mooc

Hosting c-MOOCs around CCT courses?

No—instead see "Collaborative Explorations" as CCT's niche
draft 17 May 13

During the spring 2013, the CCT graduate program considered the possibility of hosting connectivist or c-MOOCs using online course material as a backbone. This thinking is summarized below. The end result of this thinking is that CCT decided against such a step, but, instead, will host an ongoing series of Collaborative Explorations, which better match the Program's approach to learning, collaboration, and community-building involving alums.

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Preliminaries

Two kinds of online CCT courses

A. Regular online course
Sequence of sessions, each with reading, homework, and expectations of sharing (via bulletin board etc.)
Some sessions include a live (synchronous) meeting, but with make-up arrangements for anyone who misses.

B. Hybrid, i.e., Synchronous online
Students from a distance are brought in to join regular class meetings.
These courses are, ideally, designed to put face2face and online students on an equal footing.

• E.g., One hour of class time is a dialogue hour, in which everyone is listening and online students can get a turn to talk as readily as face2face student. Visual aids and audio recording of lectures posted after class for anyone who misses. During breakout discussions or in-class activities, online students form one (or more) subgroups and instructor checks in with them from time to time.
  • WIMBA allows subgroups, but is being phased out. Using hangout, students could learn to leave the whole-class hangout and create another one for their subgroup, before returning to the whole class hangout.
  • If synchronous online time is kept to a smaller period (given that it is very hard to focus for 3 hours online), then how do the instructor and online students interact so as to produce an alternative to the face2face interactions in the live class? One approach is to record a mini-lecture, which the online students can listen to on their own time and undertake any activities asynchronously. Online students would be expected to discuss these activities on a google+ community for the course, which might elicit additional responses from the rest of the students and from the instructor. Online students would be expected to meet in buddy pairs to help each other on the activities and debrief. In these various ways the instructor would not be weighted with responsibility for providing special one-on-one interaction to substitute for the face2face interactions that the online students miss. It is hoped that the instructor may contribute to the discussion on the google+ community, but as an inquiring participant, not as the ringmaster.

Mooc'ing those courses

1. A publicly accessible community would be established for each course for making discussion posts and sharing links (using e.g., google+; see Model from current Media Lab course)

• By-products of having such a community are a) stimulating and informing the work and discussions of the students and instructor in the regular course; b) getting the Program recognized and recruiting students to the Program or to register in future courses (see #7); and c) serving as a community for alums to get a refresher dose of CCT (see #5).

2. Syllabus, with links to activities and open-access videos & readings, would be made available to mooc participants, but they would have to access any copyrighted material through their own library.

• Permission would be needed from the course designer for use of syllabus in this way.
• The syllabus might need to be adjusted so as to stimulate asynchronous activity and interaction in the wider mooc community. Stipend might be needed to compensate for this work.

3. Registered students would be unaffected except a) students and instructor would have access to discussions and leads provided by the wider MOOC community (see #1) and b) the live sessions in #B would be recorded (perhaps streamed, e.g., by google hangout & youtube).

• Students in #B would need to give permission and have the option for contributions to be edited out on request.

4. For #A, an extra hour-long streamed & recorded live discussion would be scheduled each week, with an accompanying chat space. Participants in these discussions might include the course instructor, any students who volunteer, CCT faculty, guest presenters, and mooc-ers who volunteer.

• Honoraria might be needed to compensate CCT faculty who participate throughout the course and for guest presenters in these discussions.
• The Five-phase format is a possible model for such discussions.

5. CCT Students and selected alums can receive a stipend for participation as mooc'ers, the idea being to a) keep the wider mooc community active around any mooc'd course and b) draw attention in other moocs to the CCT ones.

• This role could be called O.C.'ing for Online contributor/connector/coach.
• O.C.'ing for a semester could be the condition of the stipend for those who participate in the Summer Institute and then join the Program.
  • How to set expectations for stipends?
    • 100 posts for $400, with participation in an hour-long dialogue counting as 4?

6. Peer commentary on mooc'ers' assignments would happen by posting them to the community and seeing what comments they elicit. There could be an option to submit a portfolio to get certificate of attendance or badges involves commenting by peers.

• Seed work to establish the culture of commenting could be done by the students and alums in #5.
• System needed to facilitate the certificate of attendance or badges, with CCT support for issuing certificates.

7. Publicity

• No established system yet for announcing UMB MOOCs to the wider world
• See #5
• Partnerships with existing, well-known venues (see Possible courses, below)

8. Costs = see #2, 4, 5; estimated $3000/year, possibly also a course load reduction for JS to organize and facilitate everything. Revenue = increased registration in subsequent CCT courses.

9. Possible courses
A. Creative Thinking, Fall '13 -- 2012 Syllabus: files/602-12online.pdf

• The c-MOOC could be offered to the MIT Media Lab Lifelong Kindergarten group as their fall '13 follow-up to the current spring '13 course. Partnership would involve making a CCT'er into moderator on their google+ community & non-competition (i.e., no other courses offered at same time) & liaison person from media lab.

B. Summer institute courses, Summer '13
C. Scientific & Political Change, Spring '14 (using project-based learning format, so dividable into separate "Collaborative Explorations."

10. Possible use of CCRP and SICW google+ communities as a supplement to all courses happening at the same time. Course participants would post to some course-specific place, but be encouraged to edit selected submissions and post them to the wider community.