Massive Open Online Courses
This is a post related to the topic of Open Educational Resources. It is in response to the prompt:
"Nowadays, MOOCs are very popular learning tools. One can notice an immense promotion of MOOCs in academia and in business as well( for access, flexibility etc); however, there are also strong criticisms against it (for quality, pedagogy, assessment etc). Of course, throughout the preceding weeks' discussion, so many issues have been raised on similar matters, hence I would suggest
1. reflections on the basis of your experience/observation as a learner/educator in MOOCs.
2. What would you suggest differently for MOOCs to be serving the purpose of promoting online adult teaching and learning?"
Here is my response:
Thank you for posting this question, I found it to be a thoughtful one to pursue. While I haven't completed a MOOC, this question got me interested to look into what MOOCs (if any) are offered by the University of Vermont where I completed my undergraduate coursework. In my search, I came across this fascinating article from 2016. In the article, the author describes one of the only MOOCs taking place at UVM, which is a MOOC on robotics called Ludobots. What I found particularly fascinating is that the professor who started this MOOC actually decided to use Reddit as his platform for enrollment and administering the course. Not only that, but he required his face-to-face students to also participate in the MOOC. This has resulted in a Reddit thread that is not only a MOOC, but also a form of crowdsourcing knowledge as students both online and IRL (in real life) all add to the data and knowledge of the course. So while it still has some elements common to MOOCs (assignments are submitted and graded by computers, students go at their own pace, there is low completion rates etc.), it has also addressed some of the common problems people have with MOOCs.
One of those problems is the lack of "expertise feedback" typically thought of as coming from the professor. In this course, graduate students and students who are alumni of both the MOOC and the IRL course provide feedback and encouragement to the current students who start threads or have suggestions, comments or problems. In this way, the students still get to interact with an "expert"- or at least someone who has successfully been through the course.
The professor does articulate that his in-person students have additional benefits such as access to him as well as to labs and equipment, but he also notes that this was one reason why he made active participation on the Reddit thread mandatory for his in-person students and why he now has youtube videos of all his lectures available for the MOOC students.
Anyway, I found this to be a fascinating example of the evolution of MOOCs and how knowledge can be shared and used collectively and develop ideas that may not have come about in any other way. I also think that the course not having formal grades and that any Reddit user can interact with the course even if they are not enrolled in the MOOC has great implications for the future of this type of design. It allows access to this knowledge to people who want to study it in-depth or intently and register for the course, and it also provides the same knowledge to people who just want a cursory understanding or want to add input in an informal manner.
In fact, I think I may check it out on Reddit purely out of curiosity having just read this article- and I think that in and of itself is the appeal and draw of MOOCs, that you can, at relatively low risk (in terms of funding and grades etc), explore your interest in just about any topic!
A picture of the Ludobot from the University of Vermont MOOC/Reddit (taken from the same source as the paraphrased article talked about above):
