MMS or Dashboard?

[Rebecca]

Hi all,

I was thinking about an MMS (MOOC Management System) and that thread,
but what occurs to me that we really need is a crowd-sourced MOOC
dashboard. That is a place where participants could register their
learning activities (like blog posts, links, discussions, or
projects). The Dashboard would give a real-time picture of how many
"conversations" and learning actions are occurring and allow
participants to easily find the conversations and easily participate.

The dashboard is functions as a curator of MOOC participant generated
content.

Maybe the dashboard would have a button to "add your activity", where
participants fill in a form that captures a link to content plus key
words or something - really simple so that people will both to use it.

The dashboard itself might have:
* One section for each "type" of media or conversation with links
* A visually linked tag cloud
* Maybe different views of the content - like a physical location view

You might also use it to capture statistics about the MOOC. Once a
conversation thread is registered, it could track how active that
thread becomes (useful for those who are researching MOOCs), but it
would also provide a knowledge object that is a capture of the MOOC
itself.

One of the challenges I'm finding with this MOOC (edumooc) is that the
conversations have either gone underground or they are so distributed
that they are difficult to find. I shouldn't need to spend more time
looking than participating! A MOOC dashboard that is truly crowd-
sourced would certainly help solve that problem.

Anyone with the technical savvy care to build one? I'll happily test
and document it.

cheers,
Rebecca

[Osvaldo Rodriguez]

Hi Rebecca and all

I have also been interested in how could one improve the "understanding of what is going on " on a MOOC.
Even if one does not arrive at the course right there should be some coherent resume.

In other MOOCs the facilitators through "the daily"  for example or as you mentioned the early weekly live sessions  (MobiMOC) established a glue and gave a weekly sense of structure (without actually imposing it).

For me in EduMOOC the websphere by Jeff LeBow blogspot has sometimes helped since it gave an overall picture of all places where "things" were going on.
http://edumooc2011.blogspot.com/p/edumoocosphere.html

The idea of a sphere kept in my mind: central issues/activities that radially build through layers. But a 3D sphere (like google earth) would be far too complex.

Then the  other day I came across  a web page (on the Kennedy's miniseries) that I think might serve as a basic idea on how  to indicate what is going on in a MOOC.
Of course it would need the facilitator to produce it and keep it to date. But as you can see if you step on any area of interest and move radially more and more info starts appearing on that particular area.
http://ar.aeweb.tv/thekennedys/arbol.html

Of course this complements the dashboard-idea.

Osvaldo

C. Osvaldo RODRIGUEZ
cor...@yahoo.com

---

From: Rebecca <rjh...@gmail.com>
To: eduMOOC <edu...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2011 2:09 AM
Subject: [eduMOOC] MMS or Dashboard?

[Apostolos K.]

Rebecca, what you are describing sounds like a real-time version of
gRSShopper (a tool used in CCK11 and I really really loved it! - daily
overviews of all blogs, comments to blogs, twitter posts and delicious
contributes - it was awesome!)

I agree with what you write bellow. I feel like discussion of eduMOOC
have either gone underground, or they just aren't happening. I like
the MOOC idea, but I (like many other professionals out there) am
busy, and I don't want to go hunting for course discussions everywhich
corner :-) The real-time dashboard is an awersome idea! I wonder if
gRSShopper can be modified to do this :-)

quote >>>> One of the challenges I'm finding with this MOOC (edumooc)

is that the
conversations have either gone underground or they are so distributed
that they are difficult to find. I shouldn't need to spend more time
looking than participating! A MOOC dashboard that is truly crowd-

sourced would certainly help solve that problem. <<<<< end quote

As a side note, I think that MOOC organizers should take a leading
role in collecting and aggregating major MOOC resources. In your
dashboard example the organizers could pick the formats they want to
support (blog, twitter and delicious for example) and people can
submit their blog's rss feed to the dashboard. If there are additional
resources (let's say a Fb group or a LinkedIn group, or a wiki) that
the community REALLY wants to have on the dashboard, it would be easy
for the coordinators of the MOOC to add an additional category.

I see this being parallel to f2f class practices. Students always
create external groups and resources to deal with coursework, but in
the course of doing the work, the resource becomes of use to the
entire class and everyone participates. At this juncture the
instructor can endorse it for class use and put it on your LMS's
"resources" list for more students to find.

[Apostolos K.]

Thanks for the resource Osvaldo! :-)

I feel like this sort of information should be incorporated to the
MOOC's main site because it's so useful!

On Jul 19, 3:00 pm, Osvaldo Rodriguez <cor...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi Rebecca and all
>
> I have also been interested in how could one improve the "understanding of what is going on " on a MOOC.
> Even if one does not arrive at the course right there should be some coherent resume.
>
> In other MOOCs the facilitators through "the daily"  for example or as you mentioned the early weekly live sessions  (MobiMOC) established a glue and gave a weekly sense of structure (without actually imposing it).
>
> For me in EduMOOC the websphere by Jeff LeBow blogspot has sometimes helped

>  since it gave an overall picture of all places where "things" were going on.http://edumooc2011.blogspot.com/p/edumoocosphere.html

>
> The idea of a sphere kept in my mind: central issues/activities that radially build through layers. But a 3D sphere (like google earth) would be far too complex.
>
> Then the  other day I came across  a web page (on the Kennedy's miniseries) that I think might serve as a basic idea on how  to indicate what is going on in a MOOC.

> Of course it would need the facilitator to produce it and keep it to date. But as you can see if you step on any area of interest and move radially more and more info starts appearing on that particular area.http://ar.aeweb.tv/thekennedys/arbol.html

>
> Of course this complements the dashboard-idea.
>
> Osvaldo
>
> C. Osvaldo RODRIGUEZ
> cor...@yahoo.com
>
> ________________________________

> From: Rebecca <rjho...@gmail.com>

[John Graves]

Perhaps this got lost in the shuffle, but is Popplet at all what you are looking for? 

I've been trying to find out whether Popplets are collaborative when they are shared. 

They can certainly link to one another -- so if I make one and you make one we can connect them.

Here are the Popplets I have posted for eduMOOC now:

eduMOOCweek2

http://popplet.com/app/#/49325

Two dozen popples showing the different resources of eduMOOC, including links to two other popplets

eduMOOCwikitospeech

http://popplet.com/app/#/50263

22 popples including 10 links and links to the two other popplets

eduMOOCtheory

http://popplet.com/app/#/49744

Three dozen popples giving a visual organization of the ideas in a paper "The Cycles of Theory Building ..." applied to Online Learning Theory

Includes a link to one of the other popplets

This Popplet is also discussed in a 33 slide Wiki-to-Speech presentation: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12838403/20110718/learning_theory.htm

(which is all about "understanding what is going on" at a whole different level)

Your feedback?

[clarkshahnelson]

Hi Rebecca,

One idea along those lines could be something like Netvibes.com. The
problem there is that to my knowledge they have not yet enabled
collaboration - so that a group can collaboratively build a netvibes
site. So at this point, each one is still an individual endeavor. But
Netvibes does allow you to build it out chock full of RSS feeds, your
own text/links or HTML as desired, as well as many other widgets to
bring content from disparate locations into one central point. I guess
the same thing could probably be done in Google Sites, if it were made
collaborative - so that more participants could build it out to help
ensure that the far and wide conversations have not only a central
point or bulletin board of sorts, but that the MOOC community itself
can participate in the maintenance of a wiki, netvibe site, or etc.

Here's a Netvibes example: http://www.netvibes.com/distancelearning#News

Best,
Clark Shah-Nelson
SUNY Delhi

On Jul 19, 1:09 am, Rebecca <rjho...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Apostolos K.]

I've seen other MOOCs set up a netvibes account for the MOOC but, as
you said, it doesn't provide for multiuser potentialities. Having
content aggregation is one thing, but being able to participate in
rich discussions is what really drives forth learning.

[Glenis Joyce]

Hi,

I am using Netvibes in the design of several courses and have relied on the the work of Michael Wesch. Here is a link to his course Mediated Cultures: Digital Ethnography at Kansas State University. It includes several dashboards. For example under “Digital Ethnography” are student blog posts, student blog comments, drafts discussion, recently tagged links, wiki pages, wiki updates and more. Since I'm quite new at this game, I'm not sure that it includes "multiuser potentialities", as you say Apostolos. What might that look like?

 http://www.netvibes.com/wesch#Digital_Ethnography

Glenis Joyce

[Rebecca]

Hi John,

I took a look at Popplets. I thought they were an interesting idea,
but no, not exactly. Actually the paper.li daily paper is actually
closer, because it combs the web for the articles that were tagged
each day - so in essence it is an automated curator of information.

What I'd like to see is a crowdsourced curation of information. So
people who blog could just register their URL and tag (the tag is
necessary because you only want the blog posts associated with the
MOOC). The idea is that some level of group intelligence is applied to
the collection of information.

But in addition to blogs posts, it would also be able to track (or
link to) conversation threads ... so an update that the google group
has x number of threads, and these are the threads that have more than
y number of messages in the last 24-hours - so you can see where the
conversations are actually happening.

Also, to see where wiki updates are happening .. and throw in all the
other technologies too. So, we see what changed in any given 24-hour
period, so we see and find the conversations.

Cheers,
Rebecca

On Jul 20, 12:40 am, John Graves <john.graves.at....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps this got lost in the shuffle, but is Popplet at all what you are
> looking for?
>
> I've been trying to find out whether Popplets are collaborative when they
> are shared.
> They can certainly link to one another -- so if I make one and you make one
> we can connect them.
>
> Here are the Popplets I have posted for eduMOOC now:
>

> eduMOOCweek2http://popplet.com/app/#/49325

> Two dozen popples showing the different resources of eduMOOC, including
> links to two other popplets
>

> eduMOOCwikitospeechhttp://popplet.com/app/#/50263

> 22 popples including 10 links and links to the two other popplets
>

> eduMOOCtheoryhttp://popplet.com/app/#/49744

[Rebecca]

Hi Clark,

Thanks for the link. YES! I think netvibes might be exactly what I was
looking for - or at least pretty close too it. It does a great job of
bringing in blogs and tweets, and conversations. I love that it
includes the conversations.

My only concern is that it is automated, so it could easily be too
much information - but alas - MOOCs in by their nature involve too
much information :)

Cheers,
Rebecca