Tuesday, January 29, 2013

thoughts on starting #introphil

…in no particular order, counting #introphil, I am now in…four MOOCs! (not counting CM11 or POTcert):  #etmooc, EDC and #mmooc13, five counting soon to start Complexity from Santa Fe Institute. Whatever was I thinking? Nice to "see" Gordon and Jaap. A number of familiar names/avatars from Fantasy SF course (later morphing into an active post-course book club) are there too although few blog and have yet to see signs of any on my rare Forum visits.  I wonder who else I know from online will be there? Most of the usual connectivist MOOC bunch sticks to "about pedagogy and elearning" courses.  




The philosophy course not being yet another one about edtech, online learning, networks, social media and their ilk comes as a relief, although content overlap in the other three could count as economy of scale. It will be a mentally refreshing change of pace no matter how challenging. Resolved: always be enrolled in one course with other content (not necessarily literature either). The next time an academic slams Coursera, I will contemplate the local IRL alternative, Socrates Cafe.

So how am I packing for this MOOC? prepare? I am: downloading the introduction video (which fwiw downloads better than etmooc and mmooc13 audio files); checking #introphil tag on Twitter and Topsy ~ but mostly avoiding anything that might interrupt upload: closing superfluous windows, resisting temptation to share from reader. Once the introduction video finishes I'll return to the page to download syllabus and check early readings ~ not so different from any other course, except that I now give myself permission to be a bad student, relish it even. 

My intentions (that Declare part): to think and enjoy the conversations; to blog reflections (no guarantees and no guilt if I don't); not to over obsess with studying the mooc/iness of it all.

2 comments:

Gordon Lockhart said...

I'm finding the transcripts of the videos very useful. The 'guilt' aspect is interesting - I've just said somewhere that a good proportion of the 90,000 will only be looking around, downloading stuff etc and although I think this is true I feel a bit guilty in stating it!

Vanessa Vaile said...

I do that but don't feel guilty. Generally, I go in realistic, knowing I won't have time, interest or connectivity to complete assignments (especially ones that don't interest particularly me).

I poke about the fora from time to time and am enjoying the "Friends for philosophy" group, which includes a number from the (post Coursera Fantasy S/F class) book club. We're finding interesting links, so I suggested using an online aggregator like paper.li to create a "friends for philosophy" online newspaper

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