cybertree

I just had a discussion on skype last night with one of my webgrrls colleagues, Cornelie Picht , about all the MOOCs and interesting events and discussions on Twitter- and how these are such a different experience depending on where they originate. It seems the English-speaking world has embraced the concepts a lot better than the German-speaking “scene”.  But the main problem is: what to choose and where to stop?

A nice problem - admittedly.. So right now there are at least three MOOCs  I find really interesting and worth spending my time on. And then there is the colearncamp (German) in Frankfurt coming up at the end of this month! The colearn, or Corporate Learning, Camp has ~90 participants registered for each of the 2 days. That looks like an interesting Saturday But back to the three MOOCs..

First of all: what is a MOOC? MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course. Just recently I looked at the usability, accessibility and UX of a widely advertised MOOC, the MITx course on Circuits&Electronics. I presented the results at AISHE-C . Over 150′000 people from around the world had signed up for the MITx course - that certainly makes it Massive. It is online and still open for guest users and it was free all along - that makes it online (first O) and sort of open (2nd O). Actually, as a registered user it was even possible to download the textbook. So, yes, open it was/is. And it had a course structure - actually very much so. So there you have it: Massive, Online, Open and a Course. It allows for the massive student population to learn and discuss - MITx provided a Wiki for that. Impressive speed: no matter what time of day, questions would receive at least 1 answer within minutes. There was always someone awake and logged in.

MobiMOOC started on Saturday. The topic list is as long as it is impressive: global impact of mobile devices, mobile learning curriculum framework, mLearning for development, train-the-trainer, corporate learning, mobile activism in education, augmented learning, mLearning pedagogy and theory, mobile gaming,  mobile health (mHealth) and a collaborative exchange on mLearning tools. Should be interesting to see how that will fit into 3 weeks. They have a schedule outlined - unfortunatley I missed the first 2 webinars, both scheduled yesterday. But no problem, I can watch them later on.

Yesterday was the start of oped12 - Openness in Education, a MOOC on, well, the title really gives it away. I received the first Daily, followed the instructions and registered this blog. So you will find more about oped here over the coming weeks. It is the longest course; it runs for 12 weeks until the end of November. I just went back and checked -loads of other blogs registered already!! I am really looking forward to what and how people share.

And last, but not least, the CFHE12-MOOC on Current/Future State of Higher Education. The course starts 8 October and runs for 6 weeks until mid-November. I am particularly interested in the topics in week 2, Net pedagogies: New models of teaching and learning, week 4, Big data and Analytics and the topic in week 6, Distributed Research: new models of inquiry. Looks like this will be a busy fall;)

Looking forward to seeing / reading many of you in one or all three MOOCs