Steps in the right order: from MOOC to COOM

One of the big problems with what desperate universities are doing in adopting MOOCs (SJSU/Udacity and many more) is that the process is backwards.

In the history of MOOCs, some of which I’ve mentioned in my Five Short Years to MOOC Corruption post , there were a couple of pioneers that began with a course and opened it up. Both David Wiley’s  Openness in Education and Alec Couros’ EC&I831 were already courses at BYU and U of Regina respectively in 2007.

They were courses offered in the online format. Course -> Online.

They were courses that were then opened to everyone, existing courses where the professor extended the pedagogy by bringing in participants and readers from everywhere. Course -> Online -> Open.

When a bunch of people join, the course becomes massive. The courses grow organically as people hear about them, tell each other, and join the next round. Course -> Online -> Open -> Massive.

When they grow this way, in the COOM format, there is some focus on preserving the intentions of the Course, conscious use of the affordances of the web in its Online mode, an awareness of the importance of openness for scholarship and connections in its Open offering, and concern for both pedagogy and learning in dealing with Massive.

But the current trend, where universities contract with Udacity or Coursera to have MOOCs taught (or rather presented by stage-lecture profs and facilitated by TAs/grad students or worse, peers) goes backward.

They start with Massive, because they want lots of people attracted to the university, who if they don’t pay money now will be willing to later. Massive also means paying faculty less to do more, and using cheaper labor to facilitate. Then they focus on Open, except they also want to be paid at some point, so that goes kind of sideways – the Open is mostly to attract the Massive. Only then do they get to Online, which is where they struggle technologically so they outsource to Coursera or Udacity or whoever, because it’s easier to do that than actually get into online pedagogy and the complexities of learning on the web. Then Course is last, because it doesn’t really matter –  offer whatever you can, and eventually you can have a degree program and save/make lots of money because of Massive.

I would prefer to design, teach and take a COOM than a MOOC.