#moocmooc have they missed the point?

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.

4 responses

  1. Valibrarian Avatar

    So true!  I understand the "flurry of the lurkers" simply joining to get of glimpse of a MOOC- the purpose and the experience.  Working full time during "back-to-school" for most educators, there just simply was not time to participate fully.  I am thankful to have had the opportunity to lurk.  I found out about the MOOC on twitter and found other librarians interested.  Now we are collaborating on possible library MOOC ideas.  So, it was worth the short time I had available.

  2. […] already pointed out that the course isn’t technically a MOOC. Rebecca, (@rjhogue) on Twitter, has pointed out that the weekly time format for MOOC MOOC doesn’t really lend well to the creation of […]

  3. Vanessa Vaile Avatar

    Rather my intitial impression too, but I'm inclined to look on the endeavor more kindly after reading more about it and having a few exchanges. Their hearts are in the right places, they mean well ~ no hidden agendas, so maybe they will learn something that they can take back to their less than well informed higher ed colleagues. Some of these will be there too learning for themselves. 

  4. AK Avatar
    AK

    Thanks for the tip. It is odd indeed, so odd that I signed up to lurk anyway 🙂

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