Topic 2

What is a MOOC and what are the pros and cons in participating in a MOOC? What kind of aspects are there within openness in digital learning and how should we relate to this?

 

These topics are very relevant in the modern form of learning in higher education today. As I have come further into this digital course I have reflected on more aspects of online learning. It is easy to get lost in these online courses. It is important to be seen and to be active. In MOOCs you also create an event and a social network for learning that can endure even after the course have ended. MOOCs are a relatively new concepts that mainly attracts highly educated people and not the intended low educated underprivileged population it was once designed to reach (Loizzo and Ertmer 2016). However, it has become a valuable contribution in higher education and might still evolve to a tool to reach underprivileged populations in the future.

I have not yet participated in a MOOC, but I will find a suitable one and sign up for it once this course is completed. I think it would be a valuable input in my own learning as both a researcher and as a teacher. MOOCs also address the issue of openness and what content you can share freely as a teacher and not. The TED-talk (in the course literature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0syrgsH6M ) provided by David Wiley was nice and provided a short overview of the concept of openness in the teaching community. He said that openness is mainly to be generous, and the share your teaching material with other people. If you do not share you knowledge with anyone you are not teaching. We are not that used to be completely open with our data, but we should be more open. Today we still have a collision between the new accessible technology and the outdated reinforcement of laws and regulations regarding sharing educational content.

Creative commons (CC-licensees) enable you to see what material that you can reuse (with some restrictions) in your own teaching. It is a good tool to use when searching for accessible pictures, films or texts https://search.creativecommons.org/. I will use it when I search for pictures for my lectures, but I may also contribute in the future to this initiative with my own pictures and films that I create in my courses. I did not know about this initiative before the course and I really appreciate all the digital knowledge you receive in this course. I would like to become more open with regard to my teaching material.

 

 references:

Loizzo J, Ertmer P A,  MOOCocracy: the learning culture of massive open online courses Education Tech Research Dev (2016) 64:1013–1032 DOI 10.1007/s11423-016-9444-7.

 

Wiley D, youtube online content 2016-03-20: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0syrgsH6M