The common thread of a paper

The current draft of my M.A. thesis already went a far way … due to plenty of challenges during the last year I often had to stop and to restart and I mean “restart” really literally as it feels each time not like continuing where you stopped but each time I am tempted to start at zero. Certainly I did not do so but I rearranged parts of the work, changed the structure, changed the title … and all this is time consuming and hinders going on within the writing process.

When I restarted again (and this time it’s the final count-down!) I decided to write my M.A. Thesis in English. There are three reasons to do so: The main aspects and the “famous common thread” have been presented in Chile last autumn which meant that I read and wrote already a lot of text in English. Second, there are people who I like to keep up-to-date on the ongoing process of this research and who have a really global background and communicate in English about common interests and research projects. And third I’d love to continue writing papers which base on further research and findings following up my first paper for Chile.

So the “final countdown” started and by now I have roundabout 35 sites (from estimated circa 80) written in English, approximately the same amount still in German to be translated and integrated into the revised structure and some important resources I want to read before writing/completing the part dealing with criteria and methods to evaluate academic global online courses that come up to a new understanding about what learning, knowledge and competence in global (online) learning environments is.

I work with “Citavi”, a swiss software to manage references and to integrate quotations into Word. Translating the table of contents helped me to revise the structure and to reduce complexity but I think this is still a great part of the work I have to do. Reducing and coming to the point, focusing on the common thread of the Thesis.

For the next days I will continue reading and writing and thinking (maybe I will change the sequence ;-)) mainly focusing on the chapters five to seven.

I’d really love to get feedback concerning the structure/table of contents. Does it show a common thread? Does it avoke interest? Does it show the connections between the chapters?

After presenting the table of content in this post, I will go on “write-thinking” about the main points of the chapters and my questions and ideas on criteria and methods. Before or beside doing so, I will publish the LTEC-Presentation which presents the main ideas leading to Chapter two and parts of Chapter five and six.

So here it is:

Contents

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Learning, Knowledge, and Competence: Terminology shapes Thinking

3. Revisiting Learning Theories from a New Learning Cultures’ Perspective

3.1. A New Learning-Culture: Heterogeneity and Change in Roles

3.2. Learning and Interaction

3.2.1. Gregory Batesons’ Levels of Learning

3.2.2. Connectivism: Generating Knowledge in and through learning Networks

3.3. Learning and Needs

3.3.1. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

3.3.2. The Need to Belong: Rediscovering Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

3.3.3. Martins »Glücksmodell«: Control and Assimilation of Information as Basic Needs

3.4. Learning and Communication

3.4.1. Paul Watzlawik, Jürgen Habermas and Manuel Castells: A brief excursus on Views on Communication

3.4.2. From Communication to Meta-Communication

4. First Interim-Conclusion: Heterogeneity is the Constituting Element of the New Learning Culture

5. Learning Landscape Global Online-University

5.1. The Perception of »Competence« in Higher Eduction

5.1.1. Is Competence transferable? From Didactic to »Mathetik«

5.1.2. Heterogeneity as Challenge to Competence Based Development? Or: Enhancement-Competence through Heterogenity?

5.1.3. Hierarchy of Competences: A Pyramid Diagram

5.2. Excursus: The Recent Shift in E-Learning: From »Drill and Practice« to OER and MOOCs

5.3. MOOCs: Revolution or Evolution?

5.4. Learner-Centered Approaches: What MOOCs could (should) adapt

5.4.1. Researching Learning

5.4.2. Learning by Teaching

5.4.3. The »flipped classroom«

5.5. MOOCs and the Question of Competence

5.5.1. Competence in (or for?) Global Online-Courses

5.5.2. Enhancement-Competence as Core (Key?)-Competence

5.5.3. Enhancement-Competence in and through MOOCs: Criteria and Requirements

5.5.4. What makes a MOOC a Good MOOC? Reflections on MOOCs in Practice

6. Second Interim-Conclusion: MOOCs in a New Learning Culture have to be Learning-Landscapes for Enhancement-Competence

7. The Significance of Competence in MOOC-Research and Analysis

7.1. Traditional Methods and Tools to analyze and evaluate MOOCs

7.2. Can Traditional Methods fit New Approaches?

7.3. Research-Methods 3.0: How to analyze Global Online-Courses

8. Conclusion and Desideratum