Yes I do understand your point. I think the creators of Coursera are still attempting this networking aspect of MOOCs through their forums and through google hangouts that they schedule. I am not sure this happens with all courses though.

I am not related to Coursera in any way, except for being a user myself. I am not trying to take sides. I do understand your frustration even if it is over the use of a term for something slightly different from what it should have been.

Well, I learned something new! Thanks

Regards,
Viplav

Actually there is a distinction between the much-hyped initiatives being called MOOCs or xMOOCs (like Coursera) and the original ideas of George Siemens, Stephen Downes and Dave Cormier (cMOOCs) and the theory of Connectivism (read more at http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2012/06/03/what-is-the-theory-that-underpins-our-moocs/).

I don’t if you experienced it, but CCK08 (Connectivism and Connective Knowledge, 2008) was really the first MOOC. It, and subsequent MOOCs run by George, Stephen and Dave, exemplified a radically different and revolutionary approach to learning.

When initiatives like Coursera and Udacity happened, they essentially extended the traditional format to the online space, keeping the pedagogy essentially the same as in traditional elearning, except that they accounted for “free”, “open” and “networked”, and also were backed by venture money and effective marketing.

My post rants against the usurpation of the MOOC moniker by these xMOOC initiatives and is a mark of continuing protest . MOOCs, as originally conceptualized, do accomplish part of what you are saying (at least the institutional independence piece). What the cMOOCs exemplified was the power of networks in learning (learning as the process of making connections) more than exemplify traditional elearning (learn anywhere, anytime, at your own pace).

I hope that clarifies the distinction. Do let me know.

Thanks,
Viplav

I may have missed your point entirely!

On a different note I appreciate your articles on this blog and have blogrolled you for future reference.

THE STUDENTS … THE CORE OF THE ACADEMIC system are completely IGNORED ! !. System of HE cannot be improved without harnessing the the students power and potential. Students power and potential is something more than SUN SHINE… Dr Mandi, Professor of dhandha,

Analytics starts with data (classification, identification of sources), moves on to deal with capture (or acquisition) and validation process and finally data is ready to be presented and analysed for a variety of stakeholders.

For each segment of the target audience, we would need to find appropriate indicators such as performance, well-being and attendance. These indicators will depend upon what we are trying to analyze, so there must be an overall charter. Each of the analytics stages have their own challenges – for example, how would you collect/validate data? The technology portion is not very complicated.

If you want to read more about analytics, please do look at the work Knewton, Khan Academy and Wireless Generation have done and perhaps you will find something of value there. If you have specific questions, I can try and help research them for you.

Scale with scale – very close to my heart. I dont believe centralized top down capacity building initiatives will go anywhere for our scale and diversity. Instead we must divest control, facilitate a network – and really create capability, not capacity. I have done some operational thinking for this here. http://learnos.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/edtech-policy-for-higher-education-xiith-plan-india-community-project/.

Look forward to interacting with you and learning more about your efforts.

Regards,
Viplav

Great to read your blog, much to learn from here. In terms of Educational Analytics, do you have any thoughts on what can be done at the Elementary school level? We’re working with govt elementary schools on a large scale and would like to hear from you on how analytics can improve our efforts. Would also like to hear more on the “meet scale with scale” idea, how would you operationalise this?

Thanks,
Ravi

Keen to connect and share information about our product called BookMane and also want some inputs from your side.

Girish

Keen to connect you and share some information rwith respect to our work, called bookmane( http://www.bookmane.in) , let me know if there is a way to share information.

Thanks,
Girish