Yearly Archives: 2017

Fun with MOOCs!

For the uninitiated, MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course (not to be confused with Mouk, a globe-trotting cartoon bear). Over the last several years, educators have been trying to figure out how to leverage the internet pedagogically, with varying levels of success. Some have developed online simulations for various specialties; others have created hybrid or flipped courses involving a combination of in-class and online learning. MOOCs offer completely online, free, open access learning, often with students numbering in the thousands across multiple countries.

MOOCs have a Canadian connection, having been developed by George Siemens at Athabasca University in conjunction with Stephen Downes of the National Research Council for a University of Manitoba course on connective knowledge in 2008. According to Downes, MOOCs fall into two categories: those that essentially follow a traditional course hierarchy with video lectures from one or more experts (sort of a digital correspondence course); and those that encourage greater peer connectivity via message boards, blog posts, or even virtual reality using a platform like Second Life. This second, more connected and creative option, is the one preferred by Downes, and it clearly supports Henry Jenkins’s theories of participatory media culture, in which users co-create online.  (Not sure if Henry and I are related, but we clearly share numerous interests.)

Lots of MOOCs exist. I’ve only played around on a couple of them, but as a dedicated life-long learner, I’m loving them! They’re open access (to anyone privileged enough to have access to a computer and the internet) and usually free (unless you want a piece of paper upon completion). So far, I’ve completed five courses through Coursera and FutureLearn, all created by different universities. I started with a medical humanities course from the University of Cape Town, moved on to a fascinating course on medieval magic from the University of Barcelona, simultaneously tackled two courses on forensic science (one from the University of Dundee and the other from Nanyang Technological University), and finally got around to filling the psychology gap in my education with a course from the University of Toronto.

Each course has taken a slightly different approach. While all have included short video lectures, usually from five to twenty minutes, some have included mini-check-in quizzes, while others demand longer tests; all have required a little bit of writing, along with the need to peer-evaluate written assignments by other students. Most have included links to other fascinating online resources. The level of required engagement with other students has varied from regular to none. Often, I can adjust my level of engagement to my available time. Some courses have been organized thematically week-to-week, while others have used more of a narrative arc. Right now, I’m working on an amazing course on ancient Rome that includes a virtual reality model students can explore.

Not sure what I’ll tackle once this course is done, but I’m sure it’ll be new and exciting! Hope you’ll join me. In the words of Odd Squad’s Dr. O, “What’s next!”

©Catherine Jenkins 2017 all rights reserved

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My Less-tech Experiment

I’ve been doing this (very informal) social experiment for the last six months. My cell phone died—again—except this time I couldn’t find a replacement battery. So I decided to go without for a while, just to see what that was like. Overall, it’s been very liberating. I feel lighter. I still have a landline (old school, I know), as well as e-mail and limited social media, so it’s not like I’ve vapourized completely. It’s just that for some periods each day, I’m less readily available. Given that I’m teaching some part of most days, I can’t have my cell phone on anyway.

I hate the sound of it ringing, and I hate vibrate mode even more, so most of the time I’ve carried a phone, it’s been completely muted. I check it when I think of it, and that’s been a much better way for me to relate to a cell phone. In the last six months, there’ve only been three times when having a cell phone would’ve been convenient. I’ve also noticed, however, that some of my friends, especially some of my younger friends, are less inclined to get in touch now that they can’t text me. Texting has clearly superseded phone conversation, although verbal communication is often more efficient. I find tech services in Canada outrageously priced for the use I get out of them, so I’ve also enjoyed the savings.

This less-tech experiment also caused me to ponder my relationship with cell phones, as well as when and why that relationship started. After about three months without, I remembered that I got my first cell phone when my Dad was dying. I was freelancing and often out of reach of my home phone, but I knew that at some point I’d get a call and that I’d need to get somewhere. A cell phone made a lot of sense for the kind of urgency I was experiencing. I kept it through my Mum’s similar fate. And then I had it, so I kept it. But now I’ve realized that because my introduction to cell phones was surrounded by anxiety and hypervigilance, these emotions have impacted my relationship with this technology.

I think it’s good to have taken a break, and to have figured out why I have tended to relate cell phones with anxiety. I have some travel coming up, and it’s now assumed that everybody travels with a phone, in part so airlines can inform you of delays, you can change or make last-minute bookings, and so you can show e-Tickets. (I once saw a woman arrive late at her boarding gate suddenly discover that she didn’t have her e-Ticket because she’d left her phone at security. I wouldn’t have pegged her as someone who could run that fast, but she made it, thanks to a short flight delay.) So I’m beginning to move in the direction of reinstating my cell phone, but with a shifted awareness that will hopefully make my new experience a little less stressful.

©Catherine Jenkins 2017 all rights reserved

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Reading

Reading is a mythic symbolic act in which squiggles are assigned to letters to create words and sentences and paragraphs and meaning. It really is a form of magic. And like many things in this life, it’s possible to overdo it.

Although I could read fine, I didn’t become an engaged reader until my teens, mostly because I was bored with the books I was offered. In grade 8, I discovered S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, and never looked back. I devoured books by Erle Stanley Gardner, Agatha Christie, Ursula LeGuin, Lloyd Alexander, Johnathan Wydham, and H.G. Wells, before moving onto Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins. By university, I was engaging with Philip K. Dick, Mary Shelley, Douglas Adams, Samuel R. Delaney, Delacorta, Italo Calvino, and The Tao Te Ching.

My MA focussed on hard boiled American fiction, mostly from the late 1920s to the 1950s. I was quietly in love with Raymond Chandler, while appreciating Dashiel Hammett’s edge, discovering David Goodis, Jim Thompson, Leo Malet, and others along the way. I read, re-read, and analyzed thousands of pages of fiction and criticism and philosophy over a six-year period. (Is that a record for a Master’s thesis?) Once the dust had cleared, I made the unsettling discovery that I couldn’t read any more. When I picked up even a magazine article, an anxious nausea welled up making me stop. This lasted about a year-and-a half. And then I got into Umberto Eco, James Joyce, H. Rider Haggard, Jeanette Winterson, Ali Smith, Kate Atkinson, Michael Cunningham, and Bruce Wagner.

When I started my PhD, I was unsure and concerned about what the renewed academic work would do to my reading (or writing). Because the research wasn’t literary, I wasn’t required to read fiction, and I think that helped. I did, of course, read reams of academic work, realizing that now I actually read this type of writing much faster than when entering a fictional world I want to savour.

Once the PhD was done, I started reading things with lots of pictures; National Geographic, Eyewitness Travel Guides, and comics (which have opened up a new research area for me). I started catching up on about ten years of missed TV and movies, thanks to the Toronto Public Library’s vast collection of DVDs (old school, but free!). One of the (many) series I discovered was Wire in the Blood, in which a forensic psychologist and a DI unravel and track down serial killers (you may be noticing a recurrent theme by now). Intrigued by the complex plotting, I discovered that the series was based on books by Val McDermid, so now I’m working through them. So thanks to picture books and DVDs, I’m reading books without pictures again, and looking forward to future discoveries.

©Catherine Jenkins 2017 all rights reserved

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