MOOC or Mega-Connectivism Course
George Siemens on Jul 28th 2008
Two separate individuals – Dave Cormier and Bryan Alexander – have named our upcoming course as a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). As far as names go, it works for me. We currently have 1200 signed up. As a side note – I post numbers of enrollment to obviously provide a sense of how many have expressed interest, but also to document progress for subsequent publications. This blog will serve as field notes.
Last night, in my time zone at least, a group of us got together and discussed the challenges and dynamics of running an large open course (the recording is now available). Our conversation was largely focused on the theoretical aspect of the course: the motivation for offering it, logistics of interaction, challenges expected, what we hope the course will achieve, etc. Even though our meeting ran 70+minutes, we only scratched the surface of what needed to be addressed. We decided to have another online discussion sometime in mid-August.
A few thoughts stayed with me:
- Many people have at least a partial interest in observing how this course turns out. I associate innovation and creativity with edubloggers. Ideas we were talking about 5+ years ago are only now being explored by the academy. Alec Couros’ course in spring was a great proof of concept. As was David Wiley’s course last fall. And the LTC online conferences in winter and summer of ‘07. As a group, we all share in the success (and failure) of MOOCs.
- We have to walk a line between innovating teaching and learning while still keeping things at a level that permits the ideas we’re presenting to translate into the realities of educators and administrators
- We’ve largely hit the growth curve or impact of edubloggers on changing the system from the outside. Bridges with educators in the more traditional sense are critical if we want to continue to influence the shape of education.
- While Stephen and I are facilitating this course, I think it’s critical that the larger community identifies with it and takes ownership of it. Our course isn’t happening in a vacuum – we’re building on our own previous work and the work of others. And once our course is done here, others will hopefully learn from our experience and build on it. Spiralling innovation. But I’m hoping we won’t only see people building on our work. I hope we’ll see others building with us.
- We’re already seeing the early effects of multiple contributors shaping and enlarging the course beyond what we could personally conceive. Numerous translations, meetups planned, SecondLife component in the works, Facebook groups, etc.
- Research opportunities are enormous. MOOCs are uncharted, largely undocumented, territory. This course will produce a significant amount of data – both quantitative and qualitative. Short version: this’ll be a lot of fun. I’m not sure if the model we are working with is the future of education. If not, at least we’ve found one more model that it isn’t. I’ll confidently state that some view of learning as networked – whether conceived as connectivism or an alternative theory – is the future of education. It’s getting those details right that’s the problem…
As a group, we’re having important conversations about the course, moving to some sense of shared awareness of what we are trying to achieve and the different roles indivduals will want to take. This is critical. We don’t have a shared sense of how to learn more formally in this environment. Leigh asked a good question during our talk: how is this different from the internet as a whole? What will this course offer that the edublog space doesn’t? I answered by stating it will serve as a stake-in-the-ground or proof of concept, sustained focus for deeper exploration (we do have a rather fickle blogspace), and the ability to bridge our informal ideas into the formal aspects of education. We’ll see…
Filed in Uncategorized | 10 responses so far
Lorna Costantini Jul 28th 2008 at 01:01 pm 1
As I listen and muse on the conversations evolving, I know what I am looking for in this course is a charted way to make the unorganized become organized. I see a concerted effort to make sense of learning in an environment that has no beginning and no end point. A place where everyone is an expert and still doesn’t know enough. I am very appreciative of everyone’s efforts and can attest that the process of watching the process evolve is an educational experience in itself.
Doug Holton Jul 28th 2008 at 06:52 pm 2
There are a lot of open courses like this in the programming world and other topic areas. See for example this popular online free java course given twice a year:
http://www.javapassion.com/javaintro/
IBM Developerworks had a bunch of free online courses/personal tutorials.
Probably the most helpful online tutorial/course I ever took was the nehe opengl tutorials for example: http://nehe.gamedev.net/
I bet hundreds of thousands have gone through those tutorials by now.
MOOC: Massive Open Online Course « Open Education News Jul 30th 2008 at 05:36 pm 3
[...] George summarizes some of his thoughts following the EdTechTalk.com conversation within a new blog documenting the development and delivery of this unique open education course. He reflects, As a group, we all share in the success (and failure) of MOOCs …We have to walk a line between innovating teaching and learning while still keeping things at a level that permits the ideas we’re presenting to translate into the realities of educators and administrators … While Stephen and I are facilitating this course, I think it’s critical that the larger community identifies with it and takes ownership of it. Our course isn’t happening in a vacuum – we’re building on our own previous work and the work of others. And once our course is done here, others will hopefully learn from our experience and build on it. Spiralling innovation. But I’m hoping we won’t only see people building on our work. I hope we’ll see others building with us … Research opportunities are enormous. MOOCs are uncharted, largely undocumented, territory. This course will produce a significant amount of data – both quantitative and qualitative. [...]
Stephen Downes Aug 1st 2008 at 07:57 am 4
> There are a lot of open courses like this in the programming world
Quite right. I remember myself attending various email tech courses and the like.
There’s no need to be over-awed by this.
willie Aug 3rd 2008 at 10:15 pm 5
I’m right there with Lorna- I’m overwhelmed by much of what is available and possible and see a “course” at least the responsibility of someone to provide some support for making sense of what is currently chaos. Oh yes, I have to be responsible and I don’t expoect that someone called a “teacher” will know it all and simply distribute it (whatever it is).
I keep watching and listening.
Willie
CCK08 - connecting with 1200 others in an online course « Mariis Mills Aug 4th 2008 at 12:42 pm 6
[...] to Siemens currently 1200 people have signed up for the course – participating in such a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for sure is a unique [...]
Andreas Meiszner Aug 17th 2008 at 10:09 am 7
Hello George & Stephen
Have you thought about not following the fixed course model for the so called “other participants”?
You are talking about large scale open courses and the role of learner – following the traditional course model you start each term with 100% newbies.
However having also free learner within such a course you (theoretically) would be in the comfortable position of building up a type of learning community around the course consisting of newbies and old foxes, and therefore could build on each others work and actively developing the course further over time.
George mentioned at one point “I hope we’ll see others building with us”, but your current course structure on the other hand didn’t look like being designed for such a continuity.
At a similar pilot course we just finished, though much smaller in size, participants also suggested to have a type of “whish list” or “development roadmap” for the course as a central point for contributing to its improvement.
For structuring individual learners learning activities you might also consider using something in the direction of a forge and allow others to rate those works (you can see the attempt we used – although a rss in / out function is obviously missing – at http://www.netgeners.net/index.php?option=com_mtree&task=listfavourite&cat_id=0&Itemid=37). Such a rating might also provide motivations for free learners’ contributions, as they could get out a visible repute, covering partly up for the lack of a formal certificate.
Best
Andreas
MixedRealities :: Connectivism Course in Second Life: tools and experience could very well be the real content Aug 25th 2008 at 05:08 pm 8
[...] I read that by the end of July 1,200 persons signed up for the course, which means that the course can be rightly called a MOOC or Massive Online Course, which makes it even more necessary to make clever use of social media [...]
CCKO8: Speaking of MOOCs… « Memeospheric Pressure Sep 8th 2008 at 09:58 pm 9
[...] Speaking of MOOCs… On the subject of Massive, Open Online Courses (MOOCs), I saw reference in the paper lately to Oprah Winfrey’s online course about Eckart [...]
CCK08: Gimme an “M,” Gimme an “O”… « Thinking Out Loud Nov 3rd 2008 at 11:55 am 10
[...] might result in some interesting data. But clearly, “massive” was a descriptive element added in response to a storm of initial interest, rather than prescriptive requirement or promise. I am [...]