Monday, January 7, 2013

Engagement

I recently participated in a free MOOC course called Designing a New Learning Environment. It was offered by Dr. Paul Kim on the Stanford University Venture Lab Platform, and it ran from Oct 2012 through Dec 2012. I was taking some undergraduate level coursework at the time, and as my finals approached, and even through my finals, I found myself more passionate about the assignments for this mooc course and completion of the final project, in which I led 8 others to design a new model of technology-enhanced offline learning solutions (e.g. for literacy improvements) in areas where there is neither electricity nor affordable internet access.

This experience changed me...
...and my views on the importance of motivation to engagement, education and learning. A classmate from the DNLE course shared this video, which features interesting takes on the importance of motivation and self-directed learning from some 21st Century voices.