Remix as Professional Learning: Educators’ Iterative Literacy Practice in CLMOOC

Abstract

Abstract:The Connected Learning Massive Open Online Collaboration (CLMOOC) is an online professional development experience designed as an openly networked, production-centered, participatory learning collaboration for educators. Addressing the paucity of research that investigates learning processes in MOOC experiences, this paper examines the situated literacy practices that emerged as educators in CLMOOC composed, collaborated, and distributed multimediated artifacts. Using a collaborative, interactive visual mapping tool as participant-researchers, we analyzed relationships between publically available artifacts and posts generated in one week through a transliteracies framework. Culled data included posts on Twitter (n = 678), a Google+ Community (n = 105), a Facebook Group (n = 19), a blog feed (n = 5), and a "make" repository (n = 21). Remix was found to be a primary form of interaction and mediator of learning. Participants not only iterated on each others' artifacts, but on social processes and shared practices as well. Our analysis illuminated four distinct remix mobilities and relational tendencies-bursting, drifting, leveraging, and turning. Bursting and drifting characterize the paces and proximities of remixing while leveraging and turning are activities more obviously disruptive of social processes and power hierarchies. These mobilities and tendencies revealed remix as an emergent, iterative, collaborative, critical practice with transformative possibilities for openly networked web-mediated professional learning.

Teacher–writer–crafter–maker: an exploration of how making mattered for one writing teacher

“…For example, multiple Massive Open Online Collaborations/Courses (MOOCs) have encouraged writing teachers to engage with making (e.g. Smith et al, ). An analysis of the NWP's connected learning MOOC (CLMOOC) over 3 years demonstrated teachers' remixing and iteration practices with the artefacts they created in ‘Make cycles' and in their interactions with one another; however, the research did not explore the “learning pathways or outcomes for individuals – both important avenues of research that need pursuit” (Smith et al, , p. 15).…”

“…Smith et al, ). An analysis of the NWP's connected learning MOOC (CLMOOC) over 3 years demonstrated teachers' remixing and iteration practices with the artefacts they created in ‘Make cycles' and in their interactions with one another; however, the research did not explore the “learning pathways or outcomes for individuals – both important avenues of research that need pursuit” (Smith et al, , p. 15). This study contributes to this call by examining one teacher's professional learning through writing and making, with attention to implications for her teaching.…”

“…Similarly, the US‐based National Writing Project (NWP), which has also been implemented on a smaller scale in the UK and New Zealand (Gardner, ), has been a leader in conceptualising understandings of writing‐as‐making and has supported both teacher writer communities (Nagin, ) and teacher maker communities (Smith et al, ). While writing educators are currently being encouraged to cultivate maker literacies, we are still articulating the relationship between writing and making and how/what we might learn about writing through engagements with making.…”

Playful Literacies and Practices of Making in Children’s Imaginaries

“…Another model for working with in-service teachers leverages online tools and platforms to build an extensive community of practice across time and space. NWP's involvement in the annual summer Connected Learning Massive Online Open Collaboration (CLMOCC) (Smith, West-Puckett, Cantrill, & Zamora, 2016) merges making and writing with the aim of remixing and reinventing core Writing Project practices through a Connected Learning perspective (see http://clmoocmb.educatorinnovator.org). Organized around iterative "Make Cycles," the CLMOOC invites educators of all kinds to make/compose, collaborate, and distribute multimediated artifacts as members of a participatory online community while collectively considering what this means for their work with children and youth.…”

The Marginal Syllabus: Educator Learning and Web Annotation Across Sociopolitical Texts and Contexts

“…Amidst these conditions, digital technologies and everyday media practices have opened public, more participatory, and collaborative repertoires through which educators have begun to frequently engaging in professionally-relevant learning (Gover, 2017;Jones & Dexter, 2014;Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2013). At times both promising and also problematic, efforts like Twitter chats (Carpenter & Krutka, 2015;Visser, Evering, & Barrett, 2014), EdCamps (Carpenter & Linton, 2016), and online affinity spaces (Nacu, Martin, Pinkard, & Gray, 2016) have sought to honor educator curiosity and amplify the affordances of new technologies as relevant to everyday problems of practice (see also Nussbaum-Beach & Hall, 2012;Smith, West-Puckett, Cantrill, & Zamora, 2016). These emerging approaches to educator learning highlight the limitations of routinized and formally sanctioned professional development, and further disrupt assumptions about how time and space bound hybrid learning environments and practices.…”