Rethinking Online Community in MOOCs Used for Blended Learning

This is fascinating and important. It was brought to my attention by a fellow student on H818:The Networked Practitioner. The differences between how a person spends their time when learning is spent whether online, say on a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), ‘traditionally’ and in blended forms.

Having ways to present data in an informative and engaging way is vital. Here at a glance you can see how behaviours differ. I’m eager to read further papers on this to see how the research was undertaken and how therefore I might apply it as ‘how we learn now’ is of particular interest to me. The Educause article this came from offers ample further reading.

I thought these were DNA patterns. I’d like to see these charts as animations annotating and illustrating examples so that we can see and are therefore be reminded of the context. Simply put blended learning increases the time a student spends on a subject – that’s as good as it needs to be from my point of view as with more and varied ways of engagement comes a developing interest, improved motivation and lasting learning formation. I rather think we blend learning anyway – once it comes off the screen ‘it’ interacts with the contents if your brain and is invariably shared in some form or another too.