Thinking about MOOCs
As I wrote only a couple of weeks ago Massive Open Online Courses are here to say. Almost everyday I stumble on notifications for a new MOOC.
Jenny Mackness reports she has “been invited to work with the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development to develop a short MOOC (4-6 weeks) for Educational Developers and all those interested in teaching and learning in Further and Higher Education.”
She goes on to put forward a list of issues in developing the MOOC which may be relevant to others:
- How will an already established and successful face-to-face ’closed’ course translate into a MOOC? What will we be able to keep? What will have to go?
- More importantly how might traditional ways of working/thinking have to change to accommodate MOOC principles – autonomy, diversity, openness and connectedness?
- What technologies/platforms will we use/promote and how will our choices affect our and participants’ abilities to aggregate, remix, re-purpose, feed/forward?
- What assessment opportunities will be offered? How will we manage ‘for credit’ participants?
- Most MOOCs I have been involved in have been at least 10 weeks long. This will be a short MOOC. What are the issues specific to short MOOCs?