MOOC's - The Runaway Trains [Not]

In an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education, by Professor Rob Jenkins, apparently, administrators and politicians are to blame for the rise of online course offerings and the runaway train threatens to destroy academia, or those who oppose MOOC's, technology, and change in general. I am respectful of the author's opinion, as not all faculty fully understand the potential for online courses to enhance the lives of students with various barriers from receiving face to face instruction. Many traditional or non-technology conforming faculty confuse the purpose of online courses with the reality of enrollments and infrastructure.

First off, the design philosophy of online courses began as a mechanism for colleges to grant students an education that were unable to meet at a specific location and broaden their presence internationally. In addition, online courses afford students who have full-time work obligations, care for family, or telecommuters to receive continuing education. Today, the demand for continuing education online may be found in disciplines such as Medicine, Physics, Chemistry and Engineering.

Most importantly, the goal of raising enrollments and providing more access to education in society is a good thing, and yet, opponents of technology in education consistently forget this idea. A democratic republic functions better with a more educated population. Since when did open access become a negative aspect of education? Should our goals not be to advance access to education and promote collaboration in research with technology? It is disingenuous to label MOOC'S a failure or a "flavor of the month" concept before we even have years of researching testing the benefits/disadvantages compared to traditional instruction.

The misguided fears that many proponents of traditional instruction carry stems from an impending sense of doom that technology will destroy everything that has been built from previous scholarship. Unfortunately, fear mongering and blaming politicians/administrators will become stale when online students praise the MOOC instruction for creativity, visual engagement and enhance the learning experience to fit a personalized schedule. teachers need to examine the realistic nature of MOOC's, at most it will become part of an online department within a college of education. The likelihood of MOOC's replacing courses full time are slim to none, so let's take it easy on the rhetoric and have a nice glass of reality instead.

Web Expertise > F2F Expertise

How do you judge the value of expertise on the Web? Does it differ from your notion of expertise in face-to-face settings? Why or why not?

The value of web expertise is immense for users to successfully navigate a globally connected society, and excel in jobs that demand proficiency in web 2.0 technology tools to deliver instruction in educational settings or program software in business. Web expertise differs from face-to-face (F2F) expertise in that the former requires skill in searching and navigating web pages/applications to find information whereas the latter requires command of speech, tone, and body language to convey information, knowledge, cultural artifacts or conversation. In order tor refine F2F skills, one must practice more art than science. These individuals tend to understand behavioral cues, patterns, and mnemonic devices to create a story or discourse to guide a conversation. Great orators and instructors of the Socratic method often practice these methods to deliver instruction.


However, the emergence of pervasive technology in mainstream American culture requires that educators, government agencies, and businesses excel in web expertise to collaborate, meet, transact business, publish information and scholarship, as well as transform access to healthcare with digital records. The value of web expertise may eventually surpass the value of F2F expertise based only on current trends in our culture. Sooner or later, every school and student will be digitally connected and the possibility of open access to courses in the future suggests students will need digital literacy and web expertise far more than F2F expertise. While the skill of F2F expertise always has a place in the arts and theater, the sciences/government/businesses need to adapt to the technology revolution and place an emphasis on Web expertise more than F2F expertise.

College 2.0

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation recently invested $850,000 to the Chronicle of Higher Ed to support websites that help students and parents make sound decision on college admissions. The article here provides an overview of the websites, College Completion and College Reality Check. College Reality Check informs future students and parents on the financial requirements of school and what the data means for jobs after college. College Completion offers users the chance to see graduation rates of schools and compare metrics with other college programs. Students may engage in produsage by creating different plans and metrics while collaborating with peers through Facebook and Twitter on what colleges have the best bang for the buck. Both of these interactive websites represent tools suited for the digital age in which users can create comparisons of schools and map a framework for graduation. Many students feel overwhelmed with the many nuances of college, and these two web 2.0 tools offers students a chance to make the best financial decision and what job sectors are hiring graduates from their respective programs. The more informed students and parents become about their educational future, the better we become as a society with an intelligent and informed electorate. Progressive web tools like this will have an enormous impact for future generations, I wish this existed when I were entering school almost 12 years ago.

MOOC's on Hold

A new article in the chronicle of higher ed reports that San Jose State will not be offering MOOC credit courses for students come fall semester. The news comes after reports of leaked data from a slide show presented that students for the 3 trial MOOC math courses did better than students who did not enroll. The group responsible for the leak is the California Faculty Association, a group determined to end private influence over course instruction and technology tools in education, views this move as progress for further evaluation on data and implications for future use of MOOC's in universities. Given the difficulties of the Udacity platform to facilitate instruction, and that certain stduents in the trial had limited access to the platform, the break may seem like a good move. However, further research into MOOC instructional techniques might ease faculty tensions with technology and open course instruction.

Games and CoP

One of the ways to get involved with produsage in mainstream culture involves the gaming community. Currently, the community is experiencing a paradigm shift from a vertical structure of creator-->producer-->designer-->consumer to a horizontal structure of Free2play, interactive simulations and online worlds with currency, trade and financial gain at stake. Consumers move seamlessly from one role to another as game players, but also treasure hunters with new games like Diablo III, that house a real-live auction for players to sell in-game items for real currency. Even games that take advantage of Paypal and bitcoin have created enormous digital wealth for the gaming community. The table below is a Trajectory path for someone playing the game Diablo III.

Trajectory	Gaming CoP
Periperhal	·       New gamer, arcades, LAN centers, trading card players, plays a few times a week (Usually starts in adolescence)
Inbound	·       Gamer participating in a game, plays 7 days a week, joins a clan/guild (teens/college aged)
Insider	·       Guild leader, auction house trader with guild assets, purchases items and manages digital currency for the guild (young professionals/middle agers escaping the wife/husband/kids)
Boundary	·       Social gamer, plays mobile games but no interest in community or gaming identity (the angry birds crowd)
Outbound	·       Someone who retires from games and moves on to sudoku

Intellectual Property Rights

The issues of copyright and intellectual property rights concerns me greatly with the amount of content stored on the web which we now know is being spyed upon both domestically and most likely abroad. At this point, all information required to falsify a person's intellectual and personal identification may be accessed through limited security barriers, we're supposed to feel safe, but this is an illusion. People in my family have been targeted by identity thieves, and it cost us many hours and effort to fix the fallout. The consequences of lying to American people and ineffective government oversight, combined with secrecy from the American public, is a recipe for disaster.

Now, I am unsure if using storage like Dropbox for important thesis and future research ideas or data is a good idea. The only advantage now for cloud storage appears to be a vacuum for Homework and Notes, and even then with the possibility of someone hacking Dropbox could have an incalculable amount of damage to property rights. Already, the Supreme Court in June 2013 ruled on patent rights and involving genes.Thankfully, the human genetic code cannot be patented. However, this is merely the beginning of many future battles involving property rights and online content, which we may need to tread more carefully, especially involving present and future publications.

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