As Phil mentioned, he and I were both lucky to attend the MOOC Research Initiative conference, which was a real tour de force. Jim Groom observed that even the famously curmudgeonly Stephen Downes appeared to be enjoying himself, and I would make a similar observation about the famously curmudgeonly Jonathan Rees. If both of those guys can be simultaneously (relatively) pleased at a MOOC conference, then something is going either spectacularly right or horribly wrong. I believe it was the former in this case.
We are at one of those rare moments when there’s enough confusion that real conversation happens and possibilities open up. The sense I got is that everybody is really grappling with the questions of where we can take the concept of a “MOOC” and what MOOCishness might be good for. That is fun and hope-inducing. Phil and I spent a lot of the time interviewing folks for a future e-Literate TV series (coming to a computing device near you in March or April of 2014), so we were lucky to hear a lot of perspectives. There is some very good exploration happening now. George Siemens and his fellow conference organizers (as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which sponsored the event and the research) did a real service by bringing people together to talk about these issues at this pregnant moment.
One thing happened toward the end of the conference that has me puzzled, though. Jim mentioned it in his blog post:
At the same time[,] Bon Stewart’s admonitions for some kind of organized response to start filling the temporary void of direction with alternative narrative still rings in my ears—and it is very much the lesson I took away from Audrey Watters keynote at OpenEd.
There was a lot of conversation, really throughout the conference but coming to a head at the end, that the term of MOOC is somehow damaged goods and that…something…should be done about it. Usually the word “narrative” was brought up. But this talk of “alternative narratives” or, as Bonnie put it, “changing the narrative”, confuses me. As far as I’m concerned, the connectivist/open ed crowd has been spectacularly, stunningly successful at “changing the narrative,” and I’m not at all clear what it would look like to somehow do it differently. I don’t understand what they mean here. Unfortunately I had to rush out the door to try to catch a plane shortly after the panel discussion and didn’t have an opportunity to follow up with some of the attendees. So I’m going to try to express my confusion in this blog post and hope that somebody can help me figure out what I’m missing.
Warning: This post is long and lit crit wonkish.