In a group, the shared goal of collaboration generates the pressure that everybody has to participate and decide. With shudder I remember my schooltime class discussions where the teacher wanted us to practice to utter an opinion — no matter how weak our background of the topic was. (This is probably where the deep aversion of many of my generation against “broad” shallow knowledge comes from.) More aggravating, in synchronous, face-to-face, physical spaces it is painful to sit and keep silent. So when the space has an open door, escape.

In an online network such as this MOOC, by contrast, it is acceptable to keep silent whenever I want, for whatever reason. Maybe I cannot yet argue because my differentiated view is not yet settled. Or I cannot yet decide. Or I embrace the autonomy to pick topics to deep dive and the current one does not interest me sufficiently to develop an opinion. Or I am (temporarily) a lurker, or I just choose to ignore a topic. All this does not yet cause me to signoff (walk away). In fact, there is a great dark figure of subscribers who have not yet walked away, and nobody knows what they do with their Daily newsletter.

If the open space is perceived as a network, not a group, then there is no such thing as the binary (black or white) status of collaborator or non-collaborator, and no pressure for the binary status of nodding or walking away. Instead, the three options of agreement, non-reaction, and dissent, may now be handled differently:

Under face-to-face pressure, dissent is often politely disguised as non-reaction. Online, however, this does not make sense since nobody can react to each agreeable statement, anyway. By contrast, we are free to pick the salient points that resonate in a particular degree. If we react only to salient points, both we and the originator of these points will benefit. And the human mind has a great ability of detecting salient differences, which needs to be practiced, as part of the digital literacy to skim over ever more information.

If non-reaction is not to be equated with dissent, it should be easier to be accepted by those who are avid with decisions and opinions and participation. Even though they are certainly right that participation and having an opinion is desirable, they need to accept their bias and need the open mind that participants may be different.

One quick answer would be that knowledge is identical on all three layers, but this is exactly what I cannot wrap my head around.

OK I can accept that the borders between the layers may sometimes blur. The connections between concepts are so similar to neural connections that, for example, the concept of “grandmother” seems just as if it was located in a single grandmother neuron. And when thinking of her cookies recipe, this external resource (layer 3) might sloppily be equated with the concept/ idea of her cookies (layer 2), and I (layer 3) “connect to the idea” (layer 2). But I cannot similarly equate some knowledge in a society with the knowledge in a person. And therefore I cannot picture the social knowledge as residing in the connections between people, in the same way as individual knowledge clearly is located in the connections between the concepts, or finally, between the neurons. The very word “knowledge” simply sounds different to me in the different contexts. (Perhaps this due to my ESL limitations and the different usage in German.)

The most striking difference shows when the social knowledge grows, i. e., when “learning” by the society occurs: Saying to “learn” something that nobody yet knows, sounds for me as a stretched, alien usage of the word where everybody would normally speak of research, or scientific or scholarly progress. And the resulting knowledge appears different, too.

In the sense of research, “learning” of the entire society would involve a shared goal, i. e. it would be collaborative while normal learning together may be cooperative. And of course, the obvious connotations of societal knowledge are much different, as well: The body of human knowledge is usually thought of as the stock of many libraries, artefacts, external resources — even though I am aware how much important knowledge does not fit to this simplistic view, is not codified and explicit but implicit and distributed: It takes the combined tacit knowledge of many people to build an airplane; Trusting the experiential knowledge of many generations is foundational for our world view; I acknowledge the importance of online resonance between persons, and I even understand how discussions can literally reside between people. But I cannot grasp societal knowledge as lying between people in the same way as individual knowledge resides in the connections between concepts or neurons. Using the same word “knowledge” for both phenomena, appears to me as too stretched, or as a lifeless abstraction, while the common neuronal metaphor can be much easier understood.

Any hint or reference is welcome.

Repurpose is a powerful concept. It allows to pick up the emphasis on one thing and utilize it for the emphasis on another thing which is somehow related to the original thing. So the emphasis on repurposing itself can be (creatively) repurposed into the emphasis on creativity. Can “repurpose” even be repurposed into “morph” such that “repurposing” itself becomes “creating” ?

“… dialogue, nirvana, happiness, and learning (and teaching) are not goal-directed activities. They cannot be designed. …”

I want to remix this with a link to Stephen’s blog post contrasting Transmission and Induction, and with a quote from “The Master and his Emissary” by Iain McGilchrist (RSA Animate summary):

“Happiness and fulfilment are by-products of other things, of a focus elsewhere — not the narrow focus on getting and using, but a broader empathic attention.”

(P. 436, in the Section “Could the left hemisphere succeed according to its own criteria?”, or at 1:24:00 in this great talk.)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/suraky/4230976574/

The drop rate — comparing the thousands of registered users with the few visible participants who regularly contribute postings, the drop rate seems indeed alarming. But I would be cautious with both figures: Registered for something completely free, does not necessarily mean more than “Let’s have a look into this shop window and pass on”. Of course it is an unsettling challenge to traditional quantitative research that really nobody has even a rough idea about how many registrants intended to do more and what these are doing now. But in any case, participation cannot be measured on an “all or nothing” basis (which should not surprise connectivists who embrace just these kinds of membership connections that are (Wikipedia:) not all of equal strength (= 1). Who are those who “fall by the wayside” ? Those who do not regularly contribute in the strict sense of E. Duval ? Then I am guilty, too, but I think I have engaged a lot with the matter already when I was just considering another posting. And even if I am only skimming some of the resources, I think I should not count as a drop-out. But I agree that the share of visible contributors has slightly decreased since CCK08.

Many of the analyses of the problem focus around the difficulty of finding orientation and the appropriate reading. For example, point 3 and 4 of Jenny’s summary: too much going on (no stigmergy possible), and too much choice (opportunity costs). And Jon Dron complains about the Daily (“what gets aggregated is presented as a single, flat stream of content”) and pleads for collaborative filtering (“to draw attention to to things that are more interesting”).

• Too much going on (no stigmergy possible): I think the main reason why too much seems to be going on, is the derivative activity of retweeting, “like”ing, or reposting, to draw attention to interesting things. If somebody has for the first time bothered to write some original content and this is buried among loads of derivative content, s/he might be frustrated. If I understood “stigmergy” correctly, it is just this kind of drawing of attention.
• Too much choice (opportunity costs). If one thinks of the opportunity costs “(imagining that other choices would have been better)” of selecting some content out of the massive diversity, s/he is probably not interested in the benefits of autonomous, arbitrary picking but eventually more in optimized Nuremberg funneling of knowledge?
• The single flat stream of aggregation. But the Daily is not the only means of aggregation, it is just the only one for those wanting guidance. I also have great problems with that flat format, and I am glad that Stephen offers the OPML file that I can structure as I want. (However, I fully agree with Jon Dron that more programming is required and in particular his point “visualisation - … tools to help show threads, …”.)

Besides these points about finding one’s reading, there is a major focus on more structure and parcellation. Here I just tersely say that this goes completely against my sense of connectedness of the various concepts, which is, after all, one of the layers of connectivism.

But even if all the above obstacles for reading orientation were removed, this would not yet increase the writing of more contributions. I do want to share my speculations about the reason for this, but beware, it is unfinished, messy and questionable.

In previous MOOCs the 2-3 main facilitators were slightly more in the foreground, and they modeled and demonstrated their own thinking about the emergent connectivism. These concepts and the resulting teaching appeared as, if not messy, then somewhat unfinished, and hence encouraged a similarly messy learning to be openly shared by the participants.

In this MOOC, by contrast, I have the impression that many of the weekly speakers appear as experts whose opinion is more settled and tends to intimidate learners from uttering possible discomfort or objections. Even in Stephen and George’s institutions, research about connectivist phenomena seems already more scientifically settled. (Albeit it is perhaps shortened to selected aspects of the social level, cleanly dissected abstract concepts, or observeable behavioral data, at least compared to the kind of connectivism that I once enthusiasticly welcomed as a whole new view like the Renaissance — but that is an aside). Anyway, our writing as learners will be messy as learning always is, and it is slightly harder to mess up with settled experts. Perhaps aggravating is that each week there is a new expert, although it is great that so many experts are volunteering for us.

Another difference to previous MOOCs can probably be subsumed under deliverable artefacts. Previously there were assignments of short papers, a final project, and continuous updating of Cmaps or similar. Although I was never signed up for credit, their due dates helped “structuring” my free-time activities, and I miss these MOOC components.

I think the main point for abundance is that it may foster diversity (1), under certain preconditions:

• openness (2),
• some New Critical Literacies are needed, in particukar, the skills of picking and of trust (but these are also reinforced by practicing with the abundance);
• autonomy (3), not only for picking, but also for turning one’s passion into depth (and together with the other new Critical Literacies, it fosters Independent Thinking which, in turn, reinforces autonomy);
• Connectedness (4), the fourth connectivist principle, is also needed if passion shall lead to depth of learning.

Abundance offers the best chance to generate a true, authentic, random statistical kind of diversity which can finally lead to a representative, exemplary breadth of learning, because is destroys the illusion that one could still gain some comprehensive core knowledge, or some unbiased curated selection.

“I’m wondering whether diversity should have two lines? One for people and one for resources — when thinking of course design?”

Can lacking massiveness be somehow compensated? For example, can the consequential lack of participants’ diversity be compensated by a diversity of resources?

I doubt this. I think diversity has to be authentic, unpredictably and statistically emergent from random, is uncontrolled, and not generated, ensured, enforced by always biased facilitators. A controlled, “curated” diversity looks to me like a circus, or at best a zoo, rather than a field trip or the authentic wilderness.

It would also have negative consequences for autonomy because the freedom of choice would be limited, if not by insufficient offerings, then at least by the teacher in order to enforce some balance to guarantee the residual diversity. And in any case the challenge of choice, which is crucial for the new critical literacy of picking and filtering, would be hampered.

If diversity is also intended to increase breadth (in conjunction with a desired depth) then a teacher-curated diversity might be problematic for yet another reason. As Stephen pointed out (in a comment at Jenny’s), “One person’s breadth is another person’s depth.” So, optimal breadth cannot be curated, either, but needs authentic diversity.

If diversity needs the massiveness attribute of a MOOC, and autonomy of choice, in turn, needs diversity, then massiveness follows from the 4 principles of a MOOC (autonomy, diversity, openness, and connectedness), and need not be added as a fifth principle. Or is there something wrong with this argument?

“Perhaps the decision to leave out the learning management system from the Change MOOC has not been a wise one”

I once supported this decision and I still do. The Moodle forums feature is very much in need of improvement, and gRSShopper was an opportunity to realize this improvement. I think 2-3 student assistants for coding, or a few Dollars, would suffice for implementing plenty of innovative test arrangements (including collateral usability polishing). And I am sure the MOOC participants would come up with plenty of new ideas about how such a Connectivist Forums Browser might look like.

Unfortunately, research priorities and funding often skip the development of pilot testing facilities, and focus on the evaluations done only after. Already in 2006, I linked to Prof. Reinmann who bemoaned this “Methodological Monoculture”.

(Sorry for citing multiple of my own postings, whose old links might now be broken.)