Serendipity35

"Academia and the MOOC" is a free "course" on the Canvas Network that I will be facilitating and it opens on April 15 for four weeks. It is free and is itself MOOCish, though not a true MOOC.

"Academia and the MOOC" is certainly about how Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are impacting education and a way for people from academia who have an interest in this movement to get information about MOOCs and get participants thinking and discussing their impact on education.

I say the offering is MOOCish because it's not going to be "massive" because we are capping it at 2000 participants (a BOOC or Big OOC)  and it's not so much as "course" as it is a conversation or colloquium.

Certainly, MOOCs are a huge topic in academia right now, but still, many schools and individual educators are still wondering if they should be offering them. There is also a good bit of fear about how this alternative to their own offerings will affect their own courses.

Institutions have to wonder how offering courses at no cost to a very large number of participants who do not receive institutional credit can be a worthwhile venture.

My offering will offer you a background in the history and development of MOOCs. We will examine MOOCs from the perspectives of five academic roles (teacher, designer, support, administration, and student). I will also give you content to allow you to critique some successful (and "failed") courses that have been offered as MOOCs even if you have never taken or taught a MOOC yourself.

I still refer to this as a "course" because it's a term we all understand, but since most of us associate courses with textbooks, assignments, grades, assessment, credits, and all that comes with those things, this is not a course. None of those elements exist in this experience. Discussion, as with most online courses, will be at the heart of the experience.