I just finished evaluating some of the other students’ projects in E-Learning and Digital Cultures, so thought I’d go ahead and kick off one last discussion about the MOOC and to talk a little about the MOOC Debriefing Essay.
At first, I was going to post my own thoughts about the successes and shortcomings of the MOOC here, but then I decided that I’d let you guys offer your overall thoughts/assessments first. You can read more about my own thoughts on my blog later today or tomorrow. But as you wrap up your assessments of others and hear the results of how others assessed you, post a comment here. What did you think?
First, about #edcmooc itself: I am anxious to hear/read your responses to the assessment process and to the whole thing, not only because we are all in this experiment together and I am interested in your feedback as the professor for this class, but also because I am continuing some scholarly projects about MOOCs. I’m giving a talk next weekend in San Diego at the American Federation of Teachers convention, I’m on a panel about MOOCs at the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (which is a one day conference before the CCCCs), and I suspect there might be some more writing in me about MOOCs.
Second, about the MOOC Debriefing Essay: As I wrote in that assignment:
Besides participating in the course, each of you will write a brief (1500 or so words) essay where you recap, debrief, and reflect on your experience. Since this MOOC is as new to me as it is to you, I’m not entirely sure what we’ll find there. But besides being earnest students trying to learn from the content of the course, we also will want to take on the role of “autoethnographer,” self-consciously noticing and reflecting on what participating in this MOOC shows us about learning and about online pedagogy.
So what I’m asking for here is a reflection not so much on the content of E-Learning and Digital Cultures but rather on the “learning experience” and what you think it means in terms of online pedagogy. I would encourage you to reflect back on some of the things we read earlier this semester about online teaching and MOOCs to help make connections and support your points/arguments, or to do some simple research on MOOCs– a simple Google search will return thousands of articles, believe me!
Overall, I feel like the MOOC would be a good source for someone who is interested in its subject matter because it does offer a lot of interesting ideas to explore and things to read and you can gain other people’s perspectives on what’s being discussed. However, I don’t feel like they work as actual classes. There isn’t enough human interaction for me. It’s difficult to have a conversation with someone about the class on the forums. You can see what a plethora of people think, but it’s hard to get a response from someone. I also had a difficult time following what I was supposed to do for the class. It was a lot of reading and a lot of viewing but little practicing. I mean there weren’t enough assignments to keep me engaged.
“It was a lot of reading and a lot of viewing but little practicing.”
Sarah, I think you really hit the nail on the head with this comment. Like you, I feel as though I did get something out of the MOOC, but do not feel as though I got the same thing out of it that I get out of classes (either face-to-face or online). I think it’s more that I got out of it what I might get out of reading a compiled anthology of essays (whether print or multimedia) on a subject: someone with knowledge and experience in the field has put together these readings and considers them worthwhile, so there is certainly something to be gained from considering them all together.
However, without opportunities to practice what was learned or to engage in real conversations with people (the discussion boards were better than nothing, but proved a very difficult venue for promoting extended discussions with the same people), I didn’t feel as though I was really so much part of a community of learners. And I was grateful that we were also discussing the readings here, because I feel that kind of engagement with them, and with the same people over the duration of the course, really made them more worthwhile.
I agree with everyone above. I feel that the MOOCs are great for someone who wants to find out what they are interested in and I do not see them as engaging or interactive as a face-to-face or our online class. The reading and viewing aspect was heavy, but as Sarah K. said, there was little practice.
I think if there were more assignments (more than one) throughout the course of the MOOC, the grading and evaluation process might be more beneficial for everyone on the final assignment. And, with more assignments, more people might participate, even though there were a lot of people already. Smaller group discussions might be beneficial for a MOOC, such as we were doing about the readings in 516 (as Jackie mentioned).
The diversity of the students in the MOOC was interesting. The three artifacts I graded all discussed E-learning but in different ways. One of the artifacts was even created in Russian, which presented its own translation problems, but it was interesting to see that someone speaking a completely different language had similar ideas on the artifact as I did.
http://timstorm.wordpress.com
I agree with this wholeheartedly, in terms of the MOOC functioning as a space to provide information – curated and designed – for users/”students,” but it wasn’t an interactive space for me as much as I think the creators would have liked. It was exactly what Sarah said – reading and viewing, but not practicing. I didn’t visit the Discussion Board once, because the thought of sifting through so many threads was beyond my attention span. However, if I weren’t doing 15 other things, I might have made time. I did click a few Twitter posts, though, and I made sure to tag my own blog posts on Twitter with #edcmooc, but nobody commented on my blog from the class.
I agree, that it didn’t feel like a class because there weren’t assignments, but at the same time, I’m not sure I would have been interested in doing the assignments. I kind of liked being able to browse the information, take it in, process on my own, and apply it to various other things I’m working on rather than say, creating digital artefacts every week to represent a course theme. I didn’t particularly enjoy that assignment, though I see its value, and if it had a written component much like our writing as technology assignment, it might have felt more worthwhile. I’m really curious to see what comes from the assessment, mostly because I had one artefact that was great, one that was mediocre, and one that was a professors 33 slide presentation about MOOCs. Not so fun.
Overall, I didn’t dislike the MOOC. I liked having collected information presented to me in a visual way – I loved the videos, I thought they were excellent examples that had a greater impact on me than the assigned readings. I feel like I walked away from this experience with new ideas, and I would consider doing a MOOC again.
I’ll write about this more in my essay, but I’m thinking about MOOCs as supplemental material, or self-directed learning, rather than working them into the college curriculum as credit-bearing courses. I think this is because when I think about a college course, I think about assignments and required weekly doings of some sort, and I like having the freedom to explore without that. However, I also think that some valid concerns have been brought up about the instructors, pay, time, information, etc. Again, more for later.
http://parablematernal.wordpress.com
I agree with Sarah that the MOOC felt disjointed as a “classroom” environment, digital/distance or otherwise, and had some issues now and again navigating the MOOC interface to locate instructions/assignments. I also felt disconnected from fellow MOOC students; even though there were a number of opportunities to Skype and things of that nature, that meant making and keeping contact with people (which was difficult) and scheduling times to chat with them (which goes against one of the benefits of online courses, flexibility of time).
The only “practice” I really felt I got to do in the MOOC was the digital artifact, and quite honestly I felt like I was floundering during that process. While creative freedom can be nice and many times get students engaged and interested in an assignment, I felt like I was wandering in the dark with a bunch of disjointed information trying to bring it together and hope for the best.
Yikes! I’ve been in Vegas and without Internet access since last weekend, so I apologize for the delayed response here. I can pretty much echo what the rest of you have said. While I enjoyed a lot of the course material (aside from the heavy emphasis on humanism), I never really felt like I was part of a class. Even the assessment process seemed very impersonal to me, though I get into this more in my debriefing essay, which is posted on my blow if anybody wants to check it out.
http://www.daniellebreann.wordpress.com
and by “blow” I meant “blog below”
http://www.daniellebreann.wordpress.com