How is it possible or even conceivable that after decades of the "sage on the stage" that the EDCMOOC team could conceive that participants wouldn't want instruction? Watching the taped first hangout and hearing the discussion on the fact that participants want instruction left me wondering: The model of online teaching I was used to has three dimensions: teacher, content and social presence. All three of these items are needed to create a learning environment in the online course otherwise it seems that the learners are basically in a correspondence course.
I think it was Jenn who talked about the instructor and people wanting instruction. It seems to me that the learner takes a course in order to be guided in what are the gems we need to take on our journey. If we are confident in what we are learning would we want to do it by ourselves? Or is education social and while we want peers but we also want the expert to guide our journey.
I feel like they wrote this course years ago, never tested it and don't have the technology set up to support so many learners with various needs. There is no simple pathway to ask a tech question. The addition of people's tagged blog posts seem to be 3 days old and are not getting renewed. Is there anyone there I ask myself? I think these first MOOCS need to get their heads together and see this as a pilot study. Because they won't survive if this is all the input they are going to give. I am also doing FLwebsci - it's much better, better technology and a sense of community which I need - I don't want to float out here on my own.
ReplyDeleteThat's a really good point you're making here about the difference we should find between a MOOC and an online course! I'd not seen it that way! Thanks.
ReplyDeletethank you for your post, Pat - it's great to hear all sorts of reactions to EDCMOOC, including more critical ones.
ReplyDeleteMy surprise is not that people like teacher presence, but that what 'counts' as teacher presence on a MOOC seems to be so tied to forms of embodiment (video representations). Though it's not really so surprising: video is perhaps the most powerfully attention-getting medium we have available for online interactions, and the MOOC is a good example of an attention economy.