Moodle, MOOC’s and our model for distance learning. Trying to clear up some of the vagueness around distance learning. Where we stand in regards to our work and the emerging tsunami of MOOC's.

1. LEARNING ONLINE
MOODLE, MOOC’S AND OUR MODEL FOR DISTANCE LEARNING.
PAUL TREADWELL | MARCH 2013

2. GOALS FOR THIS WEBINAR
At the end of this session you should
• Leave with an understanding of what ―distance learning‖ is
• Understand our history of involvement with structured
online courses
• Be able to locate ―MOOC’s‖ on a map of distance learning

3. WHAT IS DISTANCE LEARNING?

4. LEARNING AT A DISTANCE
Is not a new thing
• Correspondence courses (1890’s)
• Radio (1930’s)
• Television (1960’s)
• Internet (late 1990’s)

5. THE LAND GRANT AND DISTANCE ED
The land grant attempts to open access to education to a broad population
The presence of county offices, across NYS, embeds the institution in the community
Educators (previously county agents) facilitate the exchange of information and
creation of knowledge
Learning is both a facilitated and collaborative process

6. CURRENT DL TOOLS/TECHNIQUES
 We use a variety of tools for ―distance learning‖
 Moodle
 WebEx (previously connect)
 Youtube
 Camtasia
 Etc….
 It all depends on what you mean (and what your intent is) when talking about Dl

7. BOUNDARIES OF OUR DISCUSSION TODAY
―Distance learning‖ encompasses a lot of territory.
Today we’ll be focusing on:
• Structured
• Scheduled (with duration)
• (Generally) asynchronous
• Social (Not solitary)
Online learning

8. INTENT AND OUR PARTICIPANTS
 When I think about our participants/learners:
 Small groups of aspiring adults who desire to keep their minds fresh and vigorous; who begin to learn by
confronting pertinent situations; who dig down into the reservoirs of their experience before resorting to texts and
secondary facts; who are led in the discussion by teachers who are also searchers after wisdom and not oracles:
this constitutes the setting for adult education, the modern quest for life's meaning. Lindeman 1926a: 4-7
 Lindeman, E. (1926). The meaning of adult education. New York: New Republic.

9. OUR FIRST VENTURE INTO STRUCTURED ONLINE LEARNING
The How, When and Why of
Forest Farming
Initial development of learning
content for presentation online.
• Video ―modules‖ demonstrating
practices
Non interactive presentation of
content

10. EMBRACING THE CHALLENGE OF LEARNING WITH
The knowledge base • Academic knowledge constitutes a part of the overall
for forest farming in • Practice based knowledge constitutes an equal, if not greater, part
the Northeast is • Documenting, sharing and testing this knowledge becomes part of
the learning process
broadly distributed:
In this case, Learning • The role of the instructor/facilitator becomes one of creating a space
is a collaborative for sharing and discussion.
• Expert knowledge is not held by one, but distributed among many
process among peers

11. SOCIAL E-LEARNING, CIRCA 2005

12. HWWFF V2 - CHOOSING MOODLE
SARE funded project to support development
of the Forest Farming learning community
Evaluation of lcms packages, other software
to host learning community
Selection of MOODLE
• Integrated social features (Forums)
• Assessment tools
• Repository

13. EARLY LESSONS
 The initial run of HWWFF
 Demographic diversity
 Participants ranged in age from mid-twenties to seventy plus
 Technical challenges
 Access to video content is problematic on a dial up connection
 Alternative provision of video content was needed (cd’s)
 Questioning the value of free
 Erratic participation

14. EXPANDING OUR PORTFOLIO
 The potential of distance learning as a viable method for engaging learners, and creating opportunities
for participatory, social learning was demonstrated (albeit with some qualifications) by the successes of
the HWWFF
 Subsequent courses developed included:
 Grafting ( a remaking of an existing course by Ken Mudge)
 Organic Gardening
 Internal (Staff) development courses

15. CURRENT EXAMPLES
 Beginning Farmers Program
 Botanical Illustration
 Permaculture
 Suffolk County courses
 PMEP

16. WE ARE NOT MASSIVE
Our (CCE) online courses generally have between 15-40
participants per ―session‖
• This represents what our experiences have shown to be effective for
engaging in social e-learning
• At the upper end (30 to 40 participants) there are often 2
instructors/facilitators
• This insures adequate and timely responses to forum postings,
assignments etc…

18. MOOC’S
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

19. MOOCMANIA
 Massive Open Online Course
 Massive | 100’s to Thousands of participants
 Open* | (theoretically) accessible, reusable
 Online | Online
 Course | Structured learning content

20. MASSIVELY OPEN ONLINE COURSES
 Educause – (3 of)7 things you should know about
MOOCs
 a massively open online course (MOOC) is a model for delivering learning content online to virtually any
person—with no limit on attendance—who wants to take the course.
 A MOOC throws open the doors of a course and invites anyone to enter, resulting in a new learning
dynamic, one that offers remarkable collaborative and conversational opportunities for students to
gather and discuss the course content.
 the most significant contribution is the MOOC’s potential to alter the relationship between learner and
instructor and between academe and the wider community

21. MOOC MADNESS SWEEPS THE NATION
• Thomas Freidman January 26,2013 New York Times
Revolution Hits the • ―Nothing has more potential to lift more people out of
Universities poverty … Nothing has more potential to unlock a billion
more brains to solve the world’s biggest problems. ‖
California universities
see future in online • Press-Telegram Long Beach, CA. February 17, 2013
classes
MOOCs: A College • David Skorton and Glenn Altschuler, January 28, 2013
Education Online? Forbes

22. EDX

23. UDACITY

24. COURSERA

25. COURSERA COURSE DESCRIPTION

26. COUNTERING VOICES
A selection of voices counter to the MOOC madness:
• For Whom Is College Being Reinvented?
• http://chronicle.com/article/The-False-Promise-of-the/136305/
• Unthinking Technophilia
• http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/01/14/essay-says-
faculty-involved-moocs-may-be-making-rope-professional-hangings
• Inequality in American Education Will Not Be Solved Online
• http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/inequality-
in-american-education-will-not-be-solved-online/267189/
• Tree Sitting
• http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/tree-sitting/

27. IS THIS REALLY THE FUTURE?
The flurry of • Revolutionary
aspirational, optimis
tic language • Transformative
promoting MOOC’s • Reinventing education
And MOOC’s may be all of the above but the question is after the
revolution - after the transformation and re-invention – what does
education look like?

29. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
3.0 Unported License.
CONTACT
 Paul Treadwell
 pt36@cornell.edu
 @ptreadwell
 http://www.paultreadwell.com
 March 27, 2013