A couple of years ago, Stephen Downes mentioned in a blog being involved in a project to create a MOOC, a Massive Open Online Course. It was an exercise in connectivism, which was a new theory to me at the time, but has become more familiar the more that I use social networking sites. The course ran, and I promptly let the idea fall off of my intellectual radar. I stumbled across a blog post that described the experience of a participant in another MOOC a few days ago, and this has prompted new interest for me. The post can be found here: http://sleve.wordpress.com/2010/09/27/why-mooc-engagement-is-so-hard/
The description of the experience left me wondering how I might construct my own MOOC. How would I assess? How, or should I, use participation as a measure? How does one promote interaction and participation? Or do you? How do I make it easier for people like Steve without recreating in some way the standard course layout on larger scale? This is a fascinating area of education that really has not been explored in detail by academia, probably because of the same questions that I have.
Not many traditional instructors are immediately comfortable working without a safety net, and the safety net is the structure of the course. That syllabus, linear events orchestrated in such a fashion as to create time constraints for the participants, and assuring the instructor that the learning objectives are really being met. Or not.
MOOCs throw this structure out of the window. It is a very squishy approach to education. I like the idea.
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