Thomas P. Mackey
Professor of Arts and Media at Empire State University. Dr. Mackey's research examines metaliteracy, a model he originated with Prof. Trudi E. Jacobson, as a reflective, empowering, and self-directed approach to teaching and learning. They have published research about metaliteracy in several books, peer-reviewed journal articles, conference proceedings, and have been invited to keynote on this topic nationally and internationally. They established and co-lead the Metaliteracy Learning Collaborative to advance research, writing, grant projects, open educational resources (OER), and innovative learning environments. Dr. Mackey served as an administrator at Empire State University for ten years as Associate Dean and Dean of the Center for Distance Learning (CDL), and in senior management roles as Vice Provost for Academic Programs and Interim Provost. Previously, he was a faculty member in the Department of Information Studies at The University at Albany and Associate Dean at The Sage Colleges. Dr. Mackey teaches online courses in Digital Storytelling, History & Theory of New Media, Information Design, Ethics of Digital Art & Design, Educational Planning, and Special Topics: Empowering Yourself in a Post-Truth World.
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Metaliteracy served as the content focus for each of the MOOCs, and also provided the guiding framework for our course design. Metaliteracy is an empowering reinvention of information literacy
that encourages metacognitive reflection and the production of digital information in social media and collaborative communities. In each of the MOOCs, our goal was to engage participants in a way that would encourage their development as empowered, metaliterate learners, as well as teaching them about metaliteracy.
MOOCs provide ample opportunities for learners to connect with and learn from a global classroom of peers. This connectedness is often lost, however, in exchange for more automated, lecture-centered content delivery. The open and circuitous format of our first connectivist MOOC allowed for a level of flexibility and interactivity that was difficult to replicate in our later xMOOC explorations in Coursera and Canvas. However, components in the xMOOCS such as the peer assessment functionalities and discussion forums provided support structures not present in the cMOOC environment that helped facilitate student engagement.
The pedagogical practices we aimed for and how they fared in each environment will be of interest to others who are creating MOOC-based courses, and who are interested in incorporating components that encourage deep engagement and connectedness, even in the self-paced xMOOC environment.
These projects were largely supported by SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grants (IITGs), which provided additional resources for continued collaboration between colleagues at The University at Albany and SUNY Empire State College, for these open learning and competency-based ventures.
Overall, we will describe what worked, as well as what did not, and look forward to engaging in conversation with those who have developed MOOCS themselves, or are contemplating doing so.
Even with a few challenges along the way, and the occasional differences in viewpoints, we kept the band together, and the metaliteracy movie never ends. It goes on and on, and on, and on.