Going Undercover as a MOOC Student: What They Can Teach Us about Online-Course Design

In her post, A Rectangle is Not a Square, Melissa Koenig describes some of the differences between what most universities consider online courses and the newer model of MOOCs (massive open online courses). While I know it’s important to understand these differences when looking at the big picture of online education today, I’m also curious about the similarities. What can those of us developing and teaching online courses learn from MOOC design and delivery?

To get an inside look I enrolled in Model Thinking, offered on the Coursera platform. I almost couldn’t believe how easy it was to sign up and jump right into a University of Michigan course from my living room. As a course designer it is always a treat to peek into other institutions’ online courses. Typically you have to go to conference presentations to do this; I only had to provide a username and password. Imagine the shared learning that can take place when online course designers and instructors have such open access to one another’s materials. Of course there are intellectual-property and financial considerations, but ignoring these for a moment, it’s an opportunity to build on the success and innovation of others. Continue reading →

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Gamifying My Two Favorite Things: Running and Eating (and then Teaching!)

As a dutiful instructional designer, I’ve been paying attention to the concept of gamification. I’ve read some James Paul Gee, I’ve reflected on the time spent in my formative years (or *cough* last weekend) playing Zelda, and I’ve listened to our resident guru on the subject, Daniel Stanford, talk about how we could make the concept work within our courses and within D2L. But gamification remained only an interesting side topic that I sometimes devoted brainspace to until a couple of weeks ago, when I purchased the Fitbit Flex.

First, a disclaimer: I’m not trying to do any awkward product placement in our blog. There are several activity trackers out there, and I just happened to buy the newly-released Flex. Continue reading →

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I Am Red, What Are You: Understanding the Color of Our Brain

My husband Lee and I were sitting at the dinner table one evening chatting about what we should do for the kids during the time when school’s closed and summer camp hasn’t started yet. I pulled out the computer trying to search for ideas. A couple of minutes later, I sensed this vibrating sensation on the floor that resembled a minor earthquake. It was mild, constant, rhythmic, and very annoying.

I moved my eyes from the computer screen to Lee. He looked at me—what? The vibration stopped for a second. I moved my eyes back to the computer—there, the rhythm started again.

This time I closed down the laptop. “Lee, do you know you are very blue?” I said.

“What?” He was completely lost. Continue reading →

On Observation

I am working on my masters in Human-Computer Interaction in CDM at DePaul University.

At the moment I’m taking HCI 445: Inquiry Methods and Use Analysis, with Dr. Cynthia Putnam. The class focuses on observing user experience, and though it’s just getting started, so far it has taught me quite a bit about observing how people go about their daily work. One of the really informative exercises we did in class recently involved a visit to the reference desk at a bookstore chain located downtown.

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A Rectangle Is Not a Square

In grade school, I remember learning the following: a square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square. This logic lesson learned in elementary school can be applied to today’s debates about online education and MOOCs (massive open online courses). While MOOCs are online courses they are not what most universities consider online education. Unfortunately, most of the press these days about MOOCs, unfairly villianizes online education. Take for example the recent NPR Marketplace segment on Duke University’s announced decision to decline the invitation to offer online classes through the company 2U. What bothers me about the piece is not that Duke has decided to think about what the 2U partnership would mean to them, but rather the tying of this decision to Amherst’s decision not to team up with Harvard and MIT to offer free MOOCs.

This is where the square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square analogy comes into play. Continue reading →

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“Not Supported”

A few days ago, I took a stroll between the DePaul Library and the Student Center, and this is what I saw in students’ hands in a single walk through campus:

  • Lots of Android phones
  • Lots of iPhones
  • Several Macbooks
  • A number of Windows laptops
  • A couple iPads
  • A Chromebook
  • An Android tablet (something in the Asus Transformer family)
  • A Microsoft Surface tablet (I couldn’t tell if it was the Pro version or not)
  • A Kindle Fire

If there were any Linux devices, I must have missed them.

I like seeing the diversity of connected devices we’re using today. The competition among tech companies is good for the pace of innovation, and I like innovation. But it presents a challenge to institutions who allow students to bring their own devices and the students who expect their chosen device to do everything for them. Continue reading →

Test Driving the Digital Public Library of America

Earlier this month, the Digital Public Library of America launched its website to much nerdy fanfare online. This online platform aims to provide a singular portal for searching and accessing digitized content from a wide array of American libraries, museums, and research institutions. Forty-two cultural organizations have collaborated so far, in an effort spearheaded by the Berkman Institute for Internet and Society at Harvard. Though the idea has been around for a while, active planning and implementation over the past two years have finally yielded some results. According to Scott McLemee’s column in Inside Higher Ed, the DPLA currently catalogs “about 2.4 million digital objects, including books, manuscripts, photographs, recorded sound, and film/video.” (Impressive for a brand new endeavor; for comparison, the Smithsonian has more than 130 million items1, and DePaul’s library has just over 1.1 million.2)

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GNLEs, Please

We sure love our acronyms at FITS HQ. If we’re not talking about D2L (our LMS), or DOTS, or MoLI, or our CRM, we come up with emoji to get our messages across.

My FITS colleague Jan Costenbader and I recently discovered another acronym with a much wider reach, a global reach, if you will. Globally Networked Learning Environments (GNLE). GNLEs are online learning settings in which students from far-flung countries convene as classmates to learn about the topic at hand in addition to exploring one another’s cultures.

Imagine, if you will , two undergraduate screenwriting courses: one based in the US, the other based in Ghana. Continue reading →

Techniques to Avoid Plagiarism

The following techniques can be employed to address the issue of plagiarism in an online setting. Some of the techniques are specific to Desire2Learn while some are general guidelines to consider when creating assessments.


From Flickr

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TEDx Windy City: More than Just a Magic Berry

You know those awesome, addictive TED talks that can easily absorb hours of your time if you’re not paying attention? As it turns out, Chicago puts on an annual, local TEDx conference, and a couple of weeks ago, I spent a Saturday among the brilliant people.

As expected, the day was inspiring and brain-tiring, and I left feeling sure that none of those people waste time watching The Bachelor or reading the Craiglist Missed Connections or playing a pointless “find the hidden object” game on their iPad (guilty, guilty, and guilty). But I basked in their magnificent glow for several hours, and these are the two talks that stuck with me most: Continue reading →