Game MOOC, week 1 Observations

With Week 2 of Game MOOC starting up today, I thought it would be worth while to write a couple of observations from the inaugural week of this MOOC.

Last week's content was quite interesting. I still see a lot of people still introducing themselves in the "welcome and introduce yourself" forum, so I guess many more people are coming on-board, even at the end of the first week. The video of Jim Gee (reposted here) was quite interesting and engaging, and the games that the Guild Council (MOOC facilitators) had us sample weren't that bad. To be honest, I would not have tried any of these games out if I didn't have to. My time is a bit limited, and these learning games don't generally fit in with me as a learner, and don't fall into the demographic if people who might be in a course of mine.

That said, I did enjoy the games (despite some of them being frustrating, but I guess that was the point) and had some interesting discussions with a few participants about them in the fora.

From a programatic point of view (meta-MOOC), I am thinking of what "Massive" is, and how one counts massive. Even the "big" MOOCs like #change11 only had a handful of people actively participating (I don't know what the lurker and dropout situation was like), so by comparison this MOOC seems to be just as massive. I have to say that I like the forums on Shivtr. It allows people to participate in discussions with others without having to follow their blogs (although I have followed a couple of blogs and twitter accounts as well). I just wish I were able to tie this into my Disqus account somewhere to keep track of these discussions.

The journal function is interesting, but I am not a big journaler. Sure, I do blog, and this is a journal in some fashion, but I don't like to blog within a closed system (which is why I didn't blog using the LMS in the BonkOpen MOOC). The incorporation if Flickr is a nice touch because it allows people to share screenshots of their games (educational and non) with others, and provide some commentary around these games.

I am curious to see what the Guild Officers have in store for the remaining five weeks.

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