A Conceptual Model for cMOOCs

A walkthrough of a SketchUp model representing the Learning Creative Learning cMOOC.

In this video, I'm going to go through a conceptual model of cMOOCs,

based on my experience with a number of MOOCs,

but particularly the Learning Creative Learning cMOOC

that's currently running at Mitch Resnick's Lifelong Kindergarten Group

at the MIT Media Lab.

So - so a couple of things, before I'm getting started here:

This is just an experiment, like LCL: I hope people take it.

in the spirit I make it (?), which I'm just playing around with ideas.

As I get down into the model, the cubes you see represent the roles we play

It's important to remember that, that (inaudible} represent,

like the whole person just representing certain things that - certain roles that each of us take on.

Reality is vastly more complex than the model I present here,

so this is just a little attempt to just try to get an understanding of MOOCs

with a subset of the reality that is a cMOOC.

This model - this conceptual model certainly derives from the work of George Siemens and Steven Downes

who were the people who made the first MOOC - or developped the idea of MOOCs

and as you can see from the two tweets above, at the top of the screen,

George Siemens certainly is not opposed to the idea

of viewing the networks that are created in MOOCs as similar to networks of neurons

and Stephen Downes has explicitly said that he was thinking of neural networks

when he was developing MOOCs.

So, with those caveats, let's get started.

So this is an overview, in the background here, of MIT.

That's right, Cambridge, from [inaudible] over here,

and MIT is just under that - those white dots.

So, let's go and take a look.

So, here I have the artefacts that have been created by the MOOC,

some of them again, right, not all of them.

Here I have sort of the cloud of us, of the participants in the MOOC,

again, representing our roles as MOOC participants, not of the entire IVAR (?) entity.

And then down here these dots represent people at MIT.

So, this is the Media Lab,

this is Mitch Resnick's school,

here, these are other groups, other buildings at MIT

and again, right, this is just a small set, subset of reality.

There are literally, you know, hundreds of these groups at MIT,

thousands of students at MIT, it's just one university in dozens of universities in Boston and Cambridge.

So Mitch Resnick's group, so LCL, and

-- let me just turn on something here for a second --

and, you know, the lines here represent, sort of, exchange of information between people.

And obviously, Mitch is exchanging lots of information with his own team, as they are with him,

and Mitch is also exchanging information with other groups at MIT,

people leading other groups at MIT,

and, obviously, the administration at MIT.

So there's work already to (?) LCL going on at this level, sort of you know,

making the course happen and providing the resources for it.

I'm not going to focus too much on that, but just want to sort of start there.

And I'm going to turn the [inaudible] off for a bit.

So we all start off, as we begin the MOOC with this, with this sort of cloud of us --

we are obviously from all over the world, but through the internet, we sort of are connect--

have gathered here over MIT and the Media Lab to be part of this MOOC,

but at the start of the MOOC, we're very disconnected, right?

it's just a bunch of us who've shown up for this experience.

And, you know, we all go to the web site and we read about it, and we listen to Mitch,

and we get a sense of what we're in for and we can connect to resources

that Mitch's team (?) has put up to get it started.

Again, at this point, there are very few connections between people.

And, as we join the Google+ community, and start blogging about it and tweeting about it,

we start making links between ourselves -- up here --

And then the course gets started.

you know, I've represented that as this first lecture, a presentation that Mitch did,

and it sends out a lot of information to all of us, right?

to [inaudible]

Now obviously, his - Mitch and his team are also paying close attention

to this stream of information coming out of ... first presentation.

And, associated with the video presentation are readings for each of these ... of the weeks

and - well I think that's all I wanted to say here. (6:43)