[Xmca-l] Re: Quick question and assistance

[Greg Thompson]

Dear XMCA'rs,
I'm wondering if anyone can point a colleague to Vygotsky-inspired folks
writing on MOOCs. I know there has been a lot of discussion about moocs
here on XMCA, but was wondering what's out there in writing.
I've forwarded the original message below.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions,
greg


On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 9:58 AM, Alex Rosborough <alex_rosborough@byu.edu>wrote:

>  Hi all,
>
>  I have a colleague in general K-12 education that asked me the following
> question:
>
>  *Alex: re: vygotsky. can you point me toward a piece (not an overly long
> piece) that deals with the centrality of human relationships and mature
> support to learning, the sort of piece that leads to the conclusion that
> moocs and other forms of on-line ed might be okay for training but not for
> education? (i've spent part of the morning trying to find my vygotsky
> book--edited by john-steiner, but to no avail, nuts). thanks for your
> guidance, Alex. B.*
>
>  And an additional comment:
>
>  *…it's the zone in its various manifestations i'm most interested
> in--not just talk about guidance and a bit of coaching but serious
> relationship, embedded in meaning tasks that facilitate mentoring and open
> folks up to reimagining themselves as capable learners and serious problem
> solvers (if this makes any sense at all). *
>
>  Unfortunately, I'm not very up on MOOCs and technology. I know many of
> these practices claim to be very Vygotskian but in some cases they're often
> superficial interpretations. I think he's alluding (possibly) to the idea
> that modern "constructivism" is not necessarily the same as Vygotskian SCT.
>
>  I referred him to Fred Newman's and Lois Holtzman's work(s) concerning
> "performance"… And I'm pretty sure you don't typically get the Vygotskian
> drama-based / role-playing / language-play performance that is appropriate
> and valuable for CHILDREN (K-12 public education system) through many Moocs
> and such.
>
>  I know there may be some differing of opinions but do any of you have an
> article or suggestion that might help this professor?
>
>  Or are we both out of touch with what he's asking? I'm sure that second
> language issues are appropriate to this discussion as well.
>
>  I appreciate any short reply and/or reference you can send. Thank you,
>
>  Alex Rosborough
>



-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
883 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson