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 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.