Key pedagogic thinkers: Dave Cormier

An interview with Dave Cormier, the founder of Rhizomatic learnin

Critical Thinking in Context: Practice at an American Liberal Arts University in Egypt

The American University in Cairo (AUC) considers critical thinking (CT) essential for academic success, global employability, and effective citizenship. Nevertheless, CT remains a highly contested notion, with insufficient evidence that universities succeed in developing it. This study explores how CT develops in practice for diverse AUC students. After exploring different understandings of CT, I synthesize a working definition, then draw on interview evidence from students’ perceptions of AUC experiences that contributed to their CT, illuminated further by faculty and administrator interviews, and relevant AUC documentation and research. Students’ incoming CT levels differed according to high school experience, parental attitudes, and interaction with diverse others. Key factors fostering CT were found to be: liberal arts education, rhetoric and composition courses, opportunities for learning situated in authentic contexts, and intercultural learning. The thesis explores how student backgrounds and the institutional structure result in inequalities in students’ access to, and capacity to participate in, those beneficial AUC experiences, and shows the limited notion of criticality developed through most of these experiences - findings that are applicable to other university contexts. I conclude that AUC needs a critical contextual approach to curriculum development and implementation: an approach that encourages stakeholders to continually question the values behind learning experiences, recognize power struggles within the learning environment, address ways of supporting students with diverse capabilities and privileges in order to develop their capacity for CT, and question what it means to be critical in Egypt’s changing, uncertain context. Egypt's struggle for democracy after years of oppression and corruption needs a conception of critical citizenship that involves both a social dimension focusing on empathy, and a critical action dimension promoting a constructive social justice orientation. While the study addresses AUC stakeholders, it has relevance for all educational institutions aiming to develop CT in bi/multicultural contexts. Such institutions include Western-style universities located in Arab/Muslim countries, Western universities with large numbers of international students, and universities with local but diverse students and staff

Reimagining Digital Literacies from a Feminist Perspective in a Postcolonial Context

Although there are many intersecting but also conflicting definitions and understandings of digital literacy, for the most part, the majority allude to critical thinking in some form or another. This article attempts to imagine a conception of digital literacy and practice of teaching digital literacy that considers a different approach to being critical while using digital technology to consume, produce and communicate. The approach builds on the feminist work of Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger and Tarule's (1986) Women's Ways of Knowing. The author will also share from her own teaching experience as a postcolonial scholar teaching Egyptian students at an American liberal arts university

Exploring the Digital Humanities at AUC #DHAUC

The digital brings different playgrounds and new kinds of interaction, and we must incessantly ask questions of it, disturbing the edge upon which we find ourselves so precariously perched. And what the digital asks of us is that every assumption we have be turned on its head

What is it like to learn and participate in rhizomatic MOOCs? a collaborative autoethnography of #RHIZO14

In January 2014, we participated in a connectivist-style massive open online course (cMOOC) called "Rhizomatic Learning – The community is the curriculum" (#rhizo14). In rhizomatic learning, teacher and student roles are radically restructured. Course content and value come mostly from students; the teacher, at most, is a curator who provides a starting point and guidance and sometimes participates as a learner. Early on, we felt that we were in a unique learning experience that we wanted to capture in writing. Explaining #rhizo14 to others without the benefit of traditional processes, practices, roles, or structures, however, presented a challenge. We invited participants to contribute narratives to a collaborative autoethnography (CAE), which comprises an assortment of collaborative Google Docs, blog posts by individuals, and comments on those documents and posts. This strategy afforded insight into what many participants found to be a most engaging course and what for some was a transformative experience. In discussing the findings from the CAE, our intent is to benefit others interested in rhizomatic learning spaces such as cMOOCs. This authoethnography specifically addresses gaps both in the understanding of the learner experience in cMOOCs and in the nature of rhizomatic learning

Community tracking in a cMOOC and nomadic learner behavior identification on a connectivist rhizomatic learning network

This article contributes to the literature on connectivism, connectivist MOOCs (cMOOCs) and rhizomatic learning by examining participant interactions, community formation and nomadic learner behavior in a particular cMOOC, #rhizo15, facilitated for 6 weeks by Dave Cormier. It further focuses on what we can learn by observing Twitter interactions particularly. As an explanatory mixed research design, Social Network Analysis and content analysis were employed for the purposes of the research. SNA is used at the macro, meso and micro levels, and content analysis of one week of the MOOC was conducted using the Community of Inquiry framework. The macro level analysis demonstrates that communities in a rhizomatic connectivist networks have chaotic relationships with other communities in different dimensions (clarified by use of hashtags of concurrent, past and future events). A key finding at the meso level was that as #rhizo15 progressed and number of active participants decreased, interaction increased in overall network. The micro level analysis further reveals that, though completely online, the nature of open online ecosystems are very convenient to facilitate the formation of community. The content analysis of week 3 tweets demonstrated that cognitive presence was the most frequently observed, while teaching presence (teaching behaviors of both facilitator and participants) was the lowest. This research recognizes the limitations of looking only at Twitter when #rhizo15 conversations occurred over multiple platforms frequented by overlapping but not identical groups of people. However, it provides a valuable partial perspective at the macro meso and micro levels that contribute to our understanding of community-building in cMOOCs

Twitter Journal Club

Curatorial note from Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Laura Gogia started Twitter Journal Club (originally #tjc15) while she was a graduate student; people agree to read an article together at a designated time period and live tweet as they go (occasionally with the author responding on Twitter). A hashtag on Twitter allows anyone to observe at any time and jump in whenever they like; they do not need to be part of the community, nor does using a hashtag make them part of the community if they do not wish to use it regularly. Discussion can be synchronous, planned or spontaneous, or asynchronous over an extended time period. Participation does not require membership in a community, but helps build a PLN, as Shelly Terrell explains (Rheingold). This artifact serves as both a model and a tutorial. See this article by Gogia and Warren in Hybrid Pedagogy for the backstory behind #TJC

Open Learning Recipe

Curatorial note from Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: This is a crowdsourced document in which participants in a rhizomatic, connectivist open course (#rhizo15) worked together in the first week to create a recipe for open learning. It was created in an open Google Docs document where different participants entered the tips they felt would be helpful to someone new to the arena of open learning. Because participants could see one another’s tips, they could add to what already existed, add comments (viewable in the margins), and ask for clarification. The document is a good example of crowdsourcing knowledge in a network and can be adapted for a variety of different learning contexts. The #rhizo15 MOOC participants: Maha Bali, Dave Cormier, Helen DeWaard, Barry Dyck, Ann Gagne, Dilrukshi Gamage, Kevin Hodgson, Rebecca J. Hogue, Sarah Honeychurch, Keesa V. Johnson, Scott Johnson, James Kerr, Daniel Lynds, Laura Pasquini, Sandra Sinfield, Lenandlar Singh, Wendy Taleo, Lee Skallerup Bessette, Sandra Rennie, Blair Vessey, Susan Watson, Wafa Nichol

Pioneering Alternative Forms of Collaboration

One key experience of human work, life, and play is people working together on a common goal. Yet this aspect of working together does not have one primary recognizable instantiation of what it means to work together. Words like collaboration and cooperation are often used to describe such instances, but even words like ‘collaboration’ don’t always have a neat formula for working through a collaboration. In this article we examine and reflect on our own collaborative experiences as a research group. We do this through an examination of past experiences, and through a method of writing that developed in our group. We have called this type of writing a ‘swarm,’ and we explore our working together, and swarm writing, as a new type of collaborative instantiation that allows scholars, their research, and their tools and processes to self-organize as complex, open systems

What is it Like to Learn and Participate in Rhizomatic MOOCs? A Collaborative Autoethnography of #RHIZO14

In January 2014, we participated in a connectivist-style massive open online course (cMOOC) called Rhizomatic Learning – The community is the curriculum (#rhizo14). In rhizomatic learning, teacher and student roles are radically restructured. Course content and value come mostly from students; the teacher, at most, is a curator who provides a starting point and guidance and sometimes participates as a learner. Early on, we felt that we were in a unique learning experience that we wanted to capture in writing. Explaining #rhizo14 to others without the benefit of traditional processes, practices, roles, or structures, however, presented a challenge. We invited participants to contribute narratives to a collaborative autoethnography (CAE), which comprises an assortment of collaborative Google Docs, blog posts by individuals, and comments on those documents and posts. This strategy afforded insight into what many participants found to be a most engaging course and what for some was a transformative experience. In discussing the findings from the CAE, our intent is to benefit others interested in rhizomatic learning spaces such as cMOOCs. This authoethnography specifically addresses gaps both in the understanding of the learner experience in cMOOCs and in the nature of rhizomatic learning