George Veletsianos, PhD

Category: scholarship Page 16 of 27

The spectrum of MOOCs

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On October 15, 2014

In moocs, my research, online learning, open, scholarship

“xMOOC vs. cMOOC” is one way that is frequently used to describe the philosophical design of a MOOC. Tony Bates does an excellent job summarizing the philosophies behind the two. While this categorization is helpful in describing the foundations of the types of MOOCS that exist, I’m increasingly becoming more and more uncomfortable with this categorization as used to describe particular courses. I see MOOCs as a phenomenon more than anything, and when the xMOOC and cMOOC terms are used to describe courses, it seems that we are missing what actually happens in these courses, we are missing the details.

While the xMOOC and cMOOC labels are worthwhile to help individuals make sense of two opposing viewpoints, there is a spectrum the lies between the two. Between xMOOCs and cMOOCs, we see:

There is wide variation between MOOCs, and it behooves us to examine how and why particular MOOCs differ, and how the differences impact learner experiences and outcomes.

Networked Scholars course (#scholar14) starting on Monday, October 20th

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On October 15, 2014

In moocs, my research, online learning, open, scholarship, sharing

smedia

This is just a quick note to  remind you that the Networked Scholars course is starting on Monday October 20th. The #scholar14 hashtag is already collecting relevant resources.

The course is happening at an opportune time, providing ample material for us to examine. Academics are often encouraged to blog and participate online to increase their reach and impact. However, when scholars are online they face tensions, dilemmas, and conundrums. For example, some are concerned about navigating personal-professional boundaries on social media and others are worried about the degree to which online activities may be cause for termination, as revealed by the recent Kansas Board of Regents policy on “Improper Use of Social Media” and the ongoing case of Dr. Steven Salaita. It seems that these stories are never-ending: The Conversation included an article today entitled: To tweet or not to tweet: academic freedom and social media.

What do academics do on social media? What tensions do they face? Why do they continue being on these contentious spaces when a number of their senior colleagues advice them to “get off Twitter and write those papers?” These are questions that I am hoping we will explore together starting on Monday.

I have also finalized our guest experts for the course, and I’m happy to report that we have a wonderful group of colleagues from three countries joining us to discuss issues pertaining to networked scholarship. The live events are scheduled for the times/days listed below, so if you would like to join us, please add them to your calendar, and join our Google Hangout on Air events. If you can’t join us live, we will be recording and archiving the events so that you can watch them later at your convenience.

October 23 at 9am PST: Dr. Laura Czerniewicz from the University of Cape Town (South Africa) – Google Hangout on Air link
October 29 at 4pm PST: Dr. Royce Kimmons from the University of Idaho (USA) – Google Hangout on Air link
November 6, 10:30am at PST: Bonnie Stewart from the University of Price Edward Island (Canada) – Google Hangout on Air link

To convert these times to your local time zone, please use this tool: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

See you soon!

Image: The Art of Social Media by mkhmarketing

Networked Scholars syndication hub: Live

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On October 7, 2014

In courses, emerging technologies, moocs, my research, NPS, open, scholarship

STS-131 Discovery Launch

The Networked Scholars course starts in two weeks, on October 20th, with 2 options for participation.

1. Through the Canvas Network.

2. Through personal blogs and twitter accounts, syndicated, via the…. drumroll…. Networked Scholars Syndication hub. With special thanks to Alan Levine who has been helping a number of people implement this design, all readings and activities will be publicly-available, and this site syndicates blog/twitter feeds used as discussion/reflection spaces. The official Twitter hashtag for the course is #scholar14. If you are interested in this option, feel free to head over to the syndication hub, and connect your blog to the site!

Image: STS-131 Discovery Launch

Open, Social, Networked scholarship panel at social media and society conference

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On September 23, 2014

In networktest, NPS, open, scholarship

smsocconf

 

I am organizing a panel for the Social Media & Society conference entitled Networked Participatory Scholarship: Empirical perspectives on scholars use of social media. If you are attending the conference and are interested in the changing nature of scholarship, we’d love to see you there!  Below is a short description of the panel

Panel Members:

George Veletsianos, Associate Professor, Canada Research Chair, Royal Roads University, @veletsianos

Anatoliy Gruzd, Associate Professor, Ryerson University, @gruzd

Royce Kimmons, Director of the Doceo Center for Innovation + Learning, Assistant Professor, University of Idaho, @roycekimmons

Christine Greenhow, Assistant Professor, Michigan State University, @chrisgreenhow

Bonnie Stewart, Doctoral Candidate, University of Prince Edward Island, @bonstewart

 Panel Objectives:

The overarching objective of this panel is to examine the concept of Networked Participatory Scholarship, which refers to academics’ use of digital and social technologies to “share, reflect upon, critique, improve, validate, and further their scholarship” (Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2012). The five researchers participating in the panel are making significant contributions to our enhanced understanding of how and why academics are engaging in digital, social, networked, and social scholarship via the use of social media. Panelists will  make 7 minute presentations which will be followed by an interactive conversation. Each panelist’s contribution is summarized below.  

Scholars from disparate fields have discussed social media use in scholarship. However, such discussions are often disconnected. Kimmons will disambiguate several terms describing emergent scholarship, including open, social, digital, and networked participatory scholarship and identify bridges between disciplines.

Gruzd will discuss results from a recently-completed SSHRC award that examined if, how, and why Canadian scholars and their international counterparts are using social media in their research.

Greenhow will discuss social scholarship and trends and challenges experienced by educational researchers in the United States based on a recent survey and interviews with PhD students, and early- and mid-career scholars.

Stewart will discuss the different ways and purposes scholars engage in networked participatory scholarship, based on a recent ethnographic study. She will examine changing identity roles for academics and scholars.

 

Veletsianos will discuss a framework he developed summarizing empirical research in the field. In this framework scholars’ social media participation is seen to exist in networks of (a) knowledge creation and dissemination, (b) tension, (c) care and vulnerability, (d) fragmentation, and (e) transparency.

Assumptions underpinning open scholarship

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On July 18, 2014

In open, papers, scholarship

Fecher and Friesike reviewed the literature relevant to open science and found that “open science is an umbrella term that encompasses a multitude of different assumptions about the future of knowledge creation and dissemination; an umbrella term however that comprises five more or less distinct schools of thought with different assumptions about what exact aspect of research should be ‘open’ and ‘open’ to whom.”

One of these schools of thought is the “public school” whose advocates appear to believe that “the social web and Web 2.0 technologies allow and urge scientists on the one hand to open up their research processes and on the other hand to prepare research products for interested non-experts.” 

There’s a number of interesting results here, lending  support to, and further defining, the following assumptions and themes of open scholarship we identified in Veletsianos & Kimmons (2012):

  • Open scholarship has a strong ideological basis rooted in an ethical pursuit for democratization, fundamental human rights, equality, and justice
  • Open scholarship emphasizes the importance of digital participation for enhanced scholarly outcomes
  • Open scholarship is treated as an emergent scholarly phenomenon that is co-evolutionary with technological advancements in the larger culture
  • Open scholarship is seen as a practical and effective means for achieving scholarly aims that are socially valuable

 

Veletsianos, G. & Kimmons, R. (2012). Assumptions and Challenges of Open Scholarship. The International Review Of Research In Open And Distance Learning,13(4), 166-189. 

MOOCs, automation, artificial intelligence seminar

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On June 5, 2014

In emerging technologies, Ideas, my research, online learning, open, pedagogical agents, scholarship, sharing

I will be visiting my colleagues at the University of Edinburgh in mid-June to give a seminar on MOOCs, automation, artificial intelligence and pedagogical agents. This is a free event organized by the Moray House School of Education at the U of Edinburgh and supported by the Digital Cultures and Education research group and DigitalHSS. Please feel free to join us face-to-face or online (Date: 18 June 2014; Time: 1-3pm) by registering here.

This seminar will bring together some of my current and past research. A lot of my work in the past examined learners’ experiences with conversational and (semi)intelligent agents. In that research, we discovered that the experience of interacting with intelligent technologies was engrossing (pdf). Yet, learners often verbally abused the pedagogical agents (pdf). We also discovered that appearance (pdf) may be a significant mediating factor in learning. Importanly, this research indicated that “learners both humanized the agents and expected them to abide by social norms, but also identified the agents as programmed tools, resisting and rejecting their lifelike behaviors.”

A lot of my current work examines experiences with open online courses and online social networks, but what exactly does pedagogical agents and MOOCs have to do with each other? Ideas associated with Artificial Intelligence are present in both the emergence of xMOOCs (EdX, Udacity, and Coursera emanated from AI labs) and certain practices associated with them – e.g., see Balfour (2013) on automated essay scoring. Audrey Watters highlighted these issues in the past. While I haven’t yet seen discussions on the integration of lifelike characters and pedagogical agents in MOOCs, the use of lifelike robots for education and the role of the faculty member in MOOCs are areas of  debate and investigation in both the popular press and the scholarly literature.  The quest to automate instruction has a long history, and lives within the sociocultural context of particular time periods. For example, the Second World War found US soldiers and cilvilians unprepared for the war effort, and audiovisual devices were extensively used to efficiently train individuals at a massive scale. Nowadays, similar efforts at achieving scale and efficiencies reflect problems, issues, and cultural beliefs of our time.

I’m working on my presentation, but if you have any questions or thoughts to share, I’d love to hear them!

 

Networked Scholars open course

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On June 3, 2014

In courses, Royal Roads University, scholarship

NetworkedImage courtesy of NetWork

In the Fall, I will be teaching an open course entitled Networked Scholars. We are having our first design meeting this week, and in preparation for that, I have written up a course description (see below). The course is my response to the fact that Research Methods courses in the social sciences rarely examine scholarly practices in the digital age. Digital, networked, and open scholarship are topics that students and academics discover and examine on their own. These topics are too important to ignore. I believe that we should be teaching them in research methods courses. I am creating this course to help introduce individuals to these topics and to create an open online resource to help those who want to integrate these topics into their research methods courses. If you are interested in integrating aspects of this course with your (on campus or online) research methods course, I’d love to talk to you!

Course Description

In this course, we will examine the tools and practices associated with networked, open, and digital scholarship. In particular we will investigate the emergent practice of scholars’ use of social media and online social networks for sharing, critiquing, improving, furthering, and reflecting upon their scholarship. Recent reports indicate that social media are at an early stage of adoption in academia, even though mindful participation in digital spaces is a significant skill for today’s academic and knowledge worker.

Participants will study scholarly presence online. They will examine how particular tools and practices may enhance the impact and reach of scholarship, and will explore the challenges and tensions associated with emerging forms of scholarship. By gaining an understanding of modern forms of scholarship, participants will be better equipped to use digital technologies and networked practices in their own work.

This course will be of immediate relevance to doctoral students, academics, and knowledge workers. Faculty members who teach research methods courses and faculty development professionals may also find this course valuable.

August 20, 2014 update

The course will run on the Canvas network (and concurrently on social media via the #scholar14 hashtag). The course registration page is live.

June 4, 2014 update

Course hashtag: #scholar14

If you’d like to be informed about the start of course or if you’d like to give feedback on the content and design of the course, please fill in the short survey below (also found here).

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