#h817open
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H817Open reflections
My small MOOC open course, H817Open ends this week, so I thought I'd post some reflections on how it's gone. I'll start by saying what my intentions were for it. The idea was to mix formal and informal learners (as it is one quarter of a Masters level course), to blend OERs and MOOCs (it is in the OpenLearn repository and exists after course end), to use an activity-based 'collaboration-lite' model and to adopt a range of technologies. In general it went well, the learners seemed to enjoy it, although we saw the familiar drop-off of participation. It was only on a small scale so I don't think I can…
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My MOOC tech ecosystem
On my open course H817Open I use a mixture of technology, and thought it might be useful to describe these here, and also to indicate what I'd like to do beyond this. The technologies are: OpenLearn – This is where the bulk of the content is hosted and also forums. It is provided by the OU for OU content only, so not an open content system. It made sense to use this, but some recent changes have made the page rendering slow, and the design is suitable for a one-off visit to find an OER in that it prompts you to find other resources, it uses up too much screen…
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Tips for getting your blog aggregated
This is for H817Open students – the rest of you, move along now. If you have registered your blog with the H817Open blog aggregator (by completing this form) and posts aren't coming through, here are some things to check: 1) Maybe it has come through – it checks every hour or so, and posts them according to the time originally published. So yours may end up on an "Older posts" page straightaway. So have a look through, or use the search box (at the bottom of the page) to search for an identifiable term in your post. 2) RSS where art thou? – in order to aggregate your posts, we…
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5 reasons to do a MOOC & 5 reasons not to
I gave a presentation last week with the above title. In my preparation it wavered between 10 reasons to do one, and 10 reasons NOT to do one, which indicates my ambiguous take on MOOCs, so I settled for half and half. By "do a MOOC" here I mean for an instructor or an institution to offer one, rather than a learner take one, although you can infer some of the learner reasons also. Later in the week I followed the uniteMOOC session up at Newcastle via Twitter and some very similar responses were being given there. My presentation is below, but actually, you'd be better off looking at Sheila…
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H817Open MOOC content available
(Enjoy the MOOC or the puppy gets it) The content for my MOOC, no, I mean, open course, on Open Education is now all available in the OpenLearn environment. It doesn't officially start until March 16th, but I'm adopting a more flexible approach than many MOOCs so you can work through it in your own pace (and it'll stay up afterwards). Some points to note: You don't have to enrol to view the material, only if you want to contribute to forums and also to get course emails Use forums instead of comments, there is one per week When you enrol, nothing magic happens. The OpenLearn platform has recently had…
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Registration open for my Open Education MOOC
A year ago we decided to rewrite one of our Master's level courses, H817, Innovation and Openness in Education. I volunteered to write one of the four blocks of the course, on open education. I blithely suggested, "I'll probably make it a MOOC." It seemed fitting as MOOCs and different flavours of openness were the subject of the block. At the time MOOCs were all a bit new, experimental and fun. How that glib suggestion has haunted me. As the profile of MOOCs have increased so the demands and requirements placed on creating one have multiplied. But with the help of some great people at the OU (it's been great…
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Twitter is your IT support
<Image http://www.flickr.com/photos/duncan/7172953614/> This post isn’t intended as a criticism of anyone, rather an observation on a trend I’ve noticed from several others also. I’m running my block of the Masters course H817 as a MOOC. It’ll start this March, and one of the things I wanted is a DS106 style blog aggregator. That is, I want the contributors to register their blog, and for posts they tag appropriately to repost automatically in the course blog. Now, the sensible way to do this seems to be to install WordPress and use the FeedWordPress plug-in. For reasons I won’t go in to, I haven’t been able to get this done at the Open…
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Hanging with the MOOC boys
Now that MOOCtober has passed, I think it's safe to talk about MOOCs again. As I've mentioned I'm experimenting next year with running my block of the Masters Course in Online and Distance Education as an open course. I've wanted to do this for ages, but always been blocked, but now that MOOCs are on everyone's radar, lots of elements have fallen into place that make it possible. This might be a beneficial consequence of the MOOC hype – they create an environment in which experimentation in open courses is encouraged. My course will run for 6 weeks and is part of the longer 20 week course, H817 Openness and…
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Does your MOOC have penguins?
It turns out that there are no less than three MOOCs on open education coming your way. George and Stephen are running one now, David Wiley's one ran last winter and will run again this winter. And very last, I'm running one next March. My one really arose through logic and not a desire to ape George or David (although I do that often enough). I was writing a block of the new Masters level course on Innovation in education, and my block was on open education. I have a strong 'learning by doing' approach, so it made sense for the students on this block to experience it as an…
