Somewhere Between a Course and a Community: Alec Couros Twinterview

January 17, 2013 | Filed in: Open Education

View the story "Somewhere Between a Course and a Community" on StorifySomewhere Between a Course and a CommunityA Twinterview with Alec CourosStorified by Pete Rorabaugh· Thu, Jan 17 2013 22:48:35Last Friday, January 11, 2013, I asked Alec Couros to join me for an hour-long Twinterview. It was the weekend before the launch of #ETMOOC, his brainchild, and I wanted to get some context and history for his digital work before he began another connectivist adventure. Our conversation roamed from his first experiences in the cMOOC (even pre-MOOC) community, academic influences on his "open thinking" philosophy, reflections on publication and tenure, and his motivation to organize #ETMOOC.

We began by talking about his early experiments in connectivist learning.

Beginning my Twitter interview with @courosa of Univ. of Regina & #etmooc. Anyone can follow along on #courosHP. Will publish on @HybridPedPete Rorabaugh@courosa MOOCs have become monstrous, but haven't been that way forever. What & when was your first piece "MOOCish" work? #courosHPPete Rorabaugh@allistelling In Fall 2007, I first ran #eci831 which is sometimes referred to as a pre-MOOC. #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling Basically, it was 20+ grad students in an online/open course, & we made our sessions available to anyone. #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling Eventually, in later versions of the course, it went from this informal invite to the idea of 'networked mentors". #courosHP Alec Couros@allistelling so, it was a matter of creating that environment in a course. #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling This image represents how I wanted to thin the walls of my 'classroom'. http://flic.kr/p/64ZQkd #CourosHP Alec Couros@courosa I love this. It's the prog. of education from industrial/postindustrial to something that we have now. Or hope to have. #courosHPPete Rorabaugh@courosa Makes me think about this RSA Animate video with Sir Ken Robinson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U #courosHPPete Rorabaugh@allistelling Notion of 'gift economy' is also central to my work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling I had gained an 'open thinking' philosophy after my doc. work studying open source communities http://bit.ly/48d9G #CourosHP Alec CourosI had wondered for months just how "connected" some of the earliest cMOOC folks were. @courosa Were you involved in conv. with the folks that launched the first official cMOOCs in 2008? Or was it just synchronicity? #courosHPPete Rorabaugh@courosa Did you talk about, plan with others a bunch, or was it more spontaneous? #courosHPPete Rorabaugh@allistelling re: Siemens, Cormier, Downes of cMOOCs - I think we were generally leaning that way in 2008, influenced each other. #CourosHP Alec Couros@courosa Did you four know each other already? Professionally? Had been colleagues before? Just fans of each other's work? #courosHPPete Rorabaugh@allistelling There had been a very strong edublogosphere b4 the days of Twitter - so, many of us, had been virtual colleagues. #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling It's interesting that many of those from the early edublogger days are still my best & most trusted colleagues. #CourosHP Alec Couros@courosa Yes, fascinating, though not surprising. Given those connections . . . #CourosHP +Pete RorabaughFor many of us exploring the intersection of digital culture and progressive pedagogy, our work rises out of commonly held principles about students, information, and participation. I was curious to see Alec unpack some of these.@courosa + ... Would you say that there's something highly intimate, social, political about this work for you? #CourosHPPete Rorabaugh@allistelling good place to start for academics is @mweller's 'The Digital Scholar' http://bit.ly/oiTjLs #HigherEd #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling Or, see @zephoria's "Open Access is the Future: Boycott locked-down academic journals" http://bit.ly/pRKYcG #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling I'm a huge #openaccess advocate for #higherEd. cMOOCs can be powerful- allow us to reshape & democratize learning. #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling Of course, open publishing is the other piece. More of our thinking needs to be online - digital scholarship is key. #CourosHP Alec Couros@courosa Plenty of con. going on about the utility/pragmatism of open publishing. Something we try to confront on @HybridPed #CourosHPPete RorabaughJim, my colleague at Georgia State, found our conversation relevant to his ongoing faculty meeting.@allistelling @courosa #courosHP Contrast couldnt b clearer right now 4me: readin covo re openpub while in facmeet talkin bout import of pubjames roberts@film2700 @courosa There you have it Jim. I'm guessing there's more than one of those meetings going on right now! #CourosHPPete RorabaughPrinciples and publication lead to a brief discussion of tenure.@courosa Right. From our uni. president this week: teach the way you love, or know is right; less concern for 'tenure'" Comment? #CourosHPPete Rorabaugh@allistelling I think that statement is tough to dissect. Yes, in an ideal environment, 'let's do what we love'. #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling Yet, there's an ongoing war against tenure, so I find that statement difficult to trust at face-value. #CourosHP Alec Couros@courosa Right, but hides in front of the question of incentive, motivation, support, and resources. #CourosHPPete Rorabaugh@courosa Do you think that, in terms of digital pedagogy and open learning, tenure will/should remain? Is there something better? #CourosHPPete Rorabaugh@allistelling Tenure isn't perfect. But neither are uni admins. Tenure is the best we currently have because it allows *this*. #CourosHP Alec Couros@courosa Ha. Don't want to push this topic too far, but define "this"? This being the cMOOC? This being open dialogue? #CourosHPPete Rorabaugh@allistelling *this* being raw, critically honest, open dialogue discussing ills of current systems & new possibilities for growth #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling These experimentations are key to growth in the academy - if it were up to admins, it'd be publish or perish. #CourosHP Alec Couros@courosa Thank you for that crunchy definition! #CourosHPPete Rorabaugh@courosa @allistelling yeh, i think the original concept of tenure was around protecting your capacity to "teach the way you know is right".Bonnie Stewart@bonstewart @courosa Exactly. Only now, sometimes, it seems like barrier beyond which experimentation is discouraged. #CourosHP #toobitter?Pete RorabaughWe shifted back to a discussion of the textual precursors of open thinking and connected learning.@courosa What pre-Internet sources do you consider as influential to "open thinking" or connected learning phil? #courosHPPete Rorabaugh@allistelling Some of the influences found here in this chapter - http://bit.ly/ayvVPY & see entier eBook at http://bit.ly/aRBlzj #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling influences? Bandura's Social Learning, Illich's 'Learning Webs', Knowles' 'Andragogy', Yvygotsky's 'ZPD', etc. #CourosHP Alec Couros@courosa All interesting research; we've always had a tradition of "open learning" even before "the network".#courosHPPete Rorabaugh@allistelling Yes, even gift economies USED 2b central to academia. However, competitiveness & corporatism has changed that. #CourosHP Alec CourosAlec has organized an impressively diverse group of collaborators for #ETMOOC. Though I have heard him specifically resist exercising dominance over the project in organizational meetings for several weeks, I wanted to understand his hopes for the course . . . @courosa Let's shift for a minute. Can you talk about about your motivations and objectives (however those exist) for #ETMOOC? #CourosHPPete Rorabaugh@allistelling motivations? I simply love my subject area & feel #edtech & #media r critical, emerging literacies for all learners. #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling Essentially, #etmooc is meant to live somewhere between a course & a community - more the latter we hope. #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling so, to be able to help nurture a community discussing what matters in this field is simply amazing to me. #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling And think, we now have representation from over 1200 participants representing 67 countries? Astounding. #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling This is the latest representation of #etmooc participants. http://couros.ca/x/1oi It simply takes my breath away. #CourosHP Alec Couros@courosa Somewhat similar to our experiences with #MOOCMOOC. @slamteacher and @Jessifer build it, and "they will come." #CourosHPPete Rorabaugh@courosa I love that figure at the southern-most tip of S. Africa. Next time: Antarctica! #CourosHPPete Rorabaugh. . . and this lead to my ubiquitous questions about the place of Freire in all of this innovation.@courosa This is a complicated, freighted ques, but do you think that love/feeling is Freireian? Does that cause too many prob? #CourosHPPete Rorabaugh@allistelling That may be a tough one to answer - but yes, there's a sense of Friere's 'critical consciousness' in the planning. #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling moreso, w/ my teaching, there's always an attempt at nurturing self-reflexivity of one's self, and one's position. #CourosHP Alec Couros@courosa Been thinking about the Freire in all of this for 3 years. Some analog between peasant-worker literacy and dig. literacy. #CourosHPPete Rorabaugh@allistelling I wld definitely agree on that analogy - and that the divide is greater daily. Then, there's the whole Web 2 thing. #CourosHP Alec Couros@courosa Side question: are #digped and #openlearning initiatives activist in nature? #CourosHPPete RorabaughWe concluded by focusing on one of the five topics scheduled within #ETMOOC -- Digital Storytelling. As one might imagine, this thread yielded a particularly poignant narrative about culture and origination.@courosa #CourosHP Before we wrap up, one more question, about something specific. Lots of new media literacy skills to isolate . . . +Pete Rorabaugh@courosa #CourosHP +Can you talk more about the #etmooc focus on digital storytelling? Why or how is storytelling new now?Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling Well, stories are common to all cultures since the beginning of time - from campfires, to silver screen, to memes. #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling But digital allows us to not only share stories, but to easily remix & retell stories of and with others. #CourosHP Alec Couros@courosa Likes. Sometimes I think remix is the new citation. #CourosHPPete Rorabaugh@allistelling DS creates amazing possibilities for empathy and outrospection while developing communication literacies. #CourosHP Alec Couros@courosa Agreed. @jimgroom, @cogdog, and everyone working in #ds106 has made this argument much easier to assert. #CourosHP #successPete Rorabaugh@allistelling Re: citation, what remix (especially sampling) does is makes us pay attention & learn from origin - 2 honour source. #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling Citation should never be about 'credit', but that we must create systems that respect the origin of ideas. #CourosHP Alec Couros@courosa #CourosHP @jessifer and I tried to capture a similar feeling in "4 Noble Virtues of Digital Media Citation" http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/Four_Virtues_of_Citation.htmlPete Rorabaugh@allistelling A striking moment for me was a few months ago when I ran into a young, First Nations drummer. #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling His group was singing a PowWow song, and the lyrics had all of these interesting Facebook, relationship references. #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling I asked him who wrote the original song because I was interested in finding the source. #CourosHP Alec Couros@allistelling He said he didn't know, but that in his culture, "Once it is sung, the song belongs to the community." I love that. #CourosHP Alec Couros@courosa A great story to end with. Reminds me of my Twitter handle, that comes from Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing. #CourosHPPete Rorabaugh@courosa With #etmooc getting ready to start for you (and lots of us!) I know you're busy. I want to thank you for your insight. #CourosHPPete Rorabaugh@courosa The work that you've done in comm. building and knowledge sharing has given many of us so valuable of a starting point. #CourosHPPete Rorabaugh@allistelling thanks for this interview and opportunity. It's always great to get my thinking stimulated. Take care, Pete. #CourosHP Alec Couros@courosa You too, my friend! So concludes my Tw-interview with Alec. Look for it next week on @HybridPed. Peace everyone! #CourosHPPete RorabaughOn Alec's personal and professional blog, Open Thinking, you can scan the staggering collection of presentations he has given in recent years.

Look for Hybrid Pedagogy's Twinterview next month with Josh Boldt, creator of The Adjunct Project.

More on #ETMOOC:#ETMOOC | A MOOC about educational technology & media - Coming January 2013This space will act as an information hub for #etmooc, an open, online experience that is designed to facilitate & nurture conversations ...Another Twinterview (this one with Audrey Watters): Audrey Watters Wrestles with MOOCs | Open Education | HYBRID PEDAGOGYHybrid Pedagogy is an academic and networked journal of teaching and technology that combines the strands of critical and digital pedagog...door designDarwin Bell

Tags: Digital culture, Pete Rorabaugh, Twinterview, Alec Couros