{"id":829,"date":"2011-02-24T09:43:33","date_gmt":"2011-02-24T17:43:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/?p=829"},"modified":"2011-02-24T09:43:33","modified_gmt":"2011-02-24T17:43:33","slug":"the-mooc-that-wasnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/2011\/02\/the-mooc-that-wasnt\/","title":{"rendered":"The MOOC That Wasn’t"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Having been inspired by the Massive Open Online Courses of George Siemens<\/a>, Stephen Downes<\/a>, Dave Cormier<\/a>, Alec Couros<\/a>, Jim Groom<\/a> and others, I opened my History 104: Western Civillization<\/a> course as a SOOC (a Small Open …) this January.<\/p>\n

Nobody came. I created discussion questions, opened all readings and provided extensive online lectures with audio.\u00a0 I alerted enrolled students of privacy issues and set everything up in an open WordPress blog so it wouldn’t overload college servers. I post all in-class activities in audio and broadcast with video. I built it.<\/p>\n

They didn’t come. Analytics make it clear that no one outside the enrolled class is even observing, much less participating.<\/p>\n

George Siemens asked, in a comment<\/a> to his own What’s wrong with (M)OOCs?<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

I\u2019d also like to see other domains try the course format. Most open courses that I\u2019ve seen have been somehow related to educational technology. Where is the mathematics mooc? Or biology?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the time (December), I answered with my own concerns<\/a> about technology proficiency on the part of the professor, course design, professorial load, etc. But then I decided to try it anyway.<\/p>\n

One may hypothesize on the various reasons why no one showed up for mine. I didn’t advertise properly (mostly I used Twitter, meta tags, and an announcement in our online newsletter for the Program for Online Teaching<\/a>). We’re not a university, and I wasn’t sure I would get support at my college. But the most significant reason, I think, was implied by Dave Cormier when he responded to my Twitter invitation to everyone to join my MOOC:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

My cocky reply (that he hadn’t taken it from me<\/em>) didn’t hit the point. [I’m sure it’s very common that people think that because already took a history class, they have nothing important left to learn. This isn’t at all true, of course – history is a changing field that transforms its theses with every new generation that analyzes the evidence, and every new discovery of evidence itself (for example, the possible discovery of Olaudah Equiano’s baptism record that has caused such controversy<\/a>) .]<\/p>\n

There are several other ideas at play here. Maybe it’s not about the offering<\/em> of MOOCs, but about the participants (or lack thereof). Perhaps the question is not why are there no (or so few, assuming we can’t find them) MOOCs in mathematics, biology and history. It’s why would anyone want to participate in them<\/em>?<\/p>\n

The subject matter?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unlike educational technology and contemporary media\/web studies, history is a traditional discipline. The “data” doesn’t change every few months, or at least not at a level where ordinary people might feel comfortable shaping (and sharing) an opinion. The feeling that one may contribute something to a MOOC about education, technology, or modern media is likely much higher. Anyone can play. Everyone can find something interesting to explore, since they’re on the web and think about it all the time anyway. Or they figure, I’ve been through the school system, so I have something to say about education. I know the web, so I have something to say about technology. I know these edufolks, so I have something to learn from them and to share with them.<\/p>\n

The “students”, then, are inside<\/em> the course content before they even start. They can’t start from inside the 17th century.<\/p>\n

[It is tempting to point to Michael Wesch’s wildly successful anthropology classes at Kansas State as the obvious exception to the ed\/tech focus, but even there Wesch is focused on the anthropology of culture and communications in such a way as to make the web central to the task. It’s not just that he has students using RSS feeds<\/a>: the focus is often Digital Ethnography<\/a> rather than traditional anthropology, although all the tools of the discipline are in play.]<\/p>\n

If it’s about the subject matter, and if I were at a university, I could offer a History of Contemporary Media<\/em> or something trendy that would catch interest like this, and possibly have a successful MOOC.<\/p>\n

The content? The community?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

In traditional fields, there is no need to join a MOOC to get information about the subject. You can go to anywhere on the web to learn not only the facts of history, but to read journals and analysis. You can find all my lectures on Slideshare<\/a> (and hundreds have, apparently, from all over the world). If you don’t like me, MIT<\/a>, Harvard<\/a> and other big schools will be happy to provide you with the “content”.<\/p>\n

If it’s not the content, connectivists<\/a> (and even constructivists) would say it’s the community. Getting all the minds together to work on something creates something much bigger than the sum of its parts. It could spontaneously self-create, which would encourage participation. According to Rick Schwier<\/a>, such a virtual learning community would need elements such as motivation and rules for engagement. But a community forming around an issue isn’t, I think, a MOOC — it’s missing the “course” element in the same way that content alone is missing the course element. A learning community is more like a social network.\u00a0 A MOOC needs a facilitator.<\/p>\n

The facilitator(s)?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The facilitation provided by the instructor is what makes a MOOC a course rather than a website or a social network. If the subject matter were just OK, and the content could be found anywhere, and the learning community really wasn’t exciting, then the only reason to join a MOOC would be to learn directly from the teacher, that particular teacher (or teachers). And we know the names of these desirable teachers only through the subject matter interest, content, and networked connections that we have already accessed.<\/p>\n

So it’s also entirely possible that no one cares about a MOOC unless it is:<\/p>\n

* led by a university-connected person well-known in the blogosphere, Twitterverse, etc.
\n* focused on contemporary trends already of interest, and
\n* instrinsically appealing to the digerati, edubloggers, researchers, or edupunks (sorry, Jim<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

This conclusion would, unfortunately, make the modern MOOC simply the shiny object of the new age, rather than a harbinger of meaningful online learning experiences.<\/p>\n

Now, of course I (a non-university, not-very-well-connected, traditional discipline-focused instructor) will continue with open courses, and encourage open education in general. I believe strongly in public education and my responsiblity as a public servant, which to me includes what Dean Shareski calls the “moral imperative” of sharing<\/a> my methods and knowledge.<\/p>\n

But perhaps this is a start to answering George Siemens’ question, and why no “M” is participating in my OOC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having been inspired by the Massive Open Online Courses of George Siemens, Stephen Downes, Dave Cormier, Alec Couros, Jim Groom and others, I opened my History 104: Western Civillization course as a SOOC (a Small Open …) this January. Nobody came. I created discussion questions, opened all readings and provided extensive online lectures with audio.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[39,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-moocs","category-the-web"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}