A Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) is an emerging model for interactive online learning experiences designed to accommodate possibly unlimited numbers of learners who potentially arrive, attend, participate, and leave on their own terms. MOOCs can take advantage of existing social media and gaming environments as platforms to host both formal and informal learning experiences.
Opportunity Statement
MOOCs are primarily a ‘mash up’ opportunity domain, where new ventures will orchestrate trends, tools, and applications to serve audiences and their learning demands in creative, accessible and typically non-traditional ways. There are exciting opportunities for disruptively new ventures, and for existing ventures to pioneer new markets.
Prediction Source(s)
Educause – Top 10 IT Issues 2013
Online Colleges – Tech Trends for 2013
Recently our company has offered a first global MOOC supporting one of our premier products. The results have been interesting.
I researched MOOCs for ETEC 510 [http://etec.ctlt.ubc.ca/510wiki/MOOC_(Massive_Open_Online_Course)] and participated in a couple this summer. I have to admit I am slightly disillusioned. The ideal of connectivism envisioned by Downes and Siemens seems to remain elusive in most cases. Perhaps this will develop as professors and course developers gain familiarity and expertise with different forms of technology.
MOOCs offer a tremendous opportunity for mass education at a basic level. However, authentic and accurate assessment of higher level skills for a huge number of students remains problematic. The standard seems to be automated multiple choice quizzes combined with peer assessed assignments. As accurate peer assessment is difficult among students with diverse language and education backgrounds, it will be interesting to see what niche(s) will be established for MOOCs.
“Interesting” is quite the neutral observation!
Interesting dissection of MOOCs provided by this diagram…
http://www.gizmag.com/georgia-tech–graduate-computer-science-degree-mooc/28763/pictures
Although there is a lot of concern about what MOOC’s will mean for secondary education, I really think this topic is a really interesting one in the #edtech field. Reading guys like Steven Johnson and Clay Shirky, one would think that distributed cognition is alive and well and in my opinion only needs a slight nudge and a little moulding to become a successful learning platform.
I like it!
It is simple and yet still raises many of the important issues that need to be addressed.
Thanks David for sharing the link. It’s excellent, I was just about o say that actually we can’t put all MOOCs together in one basket and judge them. The differentiation between a cMOOC and xMOOC: the design and goals of each is essential to the discussion. For example what Downes and Siemens are trying to introduce and champion is totally different than what Coursera or Udacity are presenting. In 510, I worked with a team to design and create an example of an xMOOC about amateur Filmmaking and I attended a couple of Coursera courses (programming courses). Comparing this experience to what Downes and Siemes are trying to do made me realize the huge difference between the two. This is a very interesting topic that I would really like to explore more. I also think about MOOCs value in terms of community development and how it may provide opportunities for people in developing countries.
Another big opportunity in the developing world is through OERu – the Open Education Resource University. These are slightly more micro mOOCs that use OERs and accreditation from a set of universities worldwide.
http://wikieducator.org/OER_university/Home
http://creativecommons.org/tag/oeru
http://www.tonybates.ca/2011/10/05/introducing-the-oeru-and-some-questions/
OERu will launch in October 2013 here in British Columbia.