MOOCifying public education ( #edcmooc )

Sometimes schools are like space labs

I hear a bell ringing in my head when I read Bonnie Stewart asking: do the (c)MOOCs work as Trojan horses for the sociocultural growth and spread of digital literacies?

That bell reminds me how I've been telling a similar story about similar benefits when I've been training vocational teachers to utilize another platform – Facebook.

Before getting back to Facebook and VET, let's look at MOOCs and digital literacies.

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The article Massiveness + Openness = New Literacies of Participation? leans on Lankshear & Knobel's formulation that new digital literacies have an ethos component as well as a technological one.

This ethos "celebrates inclusion (everyone in), mass participation, distributed expertise, valid and rewardable roles for all who pitch in." (cit. Lankshear & Knobel, 2007, p. 18)

According to Stewart, being digitally literate is about being able to make meaning as a social practice via interaction with mediating digital technologies. I agree, couldn't have said it better.

Right now I'm making meanings as a social practice via Coursera and the course E-Learning and Digital Culture, organized by University of Edinburgh. This MOOC is a collective, distributed and dispersed way of sharing the yearn for new knowledge.

#edcmoc hangout in an informal setting

As such, it suits an adult learner who has good learning skills, understanding of the meta frameworks and own inner motivation and goals. On this course there hasn't been collaboration that would steer the action, and e.g. massive participation in the hangout sessions didn't "generate new knowledge" as Stewart thinks size and capacity make happen. So, it's all up to the learner him/herself.

Innovating the public education

Reading Stewart at the dentist's waiting room

The larger the course, the smaller the role of the teacher, and the more emphasis has to be laid on peer interaction, course materials and tools for knowledge creation.

I'm interested in what we can learn from (c)MOOCs and apply to public education, particularly to secondary vocational education and training, and to adult education centre courses.

If social learning and one being the subject of his/her own learning leads to making new meanings and sense that will transfer and affect in one's lifelong path after the very learning process, a lot is gained for the VET or the adult student.

Can the (c)MOOC model be transferred to public education? The idea behind cMOOCs is the autonomy over one's own learning, an essential factor for being the said subject. If there is such a fundamental autonomy, how can courses like these scaffold learners who have less tools, skills, knowledge, or self-steering ability?

In the beginning I referred to Facebook. It has provided a great platform for many students in our own VET organization. We can reach and communicate with students a lot better than with email or Moodle. Facebook has strengthened our digital literacies, and it can be said to be the learning platform of digital literacies for most middle aged people.

In a similar way, I believe the public education and its e-learning courses can achieve a lot from putting (c)MOOC ideas into practice in this new context. Autonomy over one's own learning is familiar also to the education authorities who at least here in Finland have a strong trend towards personalizing each learner's studies and in the VET sector a system for recognizing of prior learning in other institutions and of non-formal learning.

Previously I worked for Sotunki Distance Learning Centre that offers all upper secondary school courses online. It had similar challenges in developing quality and participatory practices as our VET institute and organizations that it's likely to merge with in the beginning of 2014.

Sotunki found answers to many of those challenges. Now, in another city, I'm facing a bit similar situation.

This is such an interesting realm to study, innovate, and develop. I feel lucky that it's part of my work and my personal interests – a combination I'd like every student to possess.

Student counseling in SecondLife in Sotunki.