The Deeper Learning MOOC: Personal Reflections as Week #4 Begins

So already, 7:00 tonight Eastern Standard Time, 4:00 Pacific Time, the Deeper Learning MOOC will offer its fourth live panel discussion, this one on the topic of student voice and choice.

So far the MOOC -- the Massive Open Online Course currently being offered by High Tech High, the M.I.T. Media Lab, and several other progressive partners -- is fascinating, overwhelming, and valuable.

Those of us who have signed on have now completed the first third of this free nine-week journey the course potentially offers to us.  I say this because we are not obligated to participate in every week or every activity of the course.  The course designers have encouraged us to participate only when and how our participation will align with our own interests, needs, and purposes.  

I signed up for the MOOC for four major reasons. 

First, all of the course's topics --  listed at the left -- interest me.  The MOOC is allowing me to re-assess and deepen my understandings of familiar topics and to enlarge my repertoire for putting them into practice. "Academic Mindsets" is a whole new area for me; "Deeper Learning for a wide range of students" always benefits from others' latest insights and experiences.

Second, many of my newly-former CRLS colleagues are taking this course, so we can be learning together without having to create the learning experience ourselves.

Third, I'm always curious about the way technology, particularly interactive technology, helps and hinders deep learning.  So this MOOC offers one more opportunity to think about that question. Not all online learning may be equally suited to eliminating global educational inequities, despite the hopes that accompany it. And does tweeting really help me learn, especially to learn deeply?

Fourth, and finally, I've been very curious about what it would be like to take a MOOC -- to participate in a course with -- if I judge the course enrollment by the number of people in the associated Google+ learning community -- 1701 other people.  This means that the number of people in the course is roughly the size of the student body of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, the public high school from which I retired in late January.

Have you had the chance to hear and see Eric Whitacre's virtual choir sing his "Lux Aurumque"?  Just the idea of this choir reminds me of the admirable, generally effective, and ongoing efforts the designers and facilitators of this MOOC to make this course a coherent, focused, communal, yet personalized experience. There are definitely ensemble moments -- around panels and protocols -- for those who want and seek them, but there's also a great deal happening within smaller subgroups and for individuals exploring the resources and using the online communication tools the course recommends.  When all is said and done, we are a much larger group than Whitacre's 183-person choir, and we are not trying to merge our multiple voices into a single musical message under the baton of one conductor; nonetheless, we cherish the feeling of doing something together with intentionality and positive educational purpose.

So how's it been for me?  I'll begin with an anecdote that Tina Blythe, co-author  Looking Together at Student Work,** often shares at the beginning of face-to-face workshops.  As a young teacher attending a professional development workshop mandated for all members of her department, Tina noticed that a veteran colleague, an unofficial mentor, wasn't sharing in the general grumbling surrounding the required participation.  When Tina inquired about her colleague's more sanguine attitude, her colleague explained that she considered any professional learning experience worthwhile as long as it offered her one valuable takeaway -- a piece of driftwood. And she generally found her piece of driftwood.

So first about the valuable part of the MOOC. The great news is that the MOOC offers so much great driftwood to be gleaned, collected.  I've collected quite a number of pieces from the first three week's online sessions, provided resources, and associated online Google+ community.  I've  learned how various schools configure student and teacher time, particularly to support learning through internships. I've been reminded of the wide range of purposes for looking at the student work, not all of which have to do with deeper learning, and I've re-appreciated the degree to which ongoing teacher learning and ongoing student learning walk hand-in-hand. I've heard a number of stories of student experiences that took theoretical ideas and made them not only real, but intellectually and emotionally compelling to me. I expect this driftwood-gathering will continue.

Now for the overwhelming part of the MOOC. The challenge is -- and the problem is -- knowing how much valuable driftwood there must be out there -- and knowing full well that exploring every part of the beach is impossible. Sometimes I feel as if I'm on one of Washington state's Olympic Peninsula beaches where, in order to be safe, one needs to be fully aware of the collective power and movement of the many big, magnificent pieces of driftwood that are afloat. When that driftwood does deposit itself at least semi-temporarily on the shore, it never is as organized and centered as it is in the photo to the right, so it creates another set of navigational challenges.  All my way of saying I've had to remind myself that for the sake of my own learning, less driftwood is often more in an environment like this.  I need to stop; I need to focus on those one or two pieces of driftwood that seem to have a place in my learning at this moment.

And it's not just the driftwood that threatens to proliferate excessively.  The online Google+ communities are also numerous enough to potentially overload the "learning together" circuits.  While multiple ones of these seem interesting enough to join, my mind starts to get tangled at the thought of all the conversations, resources, connections. So I've been consciously reminding myself to pull back, pull back, to what's manageable.  I also remind myself of the various kinds of search functions available on Twitter and Google+ that might make these online places useful more specifically at a later time. I appreciate the course facilitators' gentle acknowledgments of the potential for overload and ongoing encouragement to avoid self-expectations that foster overload.

Now finally, for the fascinating part of the MOOC -- and that's the huge community of "us" who have signed on to take this course.  For how many of us are all, or almost all, of the deeper learning topics completely new?  For how many of us are most of the deeper learning topics somewhat familiar -- or very familiar? To what degree have we signed on primarily to connect with others who share our educational values? How many of us have been looking for a place to share our own thinking and work because we've been largely thinking alone -- or not daring to share our thinking in environments where it would be viewed as "not being with the program"?  Whenever I'm in any kind of online learning environment/community that's about educating for the present and the future, I always wonder about the degree to which participants feel comfortable questioning the value of the ideas that are being presented (vs. the how-to or history of those ideas), especially when so many others are expressing a great deal of excitement about them.

In general, I feel that there's only one inherent contradiction in this MOOC -- and I actually think it's an unavoidable contradiction, given that the course is designed as a multi-course banquet to nourish participants with -- or at least encourage them to taste -- some good ways to get started and/or to continue fostering deeper learning successfully. But here goes anyway.  

Again and again, we are reminded that taking risks, experimenting, and even failing are essential to deep learning -- but we keep hearing beautiful and very inspiring deep learning success narratives that sound more linear than I suspect they actually were.  I know that whole-group online time is limited, so every panelist cannot lay out the significant well-intended missteps along the deeper learning road or the improvised moves that saved the deeper learning day when things began to fall apart. But I would sure like to learn about moments when the plan needed to change significantly or a completely unanticipated significant learning resulted from a more circuitous path. I think such stories offer reassurance as well as inspiration to people daring to foster deeper learning, especially in schools that may be less focused on deeper learning. Perhaps MOOC participants could be encouraged to post about deeper-learning-generating "failures"?

Very much looking forward to Session #4 tonight, and very grateful to be participating in this MOOC! Still unsure what I think about the technology-deeper learning connection, but thus far I have gained so much to use and think about as an educator.

*http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080907001907/color/images/6/64/Driftwood.jpg
** Tina is a co-author of Teaching as Inquiry:  Asking Hard Questions to Improve Practice and Student Achievement and The Facilitator's Book of Questions:  Tools for Looking Together at Student and Teacher Work, and the primary author of The Teaching for Understanding Guide.
Organized Driftwood Photo:  <http://www.creativityfuse.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Gabo-2-driftwood-by-John-Dahlsen.jpg>