Graduation Ceremony

. Hello, and welcome to the graduation ceremony for my MOOC. I’m of course Dr Charles Severance, and I’m your instructor. And I’ll be awarding you your certificate, when the time comes.

I really appreciate the fact that you’ve stuck with the class long enough to get a, to get a certificate. but as is traditional with graduations, we have a graduation speaker.

And he’s my good friend and colleague Curt Bonk, from, Indiana University.

And, so, before we do the, graduation ceremony, I would like to have our graduation speaker talk briefly. Kurt.

This is going to be a PC talk. There you go. What does that mean?

Well, politically correct. Okay. At least for one thing. I got my red Indiana glasses, and my, blue. Go Blue. Michigan, blue shirt on.

It’s partly about what I’ll call not personal computers, another PC word, but Possible Courses, meaning possible paths. Not next courses you’re going to take with Doctor Chuck, necessarily.

But what I want to walk you through is four P words, four C words for your possible courses in life.

This, course, this MOOC, was about, your passion, your interest, what you decided to do.

You moved into an area, maybe a new area, that’s within your, comfort zone, or maybe a bit beyond it. But you’re trying to find, your element in life, as Sir Ken Robinson says.

We’re all looking for our personal element, right?

So, at number one, passion. You have to be passionate about your course interests in what you explore.

As part of passion, you can’t just be passionate and expect to succeed in life. You need a purpose, you need a goal.

You need to be moving toward something. As this Professor at Stanford talks about, The Highest Goal. Maybe this course you took wasn’t your highest goal. But it was a goal, nonetheless

. And we’re all moving towards that. So we want to have purpose. We want to have passion. But the only way you’re going to get through a MOOC, is to have persistence, or grit.

You push your way through it. Persevere in that class. Find that extra energy inside. And I want to congratulate all of you for finding that.

You’ve got your passion, right?

You found your purpose, hopefully even just a course related purpose. And per, persistence, perseverance, grit. That’s the number one word today in psychology.

Number four, of course you’re in this class, so you have to have a little bit of playfulness along the way.

You know I got into MOOCing stance when I did my MOOC for a week. You can take a look at it online, but I have a little playfulness in my MOOC.

Four P words, keep those in mind as you perceive, another P word, into life and your possible courses in your life.

C words, of course you chose, to get involved, choice to C word you’ve had autonomy.

It’s your personal decision to get into this class and complete that class to know the C word.

But commitment, the second C word I want to focus on, you not always just decided or chose, you committed to it to completing this course.

And that, when you come, when you did that, all your peers were watching you, and talking to you, and sharing with you, and, next word, connections.

A CMOOC, a connectivist MOOC and, any class online, is about about connections and relationships

Hopefully, you didn’t just finish this class, you formed new bridges, new relationships, new possible pathways, possible courses in your life. And so those connections you have might help you down the road anywhere.

Not just for the content here, but maybe they’ll help you get an new job somewhere, or find out about a new interest, right?

And then, what is this about? Some of you will want the certificate, you’re going to want this. Some of you want your million dollars.

Well, maybe you won’t make a million from taking this class or all your classes, but what you will do is maybe like Steve Jobs is become innovative.

The book I’m listening to now in my car and I just finished Defining Your Element. You have completed a course, you might get a certificate, another C word.

So those are the four P words, passion, persistence, purpose, and playfulness. And the four C words we moved through, choice, right?

You want to have some choice in your life. Commitment to things that you do choose to, to pursue, and relationships or connections, and finally, completion. A course, a certificate, and you move on in life.

If you can keep those eight principles in mind as you proceed into other courses. I think maybe you’ll find some future successes.

I hope you do, I hope you follow your heart into additional courses with Dr Chuck or with other people.

So I congratulate all of you on not only signing up.

While I’m completing as many of the modules, and maybe all of them, so you can get your certificate, not just here. But your life certificate as a open learner in an informal, now formal learning.

Thank you very much. Outstanding, outstanding. so I really want to thank Curt for coming, here in Ann Arbor.

he came all the way up from Bloomington. and so Curt and I have done a number of things together. Just to be here with Chuck, you know.

No, no that wasn’t it. He might be have another reason to be here, so we figured we would tape this.

So it is now time for you to sort of walk in front of your computer and receive your fake graduation certificate.

I mean, there’s a, it’s a little known fact that when you actually graduate from college they don’t actually give you the real certificate. They give you a carfeully rolled up piece of paper with a little bow on it.

And then you get to your seat and you open it up and it’s blank.

But that’s what we’re going to do again and you, you can print your own certificate or badge depending on the course that you’ve taken.

And so it is time for you to get up and sort of walk in front of your television or your laptop and I will hand you your certificate. I have my Harry Potter Slytherin Severus Snape wand, to poof, you know, make you educated.

And so here you go. I congratulate you and you can reach up and grab your certificate, and there you go. Shake your hand. Shake your hand.

We’ll shake your hand. We’ll both shake your hand and and as Curt said this is hopefully just the beginning of a number of wonderful courses.

And so again, thank you for your time. Thank you for your persistence.

Thank you for your commitment, and hopefully you’ll see both of us on the net and on the web teaching the internet classes. So thank you very much. Door is open.