Day 5: Done. Sigh.

Well, I guess this class is over for me in an even shorter time than my last Janux attempt. I logged on tonight just to see if the class was still flatlining, and I see a big blue thing there, the first sign of life directed at me as a person... but when I click on this, I find out my "Janux Course Features Verification Quiz" is past due... even though I filled out a survey at the start of the course in which I indicated I had no interest at all in doing quizzes of any kind. So I can just see it now - starting with this quiz, I will pile up an endless, ever-accumulating list of "past due assignments." Ugh.

Meanwhile, in the discussion space there are 9 students who introduced themselves, but no one has commented on anyone else, and neither the instructor nor the teaching fellow have posted anything there. There are a couple of comments in the other discussion forums, but no actual discussion person to person, and I'm not really sure I am interested in discussions that start with provocative but incredibly vague questions like: "Tell us what you think about the use of drones. Are they worth it or not?"

I'll check back in a month or two just to see if anything is happening here, but it seems like a pretty sad business. Personally, I don't think it's right to invite students to participate in a course when there is not going to be any instructional dimension of any kind. If I am just going to learn on my own, I'd rather learn on the open Internet with a real learning network rather than this non-network.

Day 4... more silence.

Quite by accident, I discovered a hashtag for the Janux course I enrolled in, and I added a Twitter widget to the sidebar. Sadly, no Twitter activity on the hashtag all day today.

Even more sadly, it appears that the information about the hashtag has not been shared with the students in the open class; I guess it is just for the students for credit. I just logged in and went to see; Janux strangely does not have any place for the instructor to make announcements or communicate directly to the students in an ad hoc way (???), and of course there is no Twitter widget in there (???)... I just see "required resources" and videos to watch when I log in. Nothing about the hashtag...

So I decided to look at the Discussion Board where people are supposed to post introductions. That is also very sad: 9 people, very interesting-sounding people, all took the trouble to post introductions ... but nobody has replied to anybody. So much for social. And no replies or comments from the instructor or teaching fellow.

I guess the content itself is supposed to be self-teaching...?

And, of course, I still never received an email to even let me know the course is, in fact, ready to go.

Sigh...

Day 3: hashtag!

Because I happen to follow the instructor at Twitter, I guess I have discovered the hashtag for this class, #IAS2003, along with some helpful tweets. Although it's not clear to me how students in the open course would know about that... Anyway, now there's hope! I'll embed the widget in my sidebar.

Day 3: more silence...

Since I'm so busy I guess it's a good thing that the open Janux class is flatlining.

No, I never got an email to tell me when the class opened (just an email when I enrolled).

No glimmer of life at Twitter for this class. Although there are some pretty funny tweets from people who like the Janux interface even less than I do (here and here). I guess these are OU students required to use the system. Me — I'm just lurking.

And, as I said, I am not going to go chasing this class. If the instructor or T.A. or the system itself cannot bother to send me an email or tweet a tweet (how hard would it be to create a little social presence for these supposedly social open classes?), then I'll just continue to enjoy the silence...

Silence...

As I said, my participation in Janux this semester is going to be very much driven by notifications from the system. I'm not going to go seeking it out; instead, the course needs to involve me (the way the other social networks I participate in involve me). So, I received a welcome email when I enrolled... but there was no email when the class actually opened on Monday (it had been closed until Monday because, well, that's how Janux does things) ... and now it's Tuesday. Still no email. Still no real communication from the instructor (the welcome email was generic, I suspect the same formula as for all the Janux classes).

As it happens, I follow the instructor at Twitter where she shares all kinds of great stuff, but I don't think she even mentioned the class in her Twitter stream yesterday.

Well, so much for Janux and social media.

This is looking like it is going to turn into a total non-event. I guess I will just follow this bit of "keep calm" meme advice:

Task list... with no mention of updating profile...? Sigh.

Sigh. Janux features list does not inspire, and the list of tasks (see bottom of post) does not even include UPDATING MY PROFILE. How are people supposed to build presence? How am I supposed to figure out which classmate(s) to add to my "social group" if we do not fill out our profiles? (Not that the profile is very inspiring... it's pretty lame; see screenshot below).

My motivation to introduce myself at the discussion board is low. I'll check back later and see who's there.

Meanwhile: EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS. Not a word about whether they exist or how to configure them. That's worrisome. Do they really expect me to just log in and log in and log in to see if I have any notifications with the little bell thingy in the right-hand corner...? Not a realistic expectation.

I'm still feeling a big blah about this sofar, so I'm going to stop for now and check back in later. Will I get an email today reminding me that the class has started? I wonder.

Here's the "task list" ... do they really think dictionary look-up is more important than updating your profile??? Apparently so.

About the course

I can't say the "About" page of the class really got me excited one way or the other. And as for a sense of the online presence of the instructor and teaching fellow... nothing yet. Which is again too bad: you can never have too much presence in an online course (IMHO), and this was an opportunity lost.

And... no hashtag to be found; the assumption is discussion (see below) can and must take place inside the walls of Janux. That's disappointing. I've heard from so many people (and it's been my experience also) that these open courses are far more likely to succeed when they take place of REAL places for discussion and sharing - Facebook, Google+, etc. But without hashtags to find one another in those spaces, we are stuck. Hashtags are ENORMOUSLY powerful... baffled but not surprised (since this was problem last semester too) that a self-proclaimed social learning system doesn't put a huge emphasis on a dedicated hashtag for this course.

Textbooks: the prices really are crazy!

Hmmmm. 300 pages. $56. Textbooks: I just don't get it. How can they really get away with prices like that? The cheapest possible option is Kindle for $16.32 ... but that is on the other side of my $9.99 default limit on how much I'm prepared to pay for a book I don't really even own. So, I'll be doing this course without the textbook. :-)

Survey

I completed a detailed pre-course survey which asked a wide range of questions (no free response though). Will the results be shared with people in the class? I certainly hope so! I am sure people would be curious to begin the process of getting to know just who the class cohort is by being able to see the results of the survey. If the results do become available (???), I'll update this post. The question that made me laugh out loud was: "Are you now, or have you ever been, an instructor?" :-)

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that this was not available last semester. I am glad they are collecting data to find out just what is going on in the open courses.

Trying again: Fall 2014

So, in order to see if the Janux software is improved from last spring semester (when I enrolled in and sadly dropped the History of Science class), I enrolled in a Fall course. History of Science is not being offered again, and the Native American class that I would have liked is not offered either, so I enrolled in Understanding the Global Community. I'm taking a different approach this time. Instead of proactively seeking things out as I did with History of Science, I am going to depend on notifications from the course to let me know when to do things and what is going on. I got an email welcoming me to the course, totally generic as you can see below.

The email promised information soon as we get close to August 18. I would say August 17 is pretty close to August 18 (you cannot really get closer), but no information has come in the email. Maybe at the site? I logged on, but the course is still closed and does not open until tomorrow. Notice that the email urges me to share my enrollment in the course through social media... but is there a hashtag provided...? Uh, nope.

Also, as you can see below, the instructor shows up as a grey-head... that does not bode well for the course, does it? Generic email, generic avatar. Ouch. Online presence for both the instructor AND for the students are ingredients I consider essential. But here the instructor is just a generic avatar, and there is no clickable link to learn more (I tried clicking on Course Instructor to the left there, and I clicked on Suzette's name, the avatar... nothing). 

This lack of presence is especially regrettable because Suzette has a wonderful presence at Twitter which would be great to share with the students. In fact, it's her dynamic presence at Twitter that motivated me to choose this class. I checked her Twitter stream to see if she is using a hashtag for the course, but there is no mention of the course in her stream. And as for a live Twitter widget bringing her Twitter presence into the course space... uh, nope.

Sigh. I feel obliged to do this to see if the Janux software and course design have improved from last year, but this is not off to a good start. 

Sigh again.