Here's What To Do On Saturday

Saturday, January 12

Today's Activities

1. Reflect on your experience in MOOC MOOC
2. Write a blog post, a Google Doc, or other article about your final thoughts
3. Share your article with the rest of us
4. Complete the 10-question End of MOOC Survey
5. Breathe a sigh of relief

Reflection as Learning and Teaching

by Sean Michael Morris (@slamteacher Links to an external site.)

“In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the scholar be,--free and brave. Free even to the definition of freedom … Brave; for fear is a thing which a scholar by his very function puts behind him.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar

It’s Saturday. The week is done. We have braved the unpredictable, uncertain, winding path of this massive open online course. What have we learned? How did our expectations change over the course of the week? Where are we now?

Critical reflection is an important part of any learning process. Jack Mezirow Links to an external site. states that “Critical reflection involves a critique of the presuppositions on which our beliefs have been built. Learning may be defined as ‘the process of making a new or revised interpretation of the meaning of an experience, which guides subsequent understanding, appreciation and action’.” To reflect is to enter a space of co-incidence, where the beginning of the learning process, and its end, meet to consult about the result of that process. Without reflection, learning becomes only an activity -- like viewing a reality TV show -- which was never meant to have meaning, but was only meant to occupy time.

Critical reflection is not meditation, rather it is mediation -- an active, conversive, dialectical exercise that requires as much intellectual work as does every other aspect of the learning process, from analysis to synthesis to evaluation. But in reflection, all the learned material can be gathered about, sorted and resorted, and searched through for greater understanding and inspiration. The result of critical reflection is not the same as other steps in learning, though, because it’s like the unwrapped package: we’ve spent our time undoing the tape and ribbon, ungluing the cardboard, and clearing out the foam peanuts, and now we have the item -- the gift -- which calls us into further play.

But critical reflection doesn’t just offer us a new toy to play with, it provides us with a tool we must use. We have an ethical responsibility as educators, as students, as people involved in the educative endeavor, to reflect. In Pedagogy of Freedom, Paulo Freire tells us that “In the process of the ongoing education of teachers, the essential moment is that of critical reflection on one's practice.” This is true because we must reflect upon our process, our learning, our practice, in order to push them forward. Teaching must be a learning process as much as learning is a teaching process.

The relationship between MOOCs and this reflective step in learning is untidy. Depending upon the MOOC, learning may be positioned as more instructional than dialectical. Many MOOCs simply draw to a close with a final exam or writing project, leaving students much the way a movie leaves its audience: with a resolution that is not their own, but which belongs instead to the script. Other MOOCs so strongly encourage community connections, locating learning as a process that happens when two or more points converge, that intrapersonal connections -- those most often made through reflection -- are underplayed and possibly undervalued.

But if MOOCs are to be true learning experiences, reflection must be woven into their strange method. We must be allowed to join in the process “by which experience is converted into thought, as the mulberry leaf is converted into satin,” as Emerson Links to an external site. says. Only through reflection will we understand the nature of what we’ve unwrapped, its potential, and its instructions for use.

The Questions at Hand

1. What have we learned this week about MOOCs? How do they succeed? How might they fail? What are their strongest points and their weakest?
2. What is to be done with MOOCs from this point forward? Should they remain “massive”? Do they replace or reconfigure the traditional college classroom, or do they point to the invention of something entirely new?
3. Are MOOCs really yet a form, a species of their own? Or are they part of an evolution toward something else -- more workable, monetizable, and manageable?
4. What’s the first thing we want to say to non-MOOC MOOCers about what we’ve undergone this week? What’s the second thing? And, upon reflection, what will we actually say?

And the Task

1. Post on your blog, create a Google Doc to share, or Twitter up a small essay to reflect on your learning this week. Consider what presuppositions you started with, and what information you’re leaving with. Allow those two things to converse, and find out what they have to say.
2. For one final time, tweet about your reflection, and post a link that we can all follow.
3. Contribute to others’ reflections by commenting on their work, and comparing it with your own process this week.

Please feel free to discuss ideas, brainstorm responses to activities, and otherwise collaborate. Use today's open discussion forum, start a new discussion forum, or head to Twitter to chat with one another under the hashtag #moocmooc Links to an external site..