to camera’, private reading, asynchronous group discussion in selected weeks and a planned curriculum focused on specifics – the nature of poetic lines.
The blend of web-page information and video is seamless and very professional. But it is rather a digital mediation of things I already knew about: charismatic teaching, rigorous pedagogy and academic challenge towards the front.
The curriculum planning, delivery and assessment are all prescribed (see Appendix 1) and very coherent and respectable within the academic discipline they represent. General learning outcomes – in terms of assessment objects to be completed – are all there but the assessment criteria to achieve the required grades (80% on quizzes, 75% on score for poem by peer assessment) aren't clear. The vagueness of the assessment criteria for these grades isn’t what I’m used to and could have different meanings for different people. The question remains: does that matter? Must assessment be about 'making a grade'?
DS106 is harder to work out. Look, for instance, at the trial assignment I did (see ‘What I’ve done’ (1) above: ‘my attempt’ hyperlink). What is this testing? The stress on emergent outcomes may explain this. What emerges will emerge (if anything) from interactions and progressions – possible future connections of self to a new agency in self and to as yet unknown others with, as yet, unknown things to say. I’m puzzled, excited, a bit frightened but definitely up for it as yet.
The Coursera offering stresses things near to my heart: the role of tutor and peer challenge to increased quality of performance in small knowable things – writing a better line of poetry, for instance. But it stresses that coproduction involves caring too: ‘…. the same level of care needs to be experienced in this workshop.’ Kearney says the latter in the video meaning that BOTH
None of this is stressed in DS106, not, at least, at the Portal. Again the stress is on the emergent and an emergent that must depend on some unknowable contingencies. Maybe I will see.
Appendix:
https://www.coursera.org/learn/poetry-workshop/supplement/aqNSz/syllabus