MOOC

Draft

Introduction

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) came into existence into the late 2010's. As of July 2012 one could distinguish several forms with respect to learning materials, learning design and certification. Initially, MOOCs were tied to connectivism and included some precise model of "2.0" education, but it seems that today MOOCs most often rather refer to a renaming of "open courseware" plus some vague idea of participant interaction and light-weight certification.

Learning materials:

• Free on-line homogenous courseware that has a much older tradition (e.g. wikiversity, MIT open courseware, etc.)
• Assembly of various free on-line resources into a structure reading list
• On-the fly construction of materials while the course is underway.

Learning design:

• Read and/or watch videos, do quizes and exercices
• Like above, but interactions between participants in forums and on other channels
• Like above, but some light-weight tutoring (e.g. most interesting forum questions answered by a tutor)

Certification:

• None
• Informal certificates after completetion
• Reuse of MOOC contents in formal education (e.g. the ones that are produced by major universities for their own students)

Links

Introductions

• Massive open online course (Wikipedia). This article reflects the original Cormier/Alexander/Downes/Siemens perspective.

How to

• The Mooc Guide (Editor: Stephen Downes)
• Mooc Guide

MOOC sites

• mooc.ca (the original)
• Coursera The "Stanford" startup

Bibliography

• Ravenscroft, Andrew, (2011) Dialogue and Connectivism: A New Approach to Understanding and Promoting Dialogue-Rich Networked Learning [1] International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning Vol. 12.3.

• Carson, Stephen and Jan Philipp Schmidt; Academic Matters: The Massive Online Professor, The Journal of Higher Education Abstract/HTML

• John Mak, S.F.; R. Williams and J. Mackness, Blogs and Forums as Communication and Learning Tools in a MOOC, Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Networked Learning (2010)

• Kop. R, (2011). The challenges to connectivist learning on open online networks: Learning experiences during a massive open online course, The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Vol 12, No 3

• Levy. D, (2011). Lessons Learned from Participating in a Connectivist Massive Online Open Course (MOOC).

• McAuley. A, B. Stewart, G, Siemens and D. Cormier. (2010). The MOOC Model for Digital Practice (2010)

• Siemens George, (2008). Learning and Knowing in Networks: Changing roles for Educators and Designers

Presented to ITFORUM for Discussion.

• Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for a digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1), 3–10.

• Vickery, Graham; Sacha Wunsch-Vincent (2007). Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Participative web and user-created content: web 2.0, wikis and social networking

• Walsh, Taylor (2011). Unlocking The Gates: How and Why Leading Universities Are Opening Up Access To Their Courses; Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-14874-8