What is in Kelvin's Head?

Listen up! Moocs are the future

17/12/2013
OK listen up. Moocs are the future.

Now before we go any further, let’s get the usual responses out of the way. The usual responses are twofold:
1. What’s a mooc? (Most people)
2. *rolls eyeballs* (lots of academics, including quite a few in my congregation)
Firstly, a mooc is a term used for a new form of education that you engage in online. It stands for Massively Open Online Course. Such things have been around for the last couple of years and there’s a good wikipedia page on the concept.

The basic idea is that you do a course online along with many thousands of other people all at once (massive) which you have easy/free (open) online (online!) access to. It is a way for someone to teach many people. Many, many people. I’ve just finished doing a mooc where a team of three people were attempting to teach 13000 students all around the world.

But why the eyeball-rolling from clever people?

Well, any teacher worth their salt is going to say, “Ah, but wait a minute? Hang on there… what do you mean…. that’s not a learning experience that is equivalent to what I can do in a classroom.”

And you know what? It isn’t.

However, it is here, it is now and it is going to develop in the future all the same.

Now, are you thinking you’ve heard all this before – are you thinking this is just a glorified correspondence course? Sure you are. But this is a bit more than that. Typically in a mooc, you get video lectures or other content to download, maybe on a weekly basis. You work through that stuff and you get online quizzes and exercises that you do along the way. If the course is well designed, you get instant feedback on how you are doing and can go back and review any of the bits that you didn’t understand.

But here’s the thing – it isn’t just you. It is social. There’s a whole bunch of people out there doing the same course as you. And you can get to interact with them on the forums. Indeed, some of the ways that the mooc is assessed may include interaction on the forums. (Cue eyeball rolling from academics who can’t work out that this is the equivalent of giving a mark for interaction in class discussions, which is a relatively common practise in some institutions).

Then, when all is done, you may well have a final piece of work to submit and this will be marked. But hey, how do you mark 13000 pieces of work? Well, if it is not machine markable material (multiple-guess questions) then the mooc method is to get students to peer review. In the mooc I’ve just participated in, we were encouraged to produce a final video and to pass the course you had to, not only submit your own video, but assess three (or more) others.

Then you get your certificate and there is much rejoicing.

Now, here’s where the Eyeball Rollers have started to harumph loudly. “What use is a certificate when no-one qualified has seen the work? Isn’t this the dumb assessing the dumber?”

Well, the truth is, such a certificate is worth precisely nothing in terms of the educative processes that we have been used to.

But get this, moocs are not really about what the certificate is worth. The satisfaction comes from having learned something new. Getting the certificate is just icing on the beans. Yet getting that certificate is oddly fulfilling – it is part of the gamification of learning. You get a certificate, you want another. You unlock a level badge, you go back to try to accomplish the next level.

Anyway at the end of this post is my certificate from the mooc I recently completed. I don’t care what you think about its value – for me it represents a whole bunch of skills that I just learned. It is for a course that was really for school teachers on Blended Learning – that’s about how to mix learning that takes place in an online setting with more traditional face-to-face teaching. I took the course because I want to be able to offer some online courses at St Mary’s as well doing what we already do. It seemed sensible to do the course and also learn from completing the mooc itself.

What does this mean for the church at large – well it means that education needs to get slicker. In the same way that new technology has meant that we need to up our game in religious circles in the way we communicate with people, so we need to do the same with how we teach. That scrappy stapled-together church magazine is a great means of communicating but it does so on two levels. On one level, it communicates to those who have always received it that things are carrying on just the same as ever and even lets them know whether they are on the coffee rota on Sunday. To the more casual reader, however, it probably communicates that you are not terribly professional, have low expectations which will carry forward into worship and that you are desperate for someone to join the coffee rota to try to replace the people who are dying off.

It is the same with education. Sitting around a flipchart with half a dozen people is something that I continue to do. However, increasingly as I do it, I’m aware that the ways in which people learn are changing. Gamification (rewards – yes, sometimes silly little rewards) is here to stay. Blending of online and offline worlds is how people are doing everything from shopping to looking after their health so why shouldn’t that affect how we learn about Things That Matter in church circles? And yes, self directed learning is here to stay.

There’s new technology on offer here. Who knows what we’re going to do with it?

And here’s my certificate, which I’m terribly proud of, can you tell?
blended learning, church, education, mooc, self directed learning

20 responses to “Apologies have consequences too”

Andrew Cain

15/04/2016

You say so often and so eloquently what I feel.

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1. Father Ron Smith
  
  16/04/2016
  
  Food for serious thought, Father Kelvin. I don’t suppose there has been any objection raised by the Church of England Bishops about the liberalising ativity of our Norwegian partner’s in Christ. It is this continuing double-mindedness that exposes us Anglicans to the charge of structured hypocrisy. Keep up the good work you are doing on your web-site. Christ IS risen, Alleluia!
  
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Alan Wilson

15/04/2016

Thank you, Kelvin. It’s certainly a change of the mood music going on, but self-lacerating apologies are subject to the law of diminishing returns unless they indicate what we call “Metanoia” – change of mind, aka repentance. This means things real change. Without it, apologies breed cynicism, not hope. When, for example, a bishop tells us he is ashamed whenever he encounters homophobia in the church, curious minds want to ask him “when did you last encounter what you call homophobia in the church? What was it like? How was it separable from the ideology that validated it? And since it’s such a shameful thing, what are you going to do about it?”

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1. Kelvin
  
  16/04/2016
  
  The real disconnect for me is that Justin Welby is someone who clearly does know something about what reconcilliation is. He can’t have done that job in Coventry and not known and he can’t have named reconcilliation as one of the key strands of his time as Archbishop without knowing that metanoia is part of the deal if that is what you are chasing after.
  
  However, I can only come back again and again to the possibility that there are those who simply think that LGBT are indeed actually worth less than real people.
  
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  1. June Butler
    
    18/04/2016
    
    Kelvin, after I read your words about the empty apologies by authorities in the church after which their behavior does not change, I could not help but think what you stated in your comment, that the leaders, with exceptions like Alan Wilson, believe LGTB folks are lesser. What else can we think? My advice would be to stop apologizing and be honest, which would be a step in the right direction, because at least the hypocrisy would end.
    
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adrian copping

16/04/2016

Thank you for this. Something similar has been happening here in Wales in the past week or so where our Bishops have apologised AND issued some prayers which are authorised for use in connnection with ministry to LGBTI people. This is to be welcomed as a sign of a step in a positive direction but, at the same time, leaves a lot of questions and many disappointed.

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Bob Webster

16/04/2016

Saying it is a “constant source of deep sadness that people are persecuted for their sexuality” is not an apology. At best it is a request that someone should stop making him feel bad. That could be the people doing the persecuting, or it could be us who should just be quiet and preferably go away. An apology would be “I apologize for the hurt I have caused and as a consequence of recognizing my sin I will cease that behaviour and do everything I can to get others to stop as well.”

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Ruth Richards-Hill

16/04/2016

Kelvin, you are an expert at stating things so eloquently that makes everyone else in the Anglican communion squirm.

I was not oblivious to the fact that as a lesbian woman I entered a family of churches with a huge diversity of attitudes towards my sexuality. It was only because of the grace and love of Jesus Christ that I felt safe to come into the church despite my “flaws” and receive baptism. Is my baptism any less valid because I am a lesbian?

As a convert from Orthodox Judaism I suspect that I am sometimes more acutely aware than others at what should be in my mind a glaring hypocrisy. Rabbinical thought always looks for an alternatives to explain why a certain situation does or does not apply according to halachah (ecclesiastical law – much like the canons). But the balance either exists or it doesnt. Jesus speaks about divorce and makes it quite clear that its not really an option, while in rabbinical law, it certainly is an option. We are taught that he came to fulfil the law and yet we his church are part of a new covenant are we not? The church seems to have taken the easy way out and will marry people who have divorced, but will not marry gay couples. So if divorced people are part of the new covenant, why arent us gay folk?

I could get into all the biblical quotation arguments and as someone that reads Classical Hebrew better than most Anglicans I know, I have no fear in taking a stand on my point. (My Greek needs a little more work however.) That said, I dont see a balanced biblical foundation for excluding some that are automatically excluded by literal translation of scripture, but not others, but rather an inherited bigotry and hypocrisy that continues to thrive simply to satisy the whims of member churches whose societies havent quite experienced the journey that ours has. While that doesnt invalidate their position, neither does it invalidate the position of our society and our spiritual progress should not be hindered to satisy the agenda of those religious leaders that appear to be pandering to the demands of those churches that have not walked the path of ours.

I have arguments that cover more than simple translations and exegesis particularly surrounding what the rules were both before and after the death of Christ, but those are for another day. I know that I am a baptised Christian and Jesus loves me as much as any other, not because I am gay or straight, but because I am one of his, and therefore he wants me to thrive within his covenant rather than the stifling, unreasonable and hair splitting laws that came before – Ones that I personally know how incredibly impossible they are to live by, no matter what your sexuality, or colour, or intellectual ability. – I was there once.

When our Bishops and leaders realise that Christ died exactly to make the Christian lives of the likes of me equally valid as straight people, then perhaps we’ll make a little more progress and not see these “apologies” as merely lip service. Its almost embarrassing to LGBT people for whom their faith is a core part of their lives. It certainly is for me.

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Ruth Harley

16/04/2016

Any child in my Sunday School group could tell you that repentance is not just “saying sorry” it is “saying sorry, being sorry, and changing”. Possibly ++Justin’s words make it as far as the first of these, but I’m not convinced they signify the second, and the third is nowhere in sight. Perhaps I should send my 5 year old theologians to Lambeth and/or Lusaka to explain! Or perhaps it’s just that those who are issuing these ‘apologies’ aren’t really thinking in terms of repentance, or seeing the need for it, at all.

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Mark Falby

16/04/2016

Apologies mean nothing if not backed by action.

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Junia

16/04/2016

Well I did recently get brutally and spectacularly dumped by an American lesbian, so perhaps they just are naturally more wicked over there…

In seriousness though, thank you for this wonderfully elegant post, Kelvin, summarising so much of what I have felt since ++Justin’s statement in January. I’m starting to get a little sick of being apologised to.

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1. Cynthia
  
  17/04/2016
  
  Speaking as an American lesbian, I’m sure the Norwegian lesbians are much better people, and that we are “naturally more wicked…” 😉
  
  Kelvin expresses well the debacle of January. But interestingly, Justin just delivered an amazing sermon at ACC-16 that marks a major change of heart and theology if he’s sincere. We’ll see. A lot has happened since January.
  
  Have a look at the sermon, it’s in the Anglican Communion news. I’d hate to think that those are just empty words. Time will tell. But I want hope.
  
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  1. Kelvin
    
    17/04/2016
    
    Could you point us towards the sermon, Cynthia. I’m not seeing anything at all that’s new in relation to the things I’ve written about above.
    
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    1. Cynthia Katsarelis
      
      17/04/2016
      
      Here it is: http://www.anglicannews.org/news/2016/04/new-calls-for-new-times-archbishop-welbys-presidential-address-to-acc-16.aspx
      
      To me this seems like a new direction, born of recent realities, and perhaps inspired by the Holy Spirit.
      
      Of course, my hopes could be typical, off-the-charts American optimism. We wicked American Episcopal lesbians just know that the Promised Land is at the end of the next rainbow.
      
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      1. Kelvin
        
        17/04/2016
        
        Cynthia – this is what I was writing about above. It isn’t a new direction. It is what I’m complaining of. Talk of reconciliation whilst not engaging in it.
        
        There’s not a word in it about a new direction on the way the ABC relates to the Anglican Communion’s troubles. Not one.
      2. Cynthia Katsarelis
        
        17/04/2016
        
        It seems like he was asking people to focus on the major characters, climate change and religious violence, and to work together within our diversity. That sounds like a new tack. Of course, it will be interesting to see if this translates into action. Will the discrimination against married clergy stop? Will the ABC stop pandering to the primates who didn’t show up to ACC-16?
        
        You might be right, you seem very prophetic to me. But I want you to be wrong this time. I want hope, and to work together on things that actually matter.
      3. Kelvin
        
        17/04/2016
        
        There are simply no signs of what you hope for, Cynthia. None.
      4. Cynthia Katsarelis
        
        17/04/2016
        
        Perhaps not. But I was recently a TEC delegate to the UN Commission on the Status of Women where I met a posse of awesome women from the Anglican Communion Women delegation. We had great interaction and they affirmed a “walking together” statement they wrote in 2007. It says they are staying in communion, no matter what the guys do. We women in TEC are drafting a response, graciously receiving and affirming the statement. Against this, Justin doesn’t stand a chance and he might as well change his tune.
        
        PS. One of the awesome delegates was a Rachel from St. Andrew’s, Scotland.
Richard Barnes

17/04/2016

I was really hopeful about the Anglican Communion’s purpose from reading Rachael’s blogs from UN CSW last month. But not for long. ABC Welby’s Sermon reads like a random speech generator and says much the same as he’s been doing for months in global fora.
It’s like a couple who talk about the garden and the difficult neighbours because they don’t want to talk about their sex life.
Clever way to end ACC with everyone apparently united by talking about bigger issues.
But to read ++Welby asking for nuanced theology, when he’s totally binary (Christian=happy, healthy, wealthy & wise) just made me laugh.

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Robin

19/04/2016

> In the last week we’ve had the latest document on family life to come from the Vatican and it is very clear that there’s a change in tone from the current pope and it is hard not to welcome that.

I don’t see any change of tone in the following, which is the beginning of paragraph 251 of “Amoris Laetitia”.

> 251. In discussing the dignity and mission of
the family, the Synod Fathers observed that, “as
for proposals to place unions between homosexual
persons on the same level as marriage,
there are absolutely no grounds for considering
homosexual unions to be in any way similar or
even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage
and family”.

I’d call that a monumental snub, deliberately administered, or an equally deliberately administered drenching with cold water.

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