It's the start of a new MOOC!

Well, actually, it's the start of two new MOOCs!

I know that Change11 and DS106 are still going, but change11 seems to be on life support. It seems to me anyway that the same 4-5 people are posting, and even though there are interesting people in these final weeks, most people have moved on, which is too bad. I still read the daily digest, and those 4-5 people post some thought provoking stuff, but I just have nothing to add to the conversation, so I lurk :-)

With DS106 I don't feel that creative (which is a bummer), so I've resolved that once the summer comes and I have more mental bandwidth (too many work projects taking up space now) I plan on doing two challenges every week and work through the assignments in the summer months. I've wanted to get a podcast off the ground for a while, so doing something for DS106 should kill two birds with one stone ;-) Anyone interested in doing a "MOOC Talk Weekly" with me? LOL :-)

Anyway, so what are these two new MOOCs that I've jumped into? The first is the fslt12 MOOC that I've seen advertised around change11; and the second is Blackboard's MOOC (yes, the LMS juggernaut is doing a MOOC) with Curtis Bonk (that name sounded familiar,and then I realized I've read some of the stuff he's written).

fslt12 hasn't started yet but I decided to join early so that I can get acclimated with the materials and processes before if kicks off in a few weeks. The main audience for this MOOC are people who are teaching in higher education. It's part of a grant (from what I remember) and there are tutors available to guide those who are in need of certification to teach (I think it's a UK requirement). I opted to not go for certification because I think that there probably are colleagues out there that need it (whereas for me it's a badge for MOOC completion), but I guess I reserve the right to pursue certification if enough tutors are available :-) it should be interesting. Here is the URL with course info: http://openbrookes.net/firststeps12/

The MOOC facilitated by Curtis Bonk and Coursesites focuses on design, instructional technology and learner motivation. This MOOC is currently in week 0, introductions and getting th lay of the land for the course. Two days into Week 0 and there are over 300 introductions. I don't know if this is considered massive, but it seems like a lot of discussions to go through. In MOOCs like change, where gRSShopper is used to syndicate posts, I feel like I can pick and choose the posts that I read and comment. With LMSs and discussion boards I feel like I really need to read everything. This is just a frame of mind that I need to break and disallow. I had the same issue with LAK11 (also hosted on Moodle, like fslt12). I think that ach week I will pick 10 interesting posts (based on title of discussion board post) to read and comment back to. If I don't see anything catchy, I will just pick 25 at random to read and pick 10 to respond to.

The blackboard MOOC also has a badge for completion. It uses Blackboard Learn's adaptive release system (along with honesty from participants) to award a badge after certain key things are done each week. I am quite interested in this since it's the first open badge implementation that I've seen. To check this course out see here: https://www.coursesites.com/webapps/Bb-sites-course-creation-BBLEARN/courseHomepage.htmlx?course_id=_215194_1

Both course are 6 weeks long which is good for me. I am really feeling the fatigue with change11 being 36 weeks long. I wonder how well mid sized MOOCs would be received (8-9 weeks in length). I consider a longer MOOC to be 12-13 weeks in length, or the length of an American higher education semester.

Comments

Apostolos K. ("AK") said…
We look forward to seeing you appear in ds106 summer camp!
April 30, 2012 at 9:39 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Latour: Third Source of Uncertainty - Objects have agency too!

Image
Continuing on my exploration of ANT, and asynchronous and indirect dialogue with Latour - this blog post will cover the third source of uncertainty, which according to Latour, is that Objects have agency too! As with the previous blog posts, I've pulled out quotes from the book that seemed interesting, or that I reacted to in some way, and I am responding to them here. no tie can be said to be durable and made of social stuff (p. 66) This quote seems to continue Latour's assertion that there is no such thing as "social" or "social stuff" and that "social", or the meaning of needs to be negotiated and better understood.  It also continues the thought that social can only be seen from the actions of its actors, the traces they leave behind, and that these bonds are not durable because they need continuous reinforcement. I guess Social is a perishable item. Left to its own devices, a power relationship that mobilizes nothing but social skil...
Read more

MOOC participation - open door policy and analytics

The other day I was reading ZML Didaktik on the topic of MOOC participants. In MOOCs, one of the big questions is why are people lurking and not participating? If more than 500 people join a MOOC, why are only 10% contributing with any amount of regularity?  On the same blog, in a previous blog post, I had commented (it was an open stream of thought really) that perhaps there should be an open enrollment period, and then if the system sees that certain participants are bellow a threshold of activity, the system may give them the option to self-identify as a lurker, or un-register from the class. This line of thought went along a view that compared to the traditional classroom; in a traditional classroom students register for the course, they can attend classes for a week and then decide whether or not they want to stay with the course or not. If they do stay with the course they know that there is a certain amount of "lurking" that they can get away with, but they do have ...
Read more

You've been punk'd! However, that was an educational experience

Image
It's now the end of Teaching Goes Massive: New Skills Required (aka #massiveteaching) on coursera. Well, almost, we still have a couple of days left. I guess that the lesson here is that we were (the "learners") were punk'd† by Paul-Olivier Dehaye of the Univerisity of Zurich. After that last blog post (and subsequent pickup of the post by George Siemens and others) Inside Higher Education and the Chronicle wanted to chat with me about this MOOC experience. I only had time for one of the two before things went to press, so my 15 minutes of fame went to IHE.  Both IHE and the C hronicle have written about the topic, and have received some information from Coursera on the incident.  Others have also written about it (see here , here and here ) It's surprising to me that the University, and Coursera, waited until after this thing was a big issue in order to respond in the class, and clue people into what was happening. On Wednesday (day 3 of Week 3/3 of the ...
Read more