Education to advocacy. Reflections on #etmooc

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I want to reflect on two aspects of #etmooc: The experience of it and also the questions I am left pondering as I transition to some post-etmooc state. I am happy that this is part of my visible digital self. But truthfully, I am writing this for myself.

Some context first. etmooc started at the same time that the academic quarter begins at Northwestern University, where in winter I teach a graduate course called Creating & Sharing Knowledge (#msloc430 if you want to follow us) which is really about within-organization technology and collaboration (think Enterprise 2.0). I also co-teach another course in winter in which teams of graduate students tackle a real 6-month project for an organization. It is very much a problem-based learning course in which there is no real “lecture” element (hooray!) but instead a lot of doing. Picture it as a consulting engagement using design thinking as an underlying approach to the organizational problem.

So during this time period I’m thinking a lot about technology, collaboration, and learners finding their way through complex, ambiguous situations (the project course).

I have been teaching these courses for 5 years – my first gig in teaching. So I am a novice. I love what I do. I am lucky that my students are all wickedly smart, motivated, good people. And luckier still that none of my students are going through puberty or need to be reminded to wipe their noses.

But in any case: Playing a role in helping people learn is one of the most rewarding career gigs you can have.

The experience of etmooc

I look back at my blog posts here and realize how long it’s been since writing. But it doesn’t feel like it’s been as long as it has, in fact. Why is that?

Certainly my experiences with MOOCs (this is #3) makes me a bit more comfortable with flowing in and out, as well as taking advantage of the different forms of live and asynchronous participation: blogging, Twitter, Google communities, etc. The design of etmooc fostered a great deal of flexibility to do that. I rarely felt disconnected, even during those times that my work here at MSLOC kept me too busy to engage deeply.

But I think there is more to it than just the design aspect. I think it has to do with my thinking a lot about technology, collaboration, and people finding their way through complex, ambiguous situations (my project course). During most of the week on Northwestern’s campus I took on the role of instructor facilitating a group of graduate students exploring these areas. Online at etmooc I took on the role of co-learner in part of a network of people exploring these same issues.

At some point I just stopped playing two roles. I honestly got lost in the moment – was I “teaching” or “learning”? I forgot about the formal roles, and just became authentically interested in exploring the topics.

Here’s an example. I wrote this post — Personal brand and digital identity: Which I am I? – based on a question that came up in my class. I could just have easily written it as a post for etmooc. Now, I know my case may be unusual because the topics about which I am interested overlap so deeply with what I teach and what was being explored by etmooc. So it may be that, in my role as “instructor” and “learner” it is easier to get lost in the moments and just forget about roles.

…but isn’t that the point, though?

In my blog post considering Dave Cormier’s session on rhizomatic learning (Rhizome-plosion), I wrote this about courses: …what I have come to realize is that my best instructional strategy is to design a space in which my class members and I — as co-equal learning partners — can experience exploring a particularly interesting topic. The course container is simply a contract among us involving time and topic.

It is, I think, the same philosophy that Alec Couros talks about when he describes connectivist MOOCs being Somewhere Between a Course and a Community.  MOOCs — I am convinced — push this idea of blowing up the teacher/student dynamic in a pretty cool way. The scale of a MOOC forces that. Who’s the teacher? Who’s the learner? Who cares?

Personally, it was really interesting experiencing being an “instructor” and a “learner” simultaneously in two situations built on the same philosophy. I literally stopped playing two roles. So for now, I am going with that as my-dog-ate-my-homework excuse for lack of blogging. I was just learning and sharing about topics of interest. Time flew.

And I was aware of being something more authentic. Just someone geeked about ed tech and learning. That’s pretty freeing.

The experience of etmooc: Connections

I was contemplating how to write this section and thought about listing Twitter handles of new people I’ve connected with. But I undoubtedly would have missed someone. So just know that if I’ve ever exchanged tweets with you, commented on your blog, +1′d a post — thank you. You are what make MOOCs different and valuable — and etmooc especially so.

How, and why, this happens is an on-going conversation I have with Alison Seaman (who I met during the  Change11 MOOC). And it is an on-going fascination of mine as some of the graduate students at MSLOC discover new connections as they begin to explore digital networked learning and establishing personal learning networks. I know all of you in etmooc have experienced the same – a new connection, from an unexpected place, adding to your life.

But how? Why? In a Twitter exchange, Fenella Olynick asked:

And that’s a great question. What does bind us? Some underlying, common philosophy or point of view?

At etmooc I think it had something to do with our identity as educators. I can say that, perhaps, because I am a novice. This community is different. Most of my professional life has been in business and there are at least three things you rarely see in dialogue among business professionals: authenticity, humility and social perspective. [Sidebar comment: When I was an MBA student I distinctly remember three very smart advertising professionals coming to speak to a class I was in. They had tremendous resources at their disposal; money, researchers, tools, methods, techniques. And they were wicked smart. What were they working on? Hamburger Helper. And the believed they were doing good work. ] What I sensed at etmooc was a network of individuals who were authentically interested in learning – not teaching, but learning, which requires a good bit of humility  – and deeply concerned about social impact.

Teachers. I have a renewed, deep respect for the profession. Fenella: Maybe it’s a common philosophy. But I do wonder if it is a philosophy forged in the practice of teaching.

Questions left to ponder

And so I am left pondering this role of educators – my role, our role – with respect to digital literacy, citizenship and identity. Alec asked this question during an etmooc session on digital citizenship: “How do we develop kind and caring citizens, those with integrity in both online and offline spaces?”

My add: And how do we advocate for spaces where kind and caring citizens feel free to be authentic, or better – to start becoming something new?

This hit me rather hard these past few weeks. A few of the graduate students in my class  made the leap to blog publicly — and it wasn’t just a move to develop their professional selves. They came out sharing personal, insightful, amazing posts about their lives. And it was my class experience, they said, that moved them to do so.

Lesson learned. When you get all geeked up talking and writing about how communities like etmooc can be “transformative,” some people might actually be paying attention.

So let me deal with the world that I am closest to: Adult learners. Those who have passed puberty and know how to wipe their noses.

“Brand” is just the wrong formulation for thinking about digital identity. It’s a Hamburger Helper mentality applied to the net. I could hardly think of anything worse. We need space to explore our identities, to recapture them in some cases, and to learn to become. Become something new, or just different in some beneficial way.

One of my good friends netted it out this way (in a t-shirt slogan kinda fashion): “Authenticity. Fuck brand.” Exactly.

So here is what I am left pondering. As educators — we who come from a position that values  authenticity, humility and social perspective — where and how do we best collectively advocate to create digital spaces where individuals can “become?”

A lot of really fascinating people are thinking about digital identity. Bonnie Stewart. danah boyd. Doug Belshaw. Catherine Cronin. Nathan Jurgenson. My list of people I’m following who think about that topic is expanding weekly.

But I think — know — my next few years will be looking at ways to advocate. Thanks #etmooc.

P.S.

Some little part of me has become Canadian, I think. Wondering if anyone else had that same feeling.

photo credit: patricklanigan via photopin cc

Pinching my digital networked learning self

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large_2932097858This week’s topic in #edcmooc is “reasserting the human” – a look at various responses to the apparent threat to humanity posed by the ever-increasing presence (intrusion?) of technology. It’s an interesting setup; forcing a debate on what, in fact, does it mean to be human? What are the most fundamental, essential elements that make us human? And for educators – what does it mean as we look at technology and learning?

Of interest to me are two ideas that emerge from this consideration: 1) identity and 2) embodied knowledge. I am struggling to find a proper understanding of both in hopes that it will lead to a deeper synthesis of ideas in relation to my own work in technology and learning.

Digital identity has been on my mind of late (see Personal brand and digital identity: Which I am I? for example). And it came to mind again in reviewing the TEDx Warwick talk of Steve Fuller, a  professor in the department of sociology at the University of Warwick. Fuller provides historical perspective that helps in understanding “human” and “humanity” as social constructs. His talk also gives us permission, I think, to reconsider this construct. We’ve been having this debate for a long time. It should be a serious debate but nonetheless if we need to go off and add a few more spices to the current dish we call humanity, it’s ok. Or let’s re-imagine humanity altogether.

It is during Fuller’s overview of post-humanism that he brings me back to my current fixation with identity. Fuller notes that some people now identify more closely with their online self than their offline self. Now, you can take this as a phenomenon that will slide you quickly down a dystopian slope. But the aha that occurred to me when he shared this insight is this: We could be allowed to have multiple selves, with each self providing a value to our overall being. This is not a new idea obviously. I have a professional self. I have a personal, family self. And I am starting to become more acutely aware of a biological self – as I get older, watch my father age, and begin to more deeply feel the changes associated with that process.

But Fuller’s comment got me thinking about a learning self. And in particular, a digitally networked learning self. This actually connects with a pattern I have seen in non-digital classroom learning environments. I teach graduate students who are all working professionals. Students get to know each other well as they work closely together on projects. When doing this project-based work in our classes, there is a strong perception that “learning” as equally valued in comparison to performance (project outcomes). Is it the same as in their actual workplaces? Not really. Much more performance driven in the workplace. Why is that? The overriding power of organizational focus on performance, they answer.

What is interesting to me is that the people involved are identical. Just working in different contexts. I suspect — suspect — that there is an identity thing going on here that contributes in some way to the difference in experiences. The students take on an identity of “learner-professional” that is different than “worker-professional.” And that releases something. It allows them to be a different but still authentic self. The organizational context (an academic institution, presumably focused on student learning and self-discovery) still creates some constraints and is subject to power dynamics (see Rhizome-plosion for example). But my perception is that individual students may actually identify more closely with their student/learner self than their worker-professional self. The learning part is a strong attractor.

And I am very conscious of this same phenomenon in the digital learning world. Only it seems more pronounced and accelerated when it is working at its best in a networked environment. Which makes me wonder just how identity and networked digital learning come together. What helps us create a digital learning-self that stretches all aspects of our humanity? (See Learning in the Open: Networked student identities for a much more thoughtful treatment of this topic by Bonnie Stewart). Is that our role as educators – to discover the magic that helps networked, digital learners find that rich, post-humanist learning self?

At the same time I am acutely aware of the tension created by holding this vision of a post-humanist, digital learning self and the necessity of embodied experience and knowledge. Lowell Monke gets at one aspect of this in his piece The Human Touch but I don’t think he goes far enough. He certainly expresses well the importance of ethical and moral grounding as a pre-requisite for life, digitally connected:

Trying to teach a student to use the power of computer technology appropriately without those moral and ethical traits is like trying to grow a tree without roots. (Monke, 2004)

He also notes that the high-school students he’s taught who came to advance computing courses with rich life experiences were much better with the technology than those whose life had been more singularly focused on the technology. But what about sensory experience in general? There is a wonderful video used as part of #etmooc – Girls first ski jump – that touches you emotionally and provides a great metaphor for the leap we all need to take when learning something new. But there is no way the digital version can recreate the sensory experience of the girl executing the ski jump. The feel of her feet in ski boots. The sound, head in helmet. The muscle memory and mental processing necessary to actually jump, land, balance and stop.

All learning relies on sensory experiences like this. I can read and write forever about leadership or change or driving innovation in organizations. It’s a different experience altogether to be face-to-face with a group of people who are struggling to find that path to innovation, are looking directly at you in a conference room waiting for you to give them an answer, and your brain is working overtime wondering whether you say something (and what to say?) or shut up and let it play out a little longer. You feel it in your head, your heart. You hear. You see. You sense.

What I am missing in my own personal construct re: technology, humanity and education is a resolution to this tension between the sensory, embodied aspect of learning and knowledge and the wonderful, expansive, enriching digital learning self.

Someone please pinch me. In a digital networked kinda way.

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A new set of lenses

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medium_2354086423Sometimes I think the experience of learning is rather more like putting on your eyeglasses, or getting a new set of prescription lenses. You see things that you have seen all along but perhaps now a bit more clearly. Or with more definition. That certainly has been my experience during the first two weeks of #edcmooc.

It was quite a pleasure to find the instructional team behind #edcmooc providing a well-needed bit of relief from my normal world by taking me on an exploration of utopias and dystopias. The educational and professional world I live in revolves around understanding business. My professional background is in business. I now teach about business: learning, organizational change, and knowledge sharing in the context of business organizations. Not the places you typically find serious looks at utopian vs. dystopian perspectives.

Through the readings, videos and discussions of the past two weeks it has been interesting to unpack the sometimes subtle ways in which utopian/dystopian perspectives of digital culture play out. I find myself now recognizing the language of these perspectives as a matter of habit. (For example: Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist, flirts with the dystopian view in her Sunday column today about the U.S.’s use of drones, the email hacking of the Bush family, and Chinese break-ins of what should be secure networks. “It was a week for worrying about the dark side of our cool, fast, exciting, heedless new technologies,” she writes.) Similarly, I am beginning to recognize the pervasiveness of technological determinism.

Being able to label things is interesting and I’ve learned it to be an important first cognitive step in mashing things up with my existing mental models. The mashup went full throttle in reading two pieces articulating two sides of the technology-and-education debate:

Shirky, C. (2012). Napster, Udacity and the academy. shirky.com, 12 November 2012. http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2012/11/napster-udacity-and-the-academy/

Bady, A. (2012). Questioning Clay Shirky. Inside Higher Ed, 6 December 2012. http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/12/06/essay-critiques-ideas-clay-shirky-and-others-advocating-higher-ed-disruption

My paycheck now comes from a higher education institution and as an ed tech geek, these discussions resonate deeply. I see it playing out in my institution and others. I also see it – have seen it – play out in business. The social-business utopians battling for cultural dominance over the we-must-lock-down-and-control-survivalists.

But the aha moment for me came when I started treating the labeling less like just a way to name things and more a way to step back and see culture through the lens of language and metaphor.

This is familiar territory for me. In the course I teach on organizational knowledge sharing, one of my favorite assigned readings is John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid’s 2001 piece “Knowledge and Organization: A Social-Practice Perspective.” In this well-known work, Brown and Duguid argue for the utility of using practice — as in “work practice” or profession — as the appropriate unit of analysis for understanding the dynamics of knowledge flow within and across organizations.

“From the idea that tacit knowledge is ‘nontradable’ and needs to be converted into explicit form to circulate, we come instead to the idea not only that conversion (if it involves uprooting knowledge from the tacit) is problematic, but also that tacit knowledge is required to make explicit knowledge usefully tradable or mobile. Only by first spreading the practice in relation to which the explicit makes sense is the circulation of explicit knowledge worthwhile … Knowledge, in short, runs on rails laid by practice.”(Brown and Duguid, 2001)

Emphasis is mine in the above quotation. Knowledge runs on rails laid by practice gives you a new set of lenses. If you can see “practice” you may discover something interesting about the way in which knowledge flows or doesn’t within and across organizations. And practices present themselves not only through activity but also language and metaphors. It has become a fascinating way to see different levels of culture at play within organizations, and understand how language and activity interact.

To the insights gained from two weeks looking a utopian-dystopian perspectives on technology: Like “practice,” what you see has always been there. It is now much more sharply defined and clear. And it is leading me to a deeper appreciation for the influence of culture (macro, micro) on all that we do.

References and credits:
Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (2001). Knowledge and Organization: A Social-Practice Perspective. Organization Science, 12(2), 198–213. doi:Article

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Observing myself and MOOC activity

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It has been 4+ weeks in #etmooc and 2+ for #edcmooc. This is a note to myself – a think aloud about participation. In the end, I am trying to discover balance. What mix of activities works for me best a digital, connected learner? And why?

I find myself generally reading/watching more than writing. And writing more than creating other forms of digital artifacts — video, Storify and the host of other forms that are made possible by digital technology. Somewhere in between the reading/watching and writing is actively participating – jumping into Twitter conversations. Commenting on other learner’s blog posts. Attending live sessions during which there is the opportunity to participate with other learners in real-time.

[Note: One of my personal learning goals is to explore creation of those other forms of digital artifacts more over the next few weeks. Both etmooc and edcmooc offer opportunities to do so. This week marks week 2 of digital storytelling at etmooc. And the final product of edcmooc is a personal digital artifact.]

But back to observations about what I actually do.

Reading and watching includes:

  • Consuming edcmooc content. I am referring here to the type that falls into more traditional academic content: Videos and readings selected by the course designers. Each week is designed to cover a segment related to the overall course topic – elearning and digital cultures. Readings/videos in the first couple of weeks have focused on utopian and dystopian views of technology in general and technology and education in particular. I have also watched a recorded Google Hangout with the course’s instructors.
  • Consuming etmooc content, which is intentionally revealed in a less “course-like” fashion than edcmooc. Someone with a point-of-view or expertise in the topic covered by each two-week segment will facilitate a discussion about it via Blackboard Collaborate. Sessions are recorded. Additional content generally emerges from the on-going dialogue and conversations held among participants in etmooc (e.g., someone points to a blog post, an article, a thought-leader).

Writing:

  • Writing for me is a reflective, sense-making practice. So in this category I only count what I write in this blog as “writing.” This is post number 9. So roughly – 1-2 posts per week. And that makes sense to me. Weekends seem best fit for writing at the moment, given my work schedule and the fact that I write a lot as part of my profession.

Participating:

  • I have participated actively (in real time) in 1.5 live, synchronous events – the original orientation for etmooc and half of another etmooc live event (I had to leave for a work meeting).
  • I have commented on several etmooc’ers blog posts. Probably more commenting than I have ever done. I find this interesting.
  • I have posted a couple of comments to the edcmooc discussion forums. Less interesting overall than commenting on blog posts. But still beneficial in terms of sharing a bit and sharpening my thinking.
  • I have engaged on occasion in dialogue on Twitter for both etmooc and edcmooc (more the former than the latter, but I think this may be a temporary phenomenon). etmooc conducts regular Twitter chats but I find these difficult to participate in due to timing (6-7 pm CT). My wife and I try to hold these early evening hours to reconnect each day – a fortunate outcome of our both living within walking distance of our workplaces. I did, however, try to participate in one Twitter chat while making dinner:

Some thoughts.

I honestly am seeing value in both types of “content” — the more structured “read this” content offered up by edcmooc and the more “let’s discover this” approach my the cMOOCers at etmooc. Both approaches overlap, actually. I don’t mean to argue that edcmooc offers less opportunity to connect with others in real dialogue. The designers of the course are actually doing a wonderful job of facilitating connections, given the constraints of the Coursera environment. But just purely looking at the type of content I am looking at more deeply – long form articles, videos, etc. — I am finding that my desire to go deep on topics is being fulfilled by both course designs.

I do, however, feel much more connected at this point to the participants in etmooc than edcmooc. Again this may be a temporary phenomenon and in large part directly under my control. But I do suspect there is something going on with the connectivist approach that increases the probability of potential connection being converted into real connection. And I further suspect that it’s because of the reliance on blogging vs. discussion forums.

To my question about mix of activities that are best for me – and perhaps, the habits that I need to develop to achieve a productive balance for learning. My self-talk tells me to do more creation – both written and “other” forms of digital artifact. Weekly seems a doable pace at the moment with the opportunity to take advantage of an opening here and there and increase the pace.

But what I am finding most appealing about the open-ness of each MOOC is that I can be continuously engaged at some level throughout the day and week. There is a tension in that attribute. It is easy to feel overwhelmed, falling behind, not keeping up with new and interesting people you meet. But the comfort is that the people are there at all times. As are their conversations (past and current) and thoughts.

Perhaps I do value connections more than content – a clear judgment emerging from my digital experience in the past couple of years. But do my activities really reflect that? Not sure. Something to work on.

‘Where are’ vs. ‘who are’ the professors. Thoughts on Google Hangouts and #edcmooc

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I am catching up on some of the readings and work associated with E-Learning and Digital Cultures and just viewed the recorded version of the end-of-the-week Google Hangout (below) hosted by the organizers of this Coursera course. I wanted to take a moment to comment on my experience – and my aha’s about Hangouts as part of MOOC design. (Thoughts on course content to come in another post).

Two things struck me about the Hangout:

  • I have a much more interesting view of “who” is behind this course (the team from the University of Edinburgh). The course moved from an abstraction – activities, assignments, tools – to something more personal and, perhaps, connected.
  • There was a moment – a challenge to define reification in 140 characters or less in the Twitter chat associated with the Hangout – that to me exemplifies the most exciting aspects of massive-scale learning projects like this.

Who are?

On the first point, kudos to the Edinburgh team - Jeremy Knox, Dr Sian Bayne, Dr Hamish Macleod, Dr Jen Ross and Dr Christine Sinclair – for modeling an effective use of Google Hangouts.

In the Hangout, Christine Sinclair responds to questions that have come up about “where are the professors?” I found the Hangout to address a more interesting question: Who are the professors? The Hangout was a well-organized walk-through of topics in the allotted one-hour time, but I was most struck by the personalities that came through. I say the following with great admiration: This was not a “produced” experience. It was organized but also came across as if I were looking in on a dialogue among the team that probably happens similarly when they are in person.

I know that the question of who are the “professors” certainly raises up the instructor-student power dynamic that underlies much of the conversation about the value of different approaches to MOOCs (cMOOC vs xMOOC). This is a topic of real interest to me. See my post on rhizomatic learning from #etmooc, for example. But if we are going to use digital technologies to create a more connected type of learning – something that goes beyond sharing “content” – how do we best get at personalities, passion about topics, and the human-ness of those we connect with to learn? The Hangout provides an example of how to do that. It was certainly a much richer experience than simply reading the teaching team’s biographies. And clearly – Hangouts like this could be done by participants as well as the instructional team. But I do think the teaching team modeled the technology in a highly effective fashion.

I also noted a bit of language that helped me feel a little more connected with the team on a geeky, learning-design level. Both Sian and Jeremy used the word “intention” when talking about some of the content and content choices. As in: “Our intention was to have dialogue about…” Hamish added to this tone in his explanation of the final assignment – carefully describing the intentions behind an assignment in a course that is designed around an ill-structured problem. Jen and Sian also chatted about the difficulty in finding videos that could potentially represent a utopian perspective on technology – distopian views tend to produce more compelling stories and hence, there are more such stories.

All of this leads, to me, to a very productive type of humility in teaching. This team is open about the thinking behind the course design – about choices made and about intentions that could potentially be off the mark (my interpretation). And I think this is especially important the more I look at the learning potential provided by MOOCs.

Reification

The second highlight for me was the moment where the Hangout and the backchannel communications came together in an unplanned example of networked, connected learning. Jen asked Sian to respond to questions about the meaning of reification. Again, there was a bit of lightheartedness to the exchange as the two smiled about handing off an assignment that obviously has some difficulty to it. After Sian explained her way of thinking about the concept, the two noted that someone had posted a Twitter challenge: Define reification in 140 characters or less.

I was not there for the live event but suspect this is the tweet:

What a great example of spontaneous engagement in a large-scale event – only possible because of the mix of technologies used at that moment. You could see the reaction of the Edinburgh team at the moment that they noted the tweet (through their comments and facial expressions). And I’ve looked a bit at the Twitter stream after the challenge was posed – a wonderful combination of word play and meaning-making. “Reification = thingify” seemed to be the most popular short answer.