Serendipity, MOOCs and Gamification

By Ramón Talavera-Franco
@ratafra

Photo by Artsproject

In a way, a baby girl sited in front of me represented both characters of the short film Sight that I was watching for my gamification MOOC assignment while having a cup of coffee in a restaurant. Sight, the short sci-fi film by May-raz and Daniel Lazo depicts a futuristic world where people have retinal implants that allow them to connect to virtual realities, play games, obtain digital information about other people’s lives, send chat messages, pay bills, and receive points for every success activity. Why am I comparing this baby girl with the characters of the film? Because she belongs to the generation who started using technology at a very early age, and who certainly will contribute to change the world similarly to Sight. The way May-raz and Daniel Lazo predicted the future in their short film, could be compared to how George Orwell predicted our present in 1984.

5 MOOCs e-Pedagogy models, and 7c’s Learning Design framework

By Ramón Talavera-Franco
@ratafra

I would like to share with you two main lessons learned from The pedagogy of MOOCs webinar presented by Terese Bird and Gráinne Conole, from the University of Leicester, during the Open Education Week 2014:

1. Differences between Open Educational Resources (OER) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
2.  MOOC’s pedagogical perspective.

After listening to the webinar and conducting some research, my understanding of OER and MOOCs is:

What is MOOCstream?

Ramón Talavera Franco

@ratafra

English composition1: Achieving Expertise

In 2013, I submitted my application to study the Ed. D. program at Northeastern University. As a Spanish-language speaker who obtained my graduate and undergraduate degrees in my native language, I was concerned about not meeting the academic English writing requirements of a doctoral program. My prior academic writing consisted of two English composition courses taken six years ago. Therefore, I wanted to take an additional writing course before embarking in this new academic adventure.

While browsing the Internet, I found a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that caught my attention: English Composition I: Achieving Expertise
 (ECIAE). I didn’t know what a MOOC was or what to expect from it, but what struck me was that this course was provided by Duke University with no fees. How could a prestigious university such as Duke offer a free-of-charge course? Well, investigate was hooked. I signed up.