MOOCs: Coming to a school near you......

What is a "MOOC" and how does it intersect with the online, or hybrid learning environments that we've been studying?

      A MOOC is not something that is new to any of us in the ITDML program.  We participated in a MOOC in the first semester that we began this program.  Although it was very new to us them, the idea of MOOCs is becoming more and more real to us.  A MOOC is a Massive Open Online Courses that is attended by people at all levels taking free courses on the internet.  Currently being part of the Deeper Learning MOOC, I was astonished to see that there are over 1,000 members.  They have even begun creating sub-groups within the community.  There are members from all over the U.S. as well as Europe.  It is incredible to see the amount of people across the country interested in the same ideas that I am.

      MOOCs are becoming a new and ideal way of teaching.  Although it it mostly used in the post-secondary arena, MOOCs are trying to make there way to the K-12 spectrum.  In the post-secondary schools there are two types of MOOCs.  There are the cMOOCs, where organizers develop a framework to engage all participants around a common idea. Their work and effort is aimed at having each attendee act as both a participant learner and expert. Participants bring ideas, questions, content, and other material to a table where everyone is engaged or understanding something about the greater good of the topic addressed. Facilitators use a variety of tools to help aggregate the experience as most of the content is not located within a specific platform but across a variety of media tools (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, blogs, wikis, online articles, YouTube, etc.). (Ferdig, Page 04)  Then there are the xMOOCs which are typically on a university or university-partnered platform, sponsored by universities or for-profit platforms. " These MOOCs offered on university-based platforms are modeled on traditional course materials, learning theories, and higher education teaching methods.  For example, they usually are organized around lectures and quiz-type assessment methods.  Also these courses typically use little distributed content that's available on the Web outside the platform.  Most course content is pre-recorded video lectures which are posted on the courses' home page. (Ferdig, page 04)

      These MOOCs really intersect with the types of learning that we have been studying in a variety of ways.  I feel that the ITDML program has intersected into a type of cMOOC class.  We have the ability to participate in the class as learner and expert. We bring ideas, questions, content, and keep everyone engaged.  We use a variety of tools and never seem to get bored learning them!!  

I even have been talking about MOOCs in my department meetings at school.  My department chair is interested in MOOCs for some of her statistics classes and has enlisted my help. (Yikes!)  MOOCs is definitely coming to K-12 schools and it will be interesting to see how they work.