[Open-education] Friday Chat: Personal experiences of MOOCs

Sat Sep 13 16:19:52 UTC 2014

I have taken part as a student in three MOOCs (two of which were 
arranged by Futurelearn <https://www.futurelearn.com/>). I certainly did 
not 'complete' any of these in the conventional sense of covering 
absolutely all of the material provided, but I certainly gained a lot 
out of doing what I did do. Somebody (perhaps on this list, I can't 
remember) once said that we should not ask the question 'How many MOOCs 
have you dropped out of?' but rather 'How many MOOCs have you dropped into?'

I think we still have rather a monolithic mindset when it comes to 
educational activity. As students (or potential students) we expect a 
single institution (e.g. school, college, university) to provide 
everything for us: teacher, course material, social learning 
environment, accreditation etc. But for me the key difference that open 
resources, and indeed digital technology in general, make is that we no 
longer have to think like this. We should be able to adopt a 
'pick'n'mix' approach, taking personal responsibility, with suitable 
guidance if we need it, for choosing our own set of resources, learning 
environments, learning companions etc. But there is no tradition to help 
us think like this, and the institutions themselves do not want to give 
up their power over the learning process, so it is difficult to make the 
change that technology should, I believe, be facilitating.

So MOOCs, as they are currently created and 'delivered', will not, I 
think, be 'the answer'. Something like MOOCs may end up as part of the 
mix, but if they are to play a successful part in facilitating learning, 
such courses/resources will need to be used within a supportive social 
learning environment. And we can't have Massive Open Online learning 
communities, because human beings have been designed and evolved to work 
best within support networks provided by relatively small groups. I have 
not experienced such social support within MOOCs, even with so-called 
cMOOCs <http://degreeoffreedom.org/xmooc-vs-cmooc/>.

I believe we need to be imaginative in moving away from monolithic 
institution-based assumptions about learning towards more flexible 
models that combine the advantages both of the massive and revolutionary 
access to open resources provided by the web and of our need for support 
from small-scale learning networks and communities of practice.

What do others think?

Terry Loane

On 13/09/2014 05:24, Silvia Da Rosa wrote:
> Hello Marieke,
>
> I am Silvia, from Uruguay. I am taking this course too. It's really 
> awsome!
>
> I have finished succesfully only one MOOC but started other 3. Of 
> course I think the main reasons for not finishing rhem was time and 
> real interest, but i think there were other important factors like the 
> quality of the resources, the ease of use of the platform and the 
> resources, the clarity of the syllabus, the possibility of having 
> resources in more than one language.
>
> I have never really connected to the community, so I expect that´s 
> something new to this course.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Silvia
>
>
> El 12/09/2014, a las 06:10, Marieke Guy <marieke.guy at okfn.org 
> <mailto:marieke.guy at okfn.org>> escribió:
>
>> So sort of a Friday chat thing...
>>
>> I started Stanford's Open Knowledge MOOC last week (bit of an intro 
>> to it from me here 
>> <https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2014/09/02/stanfords-open-knowledge-mooc/>). 
>> Anyone else doing it? I'm hoping some interesting questions come out 
>> of it providing I can apply myself to do the course. [For example I 
>> learned yesterday that more people own a mobile device than a 
>> toothbrush - important stuff!!] It's my second MOOC and I completed 
>> my first one (ioe2012 
>> <https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/category/ioe12/>), but I had more 
>> spare time then...
>>
>> Anyway, I was interested in people's personal experiences of MOOCs. 
>> Do we practice what we preach? Or are MOOCs just something we deliver 
>> for other people? How do you use MOOCs to support what you do? Have 
>> people had positive experiences connecting with communities in MOOCs? 
>> What about hybrid approaches - has anyone participated in a MOOC and 
>> at the same time been involved in a physical community supporting it? 
>> Are there people delivering MOOCs who fundamentally disagree with 
>> them as a form of open education?
>>
>> Also if you have a topic for discussion remember to shout it out or 
>> add it to the etherpad 
>> <https://pad.okfn.org/p/Open_Education_Working_Friday_Chats>.
>>
>> Marieke
>>
>> ---
>>
>> Marieke Guy
>> LinkedUp <http://linkedup-project.eu/> Project Community Coordinator 
>> | skype: mariekeguy | tel: 44 (0) 1285 885681 | @mariekeguy 
>> <http://twitter.com/mariekeguy>
>> Open Knowledge <http://okfn.org/>
>> /Empowering through Open Knowledge/
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>>
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