Online Learning Insights Blog: 2013 in Review

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New year 2013Happy New Year!  After reading several year-in-review blog posts and two from blogs I follow closely [e-literate and Hack Education], I was motivated to write a similar post. I’m also writing this post in hopes that it will overcome my writer’s block [I’ve struggled with writing a post for three days now]. Let the words come forth!

I’ve included below the top five posts for Online Learning Insights in 2013 and close with thanks to readers and specific individuals that have commented consistently here.

Top Five Posts of 2013 on Online Learning Insights

  1. How Not to Design a MOOC: The Disaster at Coursera and How to Fix It, posted on February 1. This post generated robust discussion—heated and charged discussion occurring within 145 comments in total. The traffic on this post is a reflection of MOOC-mania that was in full swing in early 2013.
  2. Five-step Strategy for Student Success with Online Learning, posted on September 28, 2012, which struck me as odd given the post generated very little traffic at all in 2012. However that’s inconsequential—all that matters is that the post provided support and help to online students in some way in 2013 [and continues to do so].
  3. The MOOC Honeymoon is Over: Three Takeaways from the Coursera Calamity posted three days after the How Not to Design a MOOC post.
  4. How to Create a Personal Learning Portfolio: Students and Professionals, posted on January 30, 2013.
  5. Why Online Courses [Really] Need an Instructional Design Strategy, posted on May 7.  Since instructional design is what I do, I’m relieved at least one of the posts I wrote on instructional design made the top five list.

Thanks to Readers, Tweeters and Commenters
Thank you readers of this blog; I am grateful for all readers whether occasional or regular. Special thanks to followers, and to readers that Tweet, link to, and share posts. I also am grateful for all those that take extra time to comment in response to posts—each furthers the dialogue by engaging, sharing resources which ultimately contributes to the learning community. Special thanks to the top commenters of Online Learning Insights listed below. I’ve also included a link to his or her blog, or Google + page.

Also thanks to Paulo Simoes [@pgsimoes] for always Tweeting my posts consistently and soon after I’ve hit the publish button! Thank you Paulo!  Paulo is a Portuguese Air Force eLearning evangelizer.  

I look forward to another year of blogging, learning and writing in 2014. Happy New Year!

2 thoughts on “Online Learning Insights Blog: 2013 in Review”

  1. Scott Johnson

    Hi Debbie, thanks for the mention and I’m glad you are past the blockage. All those little (and big) things that take your voice away seem to move in while we are enjoying winter:-)

    Agree that design is necessary in all things educational. Regardless of the novelty of what you propose or invent, it has to have some comprehensible connection to use. Mentally or physically we need a kind of texture to allow learners to hang onto and some of that is the ghost of the designer in a purposefully designed course. This seems like a loose connection but a good designer acts as a representative of the learner in the course building process much like a teacher who humanizes face to face content.

    My thoughts are not to clear on this but the mechanical nature of xMOOCs are a poor representation of a learning object. They seem unattended in a field where human support is very necessary. They also have a perverse reverse/reverse design element where the student, understanding that the “teacher” is a robot, has to adapt their evidence of learning to the needs of the robot.

    Happy New Year!

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    1. Debbie Morrison Post author

      Hi Scott,
      So nice to hear from you! Happy New Year to you as well!

      Your points are most valid about the design process as it relates to the creation of education experiences– and yes xMOOCs appear to miss the mark in many instances for matching the learning methods with the needs of the learners. And those that require human support, the xMOOC format is not the right fit, even though there some educators are trying to force fit the model.

      Look forward to another year of learning with you Scott.
      Debbie 🙂

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