Towards a MMS (MOOC management system...)

[Jose I. Icaza]

Typical LMSs are clearly inadequate for a MOOC. How would a MMS look like? It should not be just a mashup of existing technologies ("A single interface where I could have blogs, tweets, bla bla; or link to endless external tools and platforms..."), because MOOCs have unique necesities, which you probably have already felt in these two weeks... What are those? What extra technology is really needed to setup, run and participate in a MOOC effectively?

--jose

[Vanessa Vaile]

MMS sounds tempting (as does any chaos into order scheme) but also somewhat oxymoronic ~ my impression is distributed networks with users deciding which they will use and how. I fear you could end up just another LMS but on steroids

[Jose I. Icaza]

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 8:24 PM, Vanessa Vaile <vcr...@yahoo.com> wrote:

MMS sounds tempting (as does any chaos into order scheme) but also somewhat oxymoronic ~ my impression is distributed networks with users deciding which they will use and how. I fear you could end up just another LMS but on steroids

May be... the MMS wouldn't restrict user freedom to use whatever tool they want. However, they may still want from the MMS some help on...

Where is everybody? What resources are most used or most popular? Where are the 2,600 people right now in the "space" of the MOOC? Where is a particular person? What learning objectives are people currently pursuing? What learning paths are being followed? May we meet in this learning path later and exchange impresions? OH! I see that X followed this learning path yesterday! let me ask her what she thinks... Can I get a visualization of the learning paths up to now, with wider lines or stronger colors for the paths most traveled? 

That's from the user point of view. The MOOC organizers may have other needs not currently satisfied by the platforms currently used for MOOCs... 

--jose

[Vanessa Vaile]

Whatever system or systems emerge as most used/ popular / dominant (and I don't doubt they will be plural), their distributed network is still evolving. I suspect institutions using moocs for course delivery will want/need one kind. Those looking at less formal projects and edupunkers in general will want another. Ideally, MMS would be both less silo-like toxic tree houses than LMS and less chaotic than open free-for alls

[Jose I. Icaza]

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 9:46 PM, Vanessa Vaile <vcr...@yahoo.com> wrote:

(...) Ideally, MMS would be both less silo-like toxic tree houses than LMS and less chaotic than open free-for alls

yes! some middle point. Or a range of options. Some people "escape from freedom" (Erich Fromm) and others love it

--jose

[Apostolos K.]

It should probably be MOOCMS since MOOC is already an acronym and MMS
can mean so many other things ;-)

That being said, having a system to manage a MOOC seems counter-
intuitive since the idea, if I am not mistaken, is for each individual
learner to figure out what works for them. Sure, there can be a
centraly organized space (be it an LMS, a gRSShopper feed, a wiki or a
google group), but a central place doesn't seem to go with the
philosophy of MOOCs. I think a lot of MOOC participants not only
collaborate with other MOOC participants (inside network) but they
also extend and expand their ideas outside of the MOOC (their
"outside" network)

[Apostolos K.]

For what it's worth, the MOOC I am planning will be facilitated
through an LMS (probably)

[Scott HJ]

If we look at MOOCs as a place where curiosity and open enquiry is
encouraged, then structure almost doesn't matter. Wittnessing a large
group of thoughtful people working through any idea is exciting and
not dampened, in my mind, by trying to impose a particular topic.
Anyway, participants will turn it to their own ends or understandings
so nothing really remains "outside" for long.

Not sure if it is a dynamic of the make-it-our-own sensibility that
emerges from a MOOC, but distractions or orderliness "problems" seem
to be non-issues.

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[Vanessa Vaile]

Not counter-intuitive if you think of MOOM-LMS as crash pad, home base, town square or eCheers

[Jose I. Icaza]

On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Vanessa Vaile <vcr...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Not counter-intuitive if you think of MOOM-LMS as crash pad, home base, town square or eCheers

Indeed. "MMS" is a terrible name because it brings to mind the silo-like (Vanessa's term) nature of LMSs, pre-structuring learning objectives and activities and so on. Words are powerful. 

In my initial post I mentioned the "unique needs" of MOOCs.  One of these is to connect with people with similar interests or similar intentions in their MOOC adventure. In the present MOOC there is one technology to find participant's introductions, another three for interests (google spreadsheets, etherpad, 2 wikis), no place to find evolving *personal* intentions or objectives, no way to input somebody's name and discover all that in one click or to input an interest and get a list of people in one click, no single place to give eCheers to others...  That's what I meant by "the unique needs of MOOCs". Are there others? Is there a need for a technology that facilitates all that?

--jose

P.S. This is not a rant. I'm very happy in this my first MOOC and very grateful to Ray and his team for setting it up - I'm just interested in MOOC and "future university" technology

[Jenny]

After 3 weeks of daily engagement, I still don't "see" the cosmos called eduMOOC 2011. I mustn't be the only person wanting a MOOC in-space map because I discovered several administrators creating their own menu of eduMOOC networks on their websites (Jeff L, Nellie D. and G. Schroeder, to name a few).

Another frustrating issue for me is locating my activity in the different spaces I have visited.  Like the novice I am, I used personal and public devices to post and didn't save copies in a cloud-based account; so I don't have a complete record of my activity. Creating a link to a MOOC management and archiving system, conveniently located on eduMOOC Google Sites home page is a great idea.

If I could, I'd  design an interactive visual map for eduMOOC. It would look like systems maps designed for the Subway, Metro or Tube.  By using tags, any member could create an individual "stop" with the entire map self-organizing into interest or content clusters.  Larger transfer points would emerge based on number of links to and from other stops, and the use of high-frequency tags. If the topics were color coded it would be wonderful.  But perhaps I am simply asking for a  fully functioning semantic web, complete with a knowledge management system sensitive to the complexity of knowledge generated in a MOOC...another Google-size idea.

Jenny

[Skye McCloud]

I too am a novice and have been a little confused.  I think your idea would be most helpful to those of us who are trying to follow people who clearly have much more experience at this

Skye

[Gia]

I've been too busy to keep up with all that's been happening in
eduMOOC over the past two weeks. I've let go of the feeling that I
need to be constantly present in all the different
"containers" (groups, wikis, FB, Moodle, etc) that this MOOC has
spawned. I can dip in and out, read other people's reflections and
discussions and add to the threads that interest me. I think I have
adopted a stumble upon approach to this: hit next until something
interesting shows up.

I do think Vanessa's idea of a home space is a good one, but at the
same time I think everyone's idea of that home space is slightly
different. If MOOCs are about real personalisation and individualism
then having one single home space, whatever the platform maybe, will
never work for all participants. I guess that's why this MOOC has
developed so many different "containers" for stuff so quickly.

A home space in the sense of a central notice board of what's on where
and when makes more sense to me- we sort of have that on the Google
Sites site. Personally, RSS is my best friend, and if there is one
thing missing for this particular MOOC, then it's an RSS from the main
Google Site. Consequently I keep forgetting to check that one for
updates.

As for Jose's idea of having some place "to input somebody's name and

discover all that in one click or to input an interest and get a list

of people in one click", in theory you should just be able to type the
hashtag (and the person's name) into Google and have all of the public
eduMOOC related postings come up - assuming, of course, that
participants tag their content appropriately. I wonder how many of us
do that religiously...?

For a more visual search you could perhaps try http://www.touchgraph.com/seo/launch?q=edumooc
- I am not sure if that's helpful to you, Jenny. Kart00 used to be
good at mapping search terms visually, but that functionality appears
to be gone (or I'm just not seeing it). - Anyone know of any other
good visualisation tools for web searches?

Gia

[John Graves]

Here is an interactive visualization of some eduMOOC content using Popplet http://popplet.com/app/#/50263 Note that it contains sub-popplets.  If more popplets are developed to visualize greater detail, we can link them together. (Non-interactive PDF rendition attached).

[Rebecca]

Hi Jenny,

I think that might be one reason people use personal blogs to reflect
on their MOOC experience. I didn't blog in the first MOOC that I did
(MobiMOOC), but I have been in this one. I find it a really useful way
for me to stay engaged, and what delights me is the number of people
that take the time to leave comments. Previous to eduMOOC, I would
blog and maybe one or two people would comment. For some of my eduMOOC
posts, I have more than 10 comments. That is certainly encouragement
to continue :). But it also gives me a picture of my learning as I
progress - I even made a Wordle of it ;) (http://rjh.goingeast.ca/
2011/07/15/learning-technology-tools-wordle-edumooc/).

Now, the blog doesn't capture all my conversations. But if I have a
key reflection during the MOOC I do make a point of blogging about it
- which gives me that record of my learning.

cheers,
Rebecca

[Apostolos K.]

Another potential acronym: MOOCARSS: Massive Online Open Course
Aggregation, Retrieval and Storage System :-)
No need to "manage" the MOOC as one would manage a lecture class, you
just need to aggregate the content created to learners, and you need
to retrieve (and then proceed to aggregate) content from learners. The
storage goes for OER purposes :)

[hewa]

Hi Rebecca,

just see u blog post of m-learning classification, it is interesting 

have a suggestion.

" rather than saying compound learning, can we say situation-dependent mobile learning, this is the real mobile learning, 

all other two types are suplementary learning options, in other words mobile extensions for learning activities in e-learning or f2f learning"

[Vanessa Vaile]

Either a technology that is customizable or a range of technologies seems more likely. A single extra technology would tend to result in more sameness between moocs. What I have noticed so far is that no two are alike (even when using an LMS or groups). I suspect that may remain characteristic. So far we are much better at saying what they are NOT and what they are 'somewhat' like than what they ARE. Greater uniformity would no doubt facilitate managing in an institutional setting but I suspect the vast number of independent (and independent minded) users will continue to push back, wedging the door open for Rube Goldberg add-ons. 

[Vanessa Vaile]

I agree, José's idea of one place to input a name (trying not to think panopticon here) and get everything (even comments) is a good idea. I'd add tag searches for topics. I'm getting better about remembering to tag but still forget and don't tag everywhere. But will it search all the 'ad hoc' locations as well? Search on groups is a bit clunky but workable and being able to extend the search to other Google seems likely. 

What about Facebook groups, Moodle, Etherpad, Wikis? Could all be sync'd? Facebook has improved search for users but are still less than nimble. The bar was low although no doubt in-house search functions have always been wizard.

RSS is my friend too (and my reader overfloweth). My first step in packing for a mooc is to subscribe to update feeds for mooc sites, delicious tags, social media, etc, burn page update feeds if necessary and create folder/s. I add blogs as I go and a Topsy tag search feed to catch social media mentions. Yes, overkill, no doubt, but I can delete feeds or move them into another folder. I skim a lot and give up early on trying to read everything. Besides, once in the reader ~  read, skimmed or just marked as read ~ feeds are searchable there.

As for our personal output (those of us not into doing our own coding), we can tag, subscribe to tag feed, bundle and share. Won't catch everything but it's a start.

[Jose I. Icaza]

@Vanessa -  You are probably right - it is perhaps too early in mooc's short life to try to settle in a single platform since moocs are still evolving. But we can at least think up what we would need in such a platform to simplify life for mooc navigators, even if we would not or cannot implement that platform yet. Implementation will be much easier once social apps integrate among themselves, for instance by adopting the recommendations that the W3C is developing for a [Federated social web].

One concern is the enormous diversity of mookers. Glancing through the Introductions, one finds many people that are just dipping their toes into online learning, others that know something but want to learn more, and the experts - all together in the same community. And multiple nationalities and cultures. And people that want more structure and others that want none. When designing ftf courses, we usually have a clear idea of our audience; less in online courses; and close to no idea in moocs. This presents unique challenges for mooc design - how to satisfy such a diverse audience?

--jose

[Vanessa Vaile]

App integration ~ yes, that would make quite a difference, just so long as the price is not one app to rule them all. Presumably, integration will facilitate and refine aggregating feeds across apps by tag. 

I've been reading a number of promising ideas on organizing / operating moocs. Most deserve test driving. At the very least, I hope someone them all in one place. No doubt, we'll end up with a handful that will then recombine or offer Chinese style menu: pick one app from Column A, two from Column C and one from Column C. Tea and cookie on the house.

Different subjects do not seem likely to use the same formats. So far, most moocs seem to have been about pedagogy or learning related topics. How much will the game change when moocs take on, for example, core curriculum subjects? Upper division capstone projects? Professional training? 

Back to an earlier metaphor for chaos, I thought of you when my feed reader led me (via Omnivore, a delightful Book Forum feature - briefly annotated links loosely aggregated by theme), to this Dec 2010 NYT Sunday magazine article, A Physicist Solves the City. Should we invite him to a mooc?