“MOOCs are all about messing with boundaries, barriers, and silos.”
In May of this year George Siemens announced the “Mother of all MOOCs”, appropriately titled Change. The philosophy is sound: Why have a single person or even small set of people delivering course content when we have a global network of innovative thinkers to pull from. The result is a 30-week series currently happening and still in its infancy at just Week 6. But much of how the course is being delivered is disappointing to me, and some aspects so offensive to the very pedagogy that these men preach, that I believe they deserve to be called out on it.
Disclaimer: I admire and appreciate the work of Siemens, Downes, and Cormier in a huge way. I don’t pretend to be an expert in the field of online education. These opinions are my own. But having people to look up to also requires the critical thinking to question them on their process. That’s what this post is.
“Over the past four years, a growing number of educators have started experimenting with the teaching and learning process”
The Change MOOC has had a roller-coaster of issues in terms of technology to deliver content. BigBlueButton crashed. FuzeMeeting had issues. Although they found a license to use Blackboard Collaborate, Both Downes and Siemens put the call out to people asking for suggestions on how to deliver synchronous course content that would scale. DTLT responded by offering to help them using the same technology we use to broadcast and interact with our network everyday on DTLT Today. This to me is a beautiful thing: trying new products and figuring things out in the open, being willing to change your methods, and using a network of peers to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
But here’s where the criticism comes in. The idea that a course should use Blackboard Collaborate simply because it’s a comfortable space for instructors is just wrong. Much of my work is pushing educators to think differently, not just students. There is no reason that using a free tool like Google Hangout should be too difficult for an instructor that has something to say on innovation in education. If it is a deal-breaker, I’m not sure that instructor has anything I’m interested in hearing. In the process of experimentation with various technologies if we put the stipulation up that the instructor has to be “comfortable” then what are we fighting for?
“Through out this ‘course’ participants will use a variety of technologies”
As our session began at least one person voiced the concern that it felt like a private conversation they were watching. Although Downes had mentioned the possibility of opening up the Hangout to others that wasn’t done. My idea of using Google Voice to take live calls and pre-recorded questions during the event was shot down. Only Siemens was participating with the chat while the discussion was going on (and I recognize it’s difficult to have a meaningful conversation while reading a chat and responding to questions there). The call for interactivity was soundly ignored, and the result was a session that was not much more than a podcast of the folks running the Change MOOC. This stands in stark contrast to all of the ideas and suggestions we put forth both in the previous discussion as well as in e-mails throughout the week.
Communication with the MOOC seems to be another major problem. The announcement for our session with them went out just 2 and a half hours before the session began, even though we had been in talks with them throughout the week to put it together. 29 people attended, yet only 6 have viewed the archive. Again, I suspect most had no clue that the session was happening, and don’t know where to go to get the recording. Only today did I find the magic page housing previous recordings. When you go to Week 5 you get no indication of what actually happened that week. During the session they also announced major time change for the following week’s guest. The session would be moved to Sunday afternoon, just 2 days from when it was announced during that live session. The e-mail newsletter for this announcement didn’t go out until Saturday afternoon. I don’t believe at this point the drop in numbers for participating in this MOOC has much to do with the technological hurdles they had earlier on, I believe it’s due to no one knowing what’s going on.
“We will show you the tool, give examples, use the tools ourselves, and talk about them in depth.”
I want the Change MOOC to succeed in a big way because when the bar for online learning is raised we all win. Collaboration among peers in a learning network is a valuable thing and I think it failed in this context because in a moment of irony many people involved in the Change MOOC (both as participants, facilitators, and guest speakers) were not open to change. If we want to have a discussion framed around innovation in education we have to be willing to experiment and not afraid for things to go wrong. There should be no hard lines or absolutes. No one seems uncomfortable with the idea of using Blackboard software to deliver content about the “open web” or “innovative teaching practices”. It’s something I don’t think anyone in the Change MOOC would have hesitated to call out another group or institution on, but no one is pushing back on the Change MOOC.
And that needs to…well…change.
Timmy,
I also have to say it was disappointing to me because I was looking forward to learning a ton about how to produce a class with so much of the stuff you have been experimenting with. It is a lost opportunity, and the fact it was squandered in the name of comfort with existing technologies (BlackBoard no less) and using the very leaders in edtech who are showcasing each week as examples of folks who would be uncomfortable with this experimentation seems ludicrous to me. These are the people who, by definition of the class, are changing the field of edtech—yet they wouldn’t be able to handle something new? This field is in a much worse way than I originally thought if that’s truly the case, I’m just not so sure it is the case.
OK, fair enough criticisms, deserving of a response.
- first, let’s keep in mind that we _did_ have a roller-coaster ride with synchronous tools to start the course. The tools we believed would work did not work. It’s unfortunate, because quite a lot of work went into it, including my own coding of a full Perl interface to the Big Blue Button API.
- second, we haven’t exactly been able to entice participants to launch their own synchronous discussions. Things like Skype and Hangout are always available, of course. In addition, the gRSShopper cchat system and BBB interface were also open to participants. Number of participant-initiated sessions: zero. This is something to work on.
- third, I think our trial with DTLT came and went without being given a chance. It was our first time using the system, so it should not be surprising to see that we did not make use of every feature of the system (especially features we did not know about). Now that both George and the DTLT hosts have given up on the idea, if I want similar functionality I’m going to have to set up a server. That’s not beyond my capacity, and I did receive a good overview, but it will take some time.
- fourth, we’re less than one sixth of the way into the course. We’ve all had a hectic schedule to start – Dave Cormier with impromptu meetings with the Minister of Education to set up a province-wide MOOC, George with his travels, m on the road seven weeks out of eight (this note is being written from Spain),
- fifth, the video segments are only one part of the innovation in the curse. In August I rewrite the harvester so it would build a course graph, which it has silently been doing for six weeks. I had to sort out parsing issues with Posterous and Tumblr, and get the Twitter feed in working. In addition to reviewing 280 feeds to ensure they had correct URLs and were working propery. I still have to fix OpenID, I want to get the calendaring system (which had assumed BBB) working properly, and of course the recordings page is still a shambles (but at least the DTLT link is now posted).
- sixth, I did not participate in the chat because I was having difficulty keeping the video and the chat in the same screen. Simple as that. I was also making sure that the audio recording was functioning and that the webcast audio feed was properly broadcasting. I think we did pretty well for a first run through with the system.
None of this is intended to offer excuses. I completely agree with the criticisms. These are all things we could be doing better. Specifically:
“The idea that a course should use Blackboard Collaborate simply because it’s a comfortable space for instructors is just wrong.” I totally agree. But despite what others may have said, that’s not why we’re using Blackboard Collaborate. There’s a much simpler reason: it works.
Put yourself in our shoes. It’s week six and things are spiraling out of control because we can’t get a decent synchronous conversation up and running. These aren’t just course meetings; they’re also the way we produce course content. We needed something we could count on quickly. Elluminate was it.
But that doesn’t end my interest in alternative forums. I have planned some events (probably for Fridays) using alternative systems – and even an alternative language! But I have to get home long enough to wash the airport dust off my computer before I can get to this. We’re talking mid-November.
Though that said, maybe I can do some ‘from the road’ hangouts, if I can get Nicecast working properly. It’s not the easiest system to work with; it’s much more difficult to work with than analagous webcasting systems on the PC. But on the road I’m in a macBook environment, with all the limitations that entails.
“There is no reason that using a free tool like Google Hangout should be too difficult for an instructor that has something to say on innovation in education.” I agree – but let’s keep in mind that Hangout i just outta beta itself. It simply refuses to work on some systems (including my office PC) because of sampling speed errors (a well-documented but still unfixed problem). What we need are better backups when this happens.
“If it is a deal-breaker, I’m not sure that instructor has anything I’m interested in hearing.” I think that if the instructor simply refuses to use technology, then they should not be talking about technology. I’ve seen a lot of those. But if they have difficulty with some particular technology, then we have to work around that, because they may well have something interesting to say. Sometimes Hangout is a deal-breaker, sometimes Skype is a deal-breaker, sometimes Elluminate is a deal-breaker.
One thing I’ve learned in messing around with internet technology for 20 years: there are more ways for technology to fail than you can possibly imagine. This stuff can be simple – when everything works. But when it stops working, it can become very complex very quickly (cf. why Hangout simply refuses to work on some computers – there’s 4 hours of my life I’ll never get back).
“In the process of experimentation with various technologies if we put the stipulation up that the instructor has to be “comfortable†then what are we fighting for?” – well, a bunch of things. Not just playing with technology. Don’t forgt, we’re asking university professors and world-ranked researchers to volunteer a fair chunk of their time in the name of open access education. That’s a significant ask. We can’t just turn around and say “f u if you don’t like the tech.”
Our guests have been *enormously* tolerant of our foibles in the first few weeks of the course. Everybody understands we’re trying to do things that haven’t been done before. The generosity of our guests has been without bounds, and we’re immensely grateful for their cooperation.
“As our session began at least one person voiced the concern that it felt like a private conversation they were watching.” Past surveys and experience show that the participants love those sessions. Not every time, of course. But they are very popular. And I understand why – it’s a format numerous podcast use, including many of the DTLT shows. Listen to the audio – it’s great radio!
But we’ve missed Dave Cormier at these, because he’s been so busy. He’s done more than a thousand of these online audio-video sessions. He’s the guy who pulls things on track when we’re getting off-topic.
“My idea of using Google Voice to take live calls and pre-recorded questions during the event was shot down.” Not exactly. It wasn’t something we could manage to pull off in the hectic lead-up to that event. Also, Google voice won’t work on my office PC (Hangout issues, remember?).
It’s not that I don’t like the idea. I love the idea. I want to extend it. You may recall I said at the time I want people to record audio which can be harvested and played back (you can’t really ask a world-wide audience to give you a phone call) – that’s part of the functionality I built into gRSShopper in August. It’s cool to suggest things, and I’m totally in favour, but it’s different to suggest something and then have that be the one thing we should be doing to address this issue. Not all suggestions are perfect out of the box, even if they work in other contexts.
I *totally* want audio and video contributions, both synchronous and asynchronous, to be part of these sessions. But if something isn’t ready to go on day one, it’s unfair to say the idea was “shot down”.
“Communication with the MOOC seems to be another major problem. The announcement for our session with them went out just 2 and a half hours before the session began, even though we had been in talks with them throughout the week to put it together.”
I agree. We need to get our act together here (though let’s be clear ‘being in talks’ is not the same as ‘verybody knows what is happening’).
Here’s how we’re set up now: George works with the guests, solicits their participation, collects their contributions and schedules the live sessions. Remember, it’s a different guest, with a different set of needs and expectations, every week.
Then I’m the one who manages the server environment. I make sure the contributions are all neat and tidy for the newsletter and the website, I make sure even announcements get out, and normally I would be the one who points people into the right direction.
You may recall than for this event I did not even have the location of the Google Hangout to join. I only received notice of the room location a day or so before the event. I wasn’t sure what time it would be until the last minute. *Usually* we like Fridays at noon Eastern for these, but you can’t count on that, especially for a new room – just like with the Fuze room, I don’t know ahead of time whether the URL is the same, whether there is availability, etc. When you make assumptions (like, say, “the Hangout address is just in your Google+ stream”) you get errors. Things need to be clear, and it’s difficult when setting things up for the first time.
We still put 29 people in the room, and a few more for who the room didn’t work on Ed Radio, Not bad. Could we do better? Certainly.
“only 6 have viewed the archive.” – see, this is what I mean by communication. I don’t even know what you mean by that. Do you mean the YouTube recording? Or something else?
“During the session they also announced major time change for the following week’s guest. The session would be moved to Sunday afternoon, just 2 days from when it was announced during that live session.”
Yep. That’s when we found out. Neither George nor Dave were available, there would have been no way to coordinate with the DTLT people in that time, and so I’m sure glad I had an Elluminate room I could just start up and manage by myself on a weekend. Good recordings, good turnout.
“Only today did I find the magic page housing previous recordings.”
Yes, though the page has existed since Day 1, and has always been linked off the ain menu on the home page, I have been slow in getting the recordings posted (mostly because we’re dealing with recordings from five different types of system, several of which did not work properly). Anyhow, I’m working at filling out and eventually automating the recordings page.
“If we want to have a discussion framed around innovation in education we have to be willing to experiment and not afraid for things to go wrong.”
OK, good. Take that as a mantra. We have. If things are not perfect on one single session, accept that. I’d love to keep working with DTLT. But it’s important to understand that there are other things happening, that the course doesn’t take place in a vacuum.
For all sorts of reasons (busyness, organisation of MOOC, problems mentioned above) I have found it difficult to stay connected to Change11 though I am very positive to its goals. One thing I would say is that these problems do tend to show up the very valuable role that a teacher can play within bounded ‘groups’ or classes. Something for the discussion I think;)
Thanks so much for this post, Tim.
I’m so glad you opened this can of worms.
It’s helpful to see all sides, Stephen, sometimes it’s easy to forget the millions of minute details required to make something this massive happen.
I do not think the course has been “spiraling out of control” at all. It’s been fascinating and quite fun to be a part of, even if I dip in and out as time allows.
I can also appreciate that so many people are doing this ‘off the side of their desk’ but I think that if we look at the synchronous tool usage systematically there can be so many valuable lessons for educators and ed tech decision-makers.
I wholeheartedly endorse more #change11-DTLT collaborations and continued conversations about the different tools’ pros & cons.
“If we want to have a discussion framed around innovation in education we have to be willing to experiment and not afraid for things to go wrong.”
Agreed. But, then, here’s an interesting question (at least to me…): is it incumbent on the course facilitators to “experiment” ahead of time or is it OK to “model failure?” If timmmmmmmmmmyboy is struggling with the hiccups, imagine someone less tech-savvy and more newly come to these ideas. My students would bury me if I had such struggles throughout (and would be totally turned off to online learning…)
@Stephen – I truly appreciate your comments here. I apologize if the post seemed to be a laundry list of concerns void of recognizing the work you’ve done thus far. It is evident that it has taken you a lot of time and energy to build a lot of tools working in sync and that’s not an easy task. I can only speak to the synchronous live sessions because that’s all I have experience in. I recognize the course is still young and say as much early in the post because I want to believe that you all are treating the Change MOOC as a flexible system open to new ideas, hence my post here. Perhaps given how busy you were this past week it was a poor time to try something new. My approach to technology (which appears to differ at least partly from your philosophy) is that I’m not worried about these things being production-ready. Google Voice wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was already there and answered in part the question of how to accept audio from participants (which was something your group was interested in doing). I’ve never been a fan of the approach that puts off the immediate but perhaps not perfect solution for something that could take weeks/months to implement and might perhaps be more robust. It’s not a personal thing where I felt shot down because my idea wasn’t chosen. I felt shot down because my solution was the only one on the table and in lieu of using that, nothing was used. Podcasts are a great format, but not one that needs DTLT to host it frankly. Again, I understand if you all are too busy to work on these bigger problems and I do recognize the immediate relief that an integrated solution like Blackboard Collab brings. But I think these larger hurdles are worth attempting to jump and if we in education can break free of the handcuffs of requiring everything be production-ready solid we can do some interesting things.
@Jon – I think it all depends on how it’s framed. An instructor saying “this is how we’re going to do it” and then having it fall apart and scrambling, yeah I can see where you’d lose buy-in with students. But a course like #ds106 was built on the foundation of “Let’s try this and see if it works. If anyone has any other ideas let’s try those too. Heck let’s try it all and see what works. Regardless we’re going to do some great stuff.” I don’t believe students are afraid of experimentation when it’s framed as a journey they take alongside the instructor in the interest of learning.
Hi Tim,
First, thanks for the critique. I wish we had more of this in our field. MOOCs need solid critiques. The pedagogical model we are using need solid critiques. As does edupunk, DIYu, CCK08/09/11, DS106, etc. Too often when people disagree, they simply ignore it rather than providing the value and insight of differing perspectives. A good solid argument is much more instructive than silent disagreement.
There are things in the course that we should be on top of…things such as having recordings online or, if possible, having advance schedules of live sessions. Unfortunately, we often only receive readings from authors a few days before we post them. And, in the case of Tony this week, found out 3 days before the Sunday session. We had a choice: don’t do it at all, or do it on Sunday. We went with the latter.
I have to call both you and Jim out for what I think is an unwarranted arrogant attitude. How is our use of Blackboard Collaborate any different from your use of AWS? Why aren’t you hosting your own streaming servers on your own network? You’re using a proprietary, closed system from a company that is as evil as Bb in terms of control and affront to openness. But you use it because it makes some part of your work easier. You are not interested in running streaming servers because you’re working on things such as DTLT, streaming media, and similar projects. Great. But don’t turn and call us out on this topic when you’re exhibiting the exact same tradeoffs in your choice of technology use that we are.
We want to teach a course, not run a streaming platform. We (Stephen, actually) have developed tools that reflect our research interests. I regret that we weren’t able to use an open source option. We tried BBB. Cost us $800. But, unfortunately, it’s not ready for large use. We bounced around for a while, and finally settled back on Collaborate.
We (actually, it was mainly me. Dave was ready to move away from synchronous sessions altogether) weighed numerous factors in using Collaborate. The ability to run impromptu sessions, such as with Tony, being one of them. Many of the presenters that are involved in the course are outstanding researchers. They just don’t have the specific skills that you have. I don’t know your background, but it’s possible that they have research skills that they think you should have.
When I received the email where you detailed that you felt more involvement in #change11 would be a waste of your time, I was disappointed. You were extremely generous in sharing your expertise, details of your technical infrastructure, etc. I was rather pumped when Jim, you, and DTLT reached out to us. That was awesome of you. Ideally, we could have worked through these issues before we cut ties. However, you’ve got lots of great stuff happening at DTLT. It makes sense for you to put your effort into projects and activities that support your views, pedagogical approaches, and technical skills.
Again, thanks for your comments, Tim. We are working on these courses for a while. We don’t have it right yet. We won’t have it right if we offer something else in the future. We’re muddling through. Some of our decisions will, in retrospect, be wise. Others, well, not so much.
George
> Google Voice wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was already there and answered in part the question of how to accept audio from participants
OK, let me repeat again: Google Voice was not working on my office PC, due to a known bug for which there is no fix, which I spent several hours investigating.
@George – Thanks for weighing in here as well. I’m totally in agreement that pushback and civil discourse is a necessary part of the growing process in researching these methods and it’s too often shied away in the name of not hurting anyone’s feelings. I apologize if my mention of Blackboard was seen as arrogant, it certainly wasn’t meant so. It’s a fair criticism that there’s a sort of gut reaction among educators that is negative towards Blackboard and I’d do better to question the reaction instead of joining it. That being said I only offer up the Wowza streaming solution not on philosophical grounds or price but because of its flexibleness in terms of how content is shown on the web, stored, and repurposed. It bothers me when I have to install extra plugins that aren’t compatible with mobile devices to join a conversation. But those are personal griefs with the system. I recognize both in the post as well in the comments here that I totally get the immediate resolution that an integrated solution like that provides (especially when you’re scrambling to find something, anything, that can scale without crashing).
I hope you guys do NOT abandon DTLT as a platform for your discussion sessions. It makes a great podcast, and that’s a good format for those re-hashes of the Change week. Finally there’s something I can find and watch. Sure, add participant voices if you can – most of us can call in with Google voice (maybe we can chip in and buy Stephen a netbook
I was totally blown away when I watched that first collaborative DTLT discussion session. “I’m watching the same kind of evolution I saw in ds106!” was my thought.
And BBC is not just “comfortable” to the facilitators. Most of us participants have become comfortable with it as well. Don’t give up on it just because it comes from the Evil Empire. Sure, experiment – show us new things. I was part of the big blue bang – and it was amazing to me how we pulled back together in fuze using our PLN’s. That was a great learning experience. I blogged about it. But once in a while at least, we need a reliable place to get back together and discuss it. I liked BBC well enough to create a CourseSites account so I could have access to my own room for creating conversations.
Soldier on George, Stephen, and Dave. You have provided me with a marvellous PD support network. Jim Groom & Timmyboy and all the ds106 crew – don’t give up on change11.
[...] rimasta sorpresa e ad un pò amareggiata leggendo un post di Timmmmyboy che si professa deluso per l’andamento del corso; si aspettava di imparare molte cose, ma, [...]
This conversation you have started here seems rather valuable to me, as it voiced concerns and then had some dialog around some of the issues that were raised. I have also experienced some of these frustrations, and while “change” is something that seems to be understood by different people in different ways, I do think having a discussion about how things are perceived, now 1/6 of the way through, is timely.
This reminds me that now may be a nice check-in with our personal goals and objectives for the MOOC itself. Yes, the tech may not have worked as we wanted, communication may be a little choppy (it is an unstructured course, after all, though some structure is needed for it to remain a course, I suppose), but to what extent do these help or hinder (or not) meeting one’s own objectives or goals for spending any time at all with the MOOC?
Jeffrey
[...] delivering course content when we have a global network of innovative thinkers to pull [...] [Link] Wed, 19 Oct 2011 14:53:57 +0000 [...]
[...] delivering course content when we have a global network of innovative thinkers to pull [...] [Link] Wed, 19 Oct 2011 14:53:57 +0000 [...]
[...] Natürlich verteidigen sich Stephen Downes und George Siemens ausführlich. Ich habe den Wortwechsel mit großem Interesse gelesen. Er bringt die z.B. widersprüchlichen Erwartungen der Beteiligten sehr schön auf den Punkt. Und ist an vielen Stellen sehr direkt und persönlich in der Kommunikation. Timmmmyboy, Weblog, 19. Oktober 2011 [...]
[...] Tim Owens has nicely frames some issues with MOOCs and his post is well worth a read. As is David Wiley’s series on his opinions of MOOCs (with the expected usual word matches with Stephen Downes). [...]
[...] brush strokes on the iPad to make a movie. However, in light of Tim Owen‘s recent question: where is the change? and Nancy White‘s highly interactive and thought-engaging week about #socialartists, I [...]
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