Yesterday was the height of a utopia followed by trepidation and perhaps a little heartache. The #edcmooc pre-course group had been spending two months connecting, experimenting and learning together. We seemed to be at the height of a utopia after Saturday night’s first Twitter chat #edcmchat where 128 people participated. Wonderful activities followed including new connections and discussions, ideas for next steps, a survey, learning how to analyze the chat session, and continuing to wait for that magic moment when the actual class would start. After the email arrived and I started looking at the class site and expectations, I wrote the following on G+ with a variation on Twitter and Facebook.
Now I’m wondering how the wonderful group cohesion and free spirit of the pre-course #edcmooc group will change as the formal class gets under way. How will the more formal course discipline with deadlines affect the learning that was already occurring.
I watched the short movie “The Inbox” and looked at Twitter and the discussion forums. It all felt very forced with none of the enchantment that I had been experiencing the past two months. I went to bed rather than ponder further, but woke up to the feeling that we had been living the Inbox to some extent. In the beginning of the movie, you get a sense of the grayness of the daily routine of life. Some of us in the pre-course group have remarked on the feeling of being in a rut doing the same thing every day. It was not that we didn’t enjoy what we did but there had to be something more. You see that in the movie where the young man looks longingly at the clasped hands of a couple or in the young woman who wants to connect with someone through the stuffed bear that can be held close.
The #edcmooc red bags arrived as an email in November encouraging us to try out different social networking tools before class started. A student developed presentation shows a timeline of the digital “ red bags” that began to connect a small group of about 160 people. You could liken each activity to one of the post-it notes in the movie where you learned more about each other and yourself. This included the anticipation that you had about the start of the class on 28 Jan. I felt that it was very much a Utopian existence filled with opportunities to learn with no undue expectations that you had to learn. Although that was tempered as suddenly several thousand joined the student created Facebook group about a week before the class started. (Angela Towndrow sums up the panic in her blog on “My #edcMOOC Freakout” on learning that the class actually had about 32,000 registered in mid January ).
So where are we now? I feel that the red bag has been torn and there is the fear that something wonderful has been lost before it really started. At the same time, perhaps we are like two people meeting in that park holding red bags anticipating the next step – not quite sure what to do next but still filled with a nervous joy about the possibilities. That’s where the Inbox ends leaving us to imagine our own ending. Will it be Utopia or Dystopia for this young couple? One could imagine both with moments of euphoria from connecting followed by disillusionment as reality sinks in.
So I am sitting here writing this digital post-it note ready to toss it out to the digital red bags of #edcmooc. I wonder what will be the ending of the #edcmooc pre-course participants. Will the #edcmooc experience evolve into a more mundane academic discussion of big words like utopia and dystopia. Or will a vibrant learning global community emerge on the other side. Only time will tell but I hope it will be the later.
Is it any different to the sense of anticipation and excitement that new first year students have as they approach university for the first time, filled with a mixture of hope and excitement? And then the lectures start, the deadlines loom and they realise just how many hundreds of others there are in the class and how the real hard work of learning actually involves effort, pain and higher degrees of self-discipline than they had realised?
😉
Enjoy!
I don’t think it is any different but it’s been a long time since I was a new first year student 🙂 And the conversations like this and those on other social networks remind me that there is more to experience through connecting than class schedules
So what’s the message here – that now that everyone else is starting their #edcmooc journeys the fun of those who prepared together for two months is spoiled? That connectivism is alright as long as not too many strangers dare to hop onboard?
The fun is not spoiled, far from it, just changed and now let’s see what happens!
Hang in there Kelcy, I think there is an expectation that we will connect with people and form study or discussion groups. We’ve already done that, so stick with us!!!! I’m at the beach, will be back in 36 hours, I’ll get organised after that and we should do a synctube or something together. We have already done the work, it doesnt matter who our PLN’s are, we have ours, why disintegrate that just because we have now entered MASSIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@spani31 I think the message is that changing expectations and hopes often catch us by surprise . The last 2 months have been fun and rewarding. Ary Aranguiz @trendingteacher https://twitter.com/trendingteacher/status/295296937085784064 likened it to making “Digital Friends Forever (DFFs)”. I have had that experience with other social networks where I have made lasting professional/personal friendships and still have yet to meet some of the folks in person. I was merely voicing my temporary freakout to borrow Angela’s word. And having watched the Inbox, it was easy to compare it to that. Which I believe is the point to the class. Now that I’m grounded again thanks to conversations with people, I’m not so freaked out. And quite ready to make new connections although not obviously with all 40,000 participants.
@Angela, thanks and have a good time at the beach. I’m looking forward to staying connected.
Hang IN there as Angela said. This too shall settle somehow I think. We might not connect with more people in the same way but there will always be our initial group to fall back on. 🙂
Synchtube is something I hope we get to do together.
I really enjoyed reading your post, Kelcy, You expressed many of my own feelings. I’m in agreement with Angela… let’s do a synchtube or something that brings us all together. I’m happy that you are not so freaked out. Unfortunately I am! Maybe after I have looked at the film clips and responded in the forum in some fashion, I’ll feel part of it all.
I am one of the people who only joined today because I didn’t know about any pre-course activity. I am surprised I didn’t hear of it and disappointed because I would have enjoyed it. I was in another MOOC before Christmas and found that a few of the 1000s hit it off together and formed an informal sub-group. These things generally work themselves out 😉 Anyway, it was a well written piece, Kelcy and I look forward to starting the work! See you there!
Kelcy,
I enjoy all your Twitter postings on your .@Coursera work. This course, especially, has piqued my interest. I’m looking forward to learning of your progress (via both Facebook & Twitter…and this blog) with #edcmooc. A return to euphoria? Let’s hope so. (But either way, you’ll learn something; and that is *always* good.)
BTY, my former-editor-self gives you props for using “under way” properly in your G+ quote. 🙂
Michele Z.
@Michele haha nearly messed it up. I’m glad to see folks I know here as well as the new connections I’m making.
@At the pingback (I have to track it back later), I hope we are not cuddling each other through our #edcmooc activities. But I feel the encouragement and support have been extremely helpful in our willingness to experiment. I think that is one of the best characteristics of a learning network.
@Angela and @Willa, I think doing a Synchtube would be great. We talked about it earlier but there was always something else to try.
@Annie B, I believe we will continue this #edcmooc experience far beyond the actual class (at least I hope so). It’s great to hear that you had an experience with a subgroup in your other MOOC. I didn’t connect on my first two MOOCs and felt that I had missed a lot of value because I was too busy elsewhere.
Hi, I think that your blog captures well the dystopian feeling about massive online courses in general. I felt like that in my first Coursera course, in which I was actively engaged for the first several weeks and began recognizing and befriending certain people who were quite involved with the content. Later on, I stopped attending – it was taking too much time out of my busy schedule, and it felt too impersonal. On the positive side, I think that some connections created before and during the course would persist and evolve. You have already gained many friends and followers, so no matter what, you are a winner 🙂
Thanks @dpedeva. I certainly felt very dystopian when I wrote the post. But as I talked to folks on various networks, I was pulled back to the middle (not completely utopia) where connecting energizes your mind.
Kelcy. I think that your post rings true with many of us. I was also feeling discouraged by the formality of the class, the readings, and the inability to be able to synthesize my thoughts about the films in my blog. Then I remembered why I enrolled in this class. 1) to experience the MOOC itself, 2) To create a personal learning network (PLN) with people of like minds, and 3) to be able to provide professional development for teachers in creating their own PLNs. How can we create engaging online courses for teachers and students? “All educators (and learners) can benefit from extending their own personal learning network online – beyond the walls of their schools, the boundaries of their districts, and the limits of their experience.” Here is a post I shared a while back http://bit.ly/V4mVFF on PLNs.
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