Serendipity35

The terms MOOC, Massive Open Online Course, and LOOC, Large Open Online Course, may be relatively new, but large online courses have been around since the earliest days of online education.

The move to online is sometimes pedagogical, but probably too often it is is because of increased pressure on classroom spaces, and the desire to add more students and programs without expanding facilities on campus.

The Chronicle's ProfHacker column often writes about teaching online and sometimes about the perils of online teaching. Anastasia Salter posted this summer about her preparations to teach her first larger undergrad online course - one capped at 150 with no scheduled meeting time and no teaching or grading assistants.

She is starting with a) rethinking timetables and assignments. b) evaluating learning outcomes and substitutions for physical activities c) adopting strategies from MOOCs and other large-scale courses.

You can follow her progress as she works to convert her older syllabus from a smaller instance of the course, address particular assignment types, scheduling, learning outcomes etc.