It t’was the MOOC before Christmas

And through the interwebs

All the creatures were stirring and…

… I actually found it kind of hard to keep up with everything but that was ok. (I know that part doesn’t rhyme – I’m not that kind of poet)

It’s not every year one gets a Graduation Solstice Birthday Christmas New Year but 2015/16 is the one for me. It’s travel time and I’m off and about staying true to my wandering nature. Along my way I’m carrying #HumanMOOC with me – no worries; it’s not so heavy. I have been paying attention and participating as I find fit and I thought I would reflect some.

First off – Wo! The participant hangout thing actually took off a little bit and that has been pretty awesome. It has me thinking about my thinking and wondering about differences in processing information synchronously vs asynchronously. For instance, the other day we had this one about digital citizenship put together by Sundi Richard and I found myself answering a question about what it means to be a good digital citizen by stating that it had to do with participation but in the same breath I somehow threw listening in as an act of participation. I could write a whole other post on this idea and of course it stands on the synchronous #HumanMOOC convo with Kate Bowles, tons of #HumanMOOC async convo on twitter and probably all the way back to my musings in #rhizo15 about lurkers, but my point is I had never really thought about it in relation to digital citizenship in that way before. That is, the idea that listening is a responsibility of being an active member of a society. But there it was, all manifesting itself as it came out of my mouth in that moment. Live on the Internet… Recorded. There is something kind of magical and terrifying about that.

In taking on a reflection here at the 3/4’s mark of #HumanMOOC a part of me wants to reflect on the competencies for weeks 1 & 2: Instructor and Social Presence, but alas I have these other pesky constructs coming out of the conversations that I have been participating in (yes some of them were only listening) that are screaming in my brain and making it hard for me to hear anything else. I might be down the rabbit hole with the questions.

Warning rhizomatic mind wanderings below

This first for me is the big question. What does it mean to be human? Can we humanize an online course if we don’t take a moment to consider this? I recognize that this is the big unanswerable philosophical question that flies in one’s face making lewd gestures and strange noises. For this reason it is often only taken on by those that bring it some air of seriousness for it is so easy to just go out drinking with it and let it get the best of you. And while I have not been known for my seriousness in these open online adventures I can’t resist it. So, please forgive this uptake of a big question by a not so serious girl who is only moderately read.

In considering what is human I have to wonder what is not human? Is it the wild? I found myself revisiting my public vs wild post from #CLMOOC due to #HumanMOOC convos. 

I’m tempted to reflect on what it means to create such a thing as good or bad or mediocre and then apply that construct to others and one’s self. Is this human? As I consider this question of what is human the phrase “to err is human” comes to mind. And this makes me wonder what it means to err. Didn’t humans create the idea of error? Maybe not, I’m not so sure that this separates the human from the wild. I suppose the wild could err if there is a pursuit that ends in failure or setback – perhaps a hunt or a gathering. But it seems to me that those kind of errors would not lend themselves to forgiveness.

To err is human; to forgive, divine

Is woman/man caught in some kind of middle here? Between wild and divine do we find human? This seems like a common enough of a thought. 

But I think I reject it. I think it might be a fraud. I think woman/man is wild as well as divine and dances in the liminal space of chaos in the universe.  So humor me with this as a foundation while I reflect a bit on how this relates to my recent thoughts inspired by #HumanMOOC.

What if to forgive was not divine? What if to forgive was just as human as to err?

We’ve had some talk these last few weeks about digital forgiveness and what that might mean. Alec Couros started this in a #HumanMOOC hangout with reflections of what it means to err in a wold that does not forget. He referenced his recent blog post where he comes to the conclusion that forgiveness may end up being the answer. I agree and I think that this is attainable because I think that forgiveness is not divine – but human. I worry that if we think of forgiveness as divine that it seems too unattainable.

Not everyone seems to agree – some would rather focus on forgetting rather than forgiving. Perhaps they think forgiveness is more than human and beyond what the human can achieve. That the only way to give someone hope would be to wipe the slate clean and erase all hints of the error. Some would even call this forgiveness.

In thinking about forgetting I can’t help but think of Socrates and how the old man warned us all those years ago on how writing stuff down would ruin our memories. Apparently there is some truth to that but I would argue the effects are not all that bad and that the benefits of writing outweigh what we have lost. Now, here we are worried that writing stuff down will ruin other people’s memories of who we used to be. Maybe the written word is ruining our history more than our memory? Or maybe it is just forcing us to rethink some things and asking us to be better people. Maybe it is doing both at the same time.

If forgiveness is something attainable by the human how do we learn to do it? Alec gives us guide points in his post such as considering context and intent. These seem helpful and clear to me but with some limitations. I wonder how many of us will take the initiative to seek out transgressions to forgive or (more likely) when encountering transgressions as they come will think to consider forgiveness as an option. The thing that seems missing (to me) in all of this is the willful act of asking for forgiveness; of realizing that a wrong has happened, recognizing the weight of that wrong, as well as who has been wronged, and genuinely asking for forgiveness.

What would it mean to request digital forgiveness? To realize a wrong, look it in the face, feel remorse, know it can’t be wiped away, yet ask for the right to go on in a particular direction? And what would that kind of forgiveness look like? It certainly sounds familiar to me. It kind of sounds like learning.