My reflections on “MOOCs of Hazard” – a well-thought out, balanced article by Andrew Delbanco


From DSC: Below are my reflections on MOOCs of Hazard — from newrepublic.com by Andrew Delbanco — who asks:  Will online education dampen the college experience? Yes. Will it be worth it? Well…


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While I’m not sure that I agree with the idea that online education will dampen the college experience — and while I could point to some amazing capabilities that online education brings to the table in terms of true global exchanges — I’ll instead focus my comments on the following items:

 

1) Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are recent experiments — ones that will continue to change/morph into something else.
They are half-baked at best, but they should not be taken lightly. Christensen, Horn, Johnson are spot on with their theories of disruption here, especially as they relate to innovations occurring within the virtual/digital realm.  For example, the technologies behind IBM’s Watson could be mixed into the list of ingredients that will be used to develop MOOCs in the future.  It would be a very powerful, effective MOOC indeed if you could get the following parties/functionalities to the table:

  • IBM — to provide Watson like auto-curation/filtering capabilities, artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, as well as data mining/learning analytics expertise, joined by
  • Several highly-creative firms from the film/media/novel/storytelling industry, who would be further joined by
  • Experts from Human Computer Interaction (HCI)/user interface/user experience design teams, who would be further joined by
  • Programmers and interaction specialists from educational gaming endeavors (and from those who can design simulations), joined by
  • Instructional designers, joined by
  • The appropriate Subject Matter Experts who can be reached by the students as necessary, joined by
  • Those skilled in research and library services, joined by
  • Legal experts to assist with copyright issues, joined by
  • Other specialists in mobile learning,  3D, web development, database administration, animation, graphic design, musicians, etc.

It won’t be long before this type of powerful team gets pulled together — from some organizations(s) with deep pockets — and the content is interacted with and presented to us within our living rooms via connected/Smart TVs and via second screen devices/applications.

2) The benefits of MOOCs
  • For colleges/universities:
    • MOOCs offer some serious marketing horsepower (rather than sound pedagogical tools, at this point in time at least)
    • They are forcing higher ed to become much more innovative
    • They provide great opportunities to build one’s personalized learning networks, as they bring forth those colleagues who are interested in topic A, B, or C
    • They move us closer to team-based content creation and delivery
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  • For students:
    • They offer a much less expensive option to go exploring disciplines for themselves…to see if they enjoy (and/or are gifted in) topic A, B or C
    • They provide great opportunities to build one’s personalized learning networks, as they bring forth those colleagues who are interested in topic A, B, or C
    • They provide a chance to see what it’s like to learn about something in a digital/virtual manner

3)  The drawbacks of MOOCs:
  • MOOCs are not nearly the same thing as what has come to be known as “online learning” — at least in the higher ed industry. MOOCs do not yet offer what more “traditional” (can I say that?) online learning provides: Far more support and pedagogical/instructional design, instructor presence and dialog, student academic support services, advising, more student-to-student and student-to-faculty interaction, etc.
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  • MOOCs are like drinking from a firehose — there are too many blogs/RSS feeds, twitter feeds, websites, and other resources to review.

4) It would be wise for all of us to be involved with such experiments and have at least a subset of one’s college or university become much more nimble/responsive.

 

Also see:

ScreenChampsAwards-Techsmith2012

 

Excerpt:

Description:

Enter up to three (3) screencast videos. Videos will be assigned a category based on the information you provide (so please be as detailed as possible!). Categories are: Education (videos with a focus on teaching and/or schools, at any level); Tutorial/Training (videos with a focus on training or tutorial content); Sales and Marketing (videos made to sell or persuade); and Wildcard (videos that don’t fit in the previous categories).

Screen resolution & browser trends [infographic] — from theultralinx.com by Oliur Rahman

 

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In Silicon Valley, designers emerge as rock stars — from Reuters.com by Gerry Shih

Excerpt:

The new breed of “user experience” designers – part sketch artist, part programmer, with a dash of behavioral scientist thrown in – are some of the most sought-after employees in technology. Entry-level interactive designers at startups are commanding salaries easily topping $80,000, almost twice the median pay for primarily print designers of about $45,000, according to a recent survey by the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

From DSC:
From my experience with Internet-related work and careers, most people are either gifted in the front end of things (interface design, graphic design, web design, etc.) or in the back end of things (programming, databases, scripting, e-commerce, security, etc.). I have seen individuals who can do both…but it’s rare that someone is deeply versed in both sides of the coin.

What are we doing in higher ed to foster more cross-disciplinary skills/assignments/projects/teams like this?

 

100 ideas that changed Graphic Design [Thorne]

100 ideas that changed Graphic Design — from coolhunting.com by James Thorne
The most influential concepts in the history of the industry

Excerpt:

In the new chronologically ordered book “100 Ideas That Changed Graphic Design“, Steven Heller and Véronique Vienne explore the most important moments in an industry they themselves helped to define. Part of publisher Laurence King‘s popular “100 Ideas” series, the combination of symbols, techniques, archetypes, tropes and trends represents some of the major creative explosions that continue to inspire an array of visual mediums today. The scope is broad but intelligently refined, connecting all aspects of graphic design, from the age-old technique of text ornamentation to the relatively nascent appearance of pixelated images and digital type.

Another excerpt from book description

New in the “100 Ideas that Changed…” series, this book demonstrates how ideas influenced and defined graphic design, and how those ideas have manifested themselves in objects of design. The 100 entries, arranged broadly in chronological order, range from technical (overprinting, rub-on designs, split fountain); to stylistic (swashes on caps, loud typography, and white space); to objects (dust jackets, design handbooks); and methods (paper cut-outs, pixelation).

Written by one of the world’s leading authorities on graphic design and lavishly illustrated, the book is both a great source of inspiration and a provocative record of some of the best examples of graphic design from the last hundred years.

Also see:

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Data Visualization: Journalism’s Voyage West — from Stanford University
This visualization plots over 140,000 newspapers published over three centuries in the United States. The data comes from the Library of Congress’ “Chronicling America” project, which maintains a regularly updated directory of newspapers.

 

VideoCopilot.net

My thanks to Mr. Tim Pixley, for posting this resource out on LinkedIn.

Reinventing the Technology of Human Accomplishment — by Gary Hamel; from the University of Phoenix Distinguished Guest Video Lecture Series.

From DSC:
No matter whether you agree with what Gary is saying or not, can you imagine if every lecture contained this type of team-based assistance in creating the motion graphics, recording the video, editing the video, executing proper sound design principles, etc.? Most likely such an endeavor would be more achievable/successful when producing content in a controlled, studio type of environment — and then presenting it online (vs. trying to do this in front of a live classroom/audience/face-to-face.)

Anyway, very powerful communication channels here! Excellent use of motion graphics to backup his message. A transcript with bolded headings and colored main points would be great too. By the way, wouldn’t it be cool for “call outs” to appear — somewhat in an augmented reality sort of way — when a main point was just made?!


Gary Hamel -- Reinventing Managment for the 21st Century

Description of video:
Watch Gary Hamel, celebrated management thinker and author and co-founder of the Management Innovation eXchange (MIX), make the case for reinventing management for the 21st century. In this fast-paced, idea-packed, 15-minute video essay, Hamel paints a vivid picture of what it means to build organizations that are fundamentally fit for the future—and genuinely fit for human beings. It’s time to radically rethink how we mobilize people and organize resources to productive ends. Here’s how we start.

This video is an excerpt from the University of Phoenix Distinguished Guest Video Lecture Series.

 

Sample screen shots:


 

 

 

 

 


From DSC:
Again, can you imagine the bump in engagement/attention spans if a faculty member could be backed up by these types of motion graphics!?

 

From DSC:
I realize that many of the for-profits are already using teams of specialists…but many others are not.

 

–Originally saw this at the
Higher Education Management blog by Keith Hampson

Be aware of the light source hitting your screen — from Digital Photography Schoolby Peter West Carey

 

Which also points to:

What happens when sixth sense meets an iPad?– from labnol.org

Excerpt:
Zach King, a film student from LA, has created this neat video where the iPad screen is projected in the form of a hologram and users can interact with the various apps using natural hand gestures. Futuristic but not impossible.

 

ipad hologram

 

From DSC:
What a creative way to help people visualize your concept and to help bring your vision to a format that others can understand and work with! Great work on the digital video editing Zach!

 

 

Mike Matas: A next-generation digital book (filmed March 2011)


TED: Mike Matas -- Next Generation Digital Book - filmed March 2011

 

About this talk
Software developer Mike Matas demos the first full-length interactive book for the iPad — with clever, swipeable video and graphics and some very cool data visualizations to play with. The book is “Our Choice,” Al Gore’s sequel to “An Inconvenient Truth.”

About Mike Matas
While at Apple, Mike Matas helped write the user interface for the iPhone and iPad. Now with Push Pop Press, he’s helping to rewrite the electronic book.

 

AP Interactive visualizes a future of stories that reach beyond text — from niemanlab.org

Excerpt:

Data visualization is “going through a kind of renaissance in journalism,” said Shazna Nessa, director of Interactive for the AP. What’s really behind the news collective’s uptick in graphics, she told me, is a kind of evolutionary change in journalism — one that’s reflected in the Interactive unit itself. Once a repository of charts and maps, the department is now creating what Nessa described as “comprehensive interactive stories,” and we can expect to see a lot more of them.

 

Visual storytelling: Interview with Nancy Duarte — from theelearningcoach.com

Excerpt:

Coach:
Why should learning experience designers care about stories? How does it relate to learning?

Nancy:
Stories are the oldest communication form and are proven to be easily recalled and repeated. If training material can be recalled and repeated, it’s most likely understood. Stories are a great container for memorable information. Relaying instructional content through metaphor and story helps the audience connect emotionally to the content being communicated. Instructional designers are on a steady quest to keep their audiences engaged and motivated, and storytelling is an effective strategy.

5 creative places to find textures

5 creative places to find textures — from MediaLoot.com by Tony Thomas

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find creative textures

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