On Sunday, I shall begin a week long MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) about MOOCs called MOOCMOOC. The course is six-days and espires to create meaningful dialogue about MOOCs. I think it will be interesting, but I do wonder if they are missing the point. How can you possibly garnish meaningful dialogue in such a short time frame? My experience with online learning is that it takes a week to have a meaningful discussion on a single topic – trying to have discussion on six separate daily topics doesn’t allow time for participants to reflect on the content. I think a MOOC on MOOCs could easily be a three or six week course.
I predict that we will see a large number of lurkers (OK, that’s true for all MOOCs), and a flurry of superficial discussions. It will all be over before we ever get a chance to delve into anything particularly meaningful or new.
The letter of introduction recommends 2-hrs per day, spread out throughout the day. Again, that lends itself well to consuming the content being provided, but doesn’t lend itself well to creating content. Often, creating a meaningful blog post on a topic takes 2-3 hours of research, a minimum of a day or two of reflecting (I’ve been reflecting on this post for almost a week), and another hour or two of writing. You cannot speed up the reflection process.
But, alas, I shall attempt to enter this MOOC with an open mind. It is an interesting experiment if nothing else.
Leave a Reply