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Donna Murdoch
The very earliest MOOCs (called cMOOCs, which stands for connectivist MOOC) were led by George Siemens and Stephen Downes. If you are interested in the history of them and how they evolved to xMOOCs (Coursera, edX, Udacity, and others sprouting up) here's a great paper by Sir John Daniels
. Musings in a Maze of Myth, Paradox and Possibility ~ Stephen's Web
As far as the "best" MOOCs, I assume you refer to the newer xMOOCs. You'll notice that the earliest of these were computer science related in some way (Stanford's famous Artificial Intelligence course, Machine Learning by MITx, etc.) That's the nature of the beast - in other words, not many were comfortable with the challenge of a massive online format so the early adopters (Computer Science types) went first. It is only recently that we have more humanities and business related courses. There are also a number of MOOCs tailored for educators or those who want to explore new environments for learning. These are huge communities of educators. Designing New Learning Environments by Stanford Venture Labs with Paul Kim has been excellent.
There are also still cMOOCs, such as EdStartup101 with David Wiley (who had weekly live broadcasts with people like Jim Groom, Fred Wilson, and many other greats) and The Future of Higher Education with George Siemens, (sponsored by Bill & Melinda Gates, Chronicle of Higher Education, etc.)
But back to your question - which have been the most popular. The biggest I've heard of was Sebastian Thrun's A.I. MOOC - at the time he was at Stanford - which spun out to be Udacity. The rest of them range from a few thousand to tens of thousands of participants. If you are wondering what to take, pick the topic that interests you most, and then investigate the instructor. They all have hashtags if they have already been offered before - check out the activity on them (#CHFE12 for Future of Higher Education, for example.)
Have they taught online before? Is there peer to peer grading, or do they use teaching assistants, or ? Frankly you can have a fantastic instructor who is great at teaching face to face, but it's the online pedagogy (method of teaching online) that will keep you engaged throughout the whole course. If it has been given before, find out what people thought of it. Twitter should help you there. If it hasn't, look up the professor on Rate My Professors. There are some that have videos of instructors talking with little participant engagement other than with other students if they can navigate the software and discussion boards, and others where the instructor not only engages in discussion more personally, but travels the world doing "office hours" at coffee shops to meet their students (Dr. Chuck's Internet History on Coursera was very good, and he did that.)
The platforms are getting better and the classes a bit smaller, because there are so many now so the audience is diluting a bit. They all start with a high number of students and have a fraction of them left at the end. But "best" is really subjective, so pick something you like and give it a try. Good luck, and enjoy!
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The very earliest MOOCs (called cMOOCs, which stands for connectivist MOOC) were led by George Siemens and Stephen Downes. If you are interested in the history of them and how they evolved to xMOOCs (Coursera, edX, Udacity, and others sprouting up) here's a great paper by Sir John Daniels
. Musings in a Maze of Myth, Paradox and Possibility ~ Stephen's Web
As far as the "best" MOOCs, I assume you refer to the newer xMOOCs. You'll notice that the earliest of these were computer science related in some way (Stanford's famous Artificial Intelligence course, Machine Learning by MITx, etc.) That's the nature of the beast - in other words, not many were comfortable with the challenge of a massive online format so the early adopters (Computer Science types) went first. It is only recently that we have more humanities and business related courses. There are also a number of MOOCs tailored for educators or those who want to explore new environments for learning. These are huge communities of educators. Designing New Learning Environments by Stanford Venture Labs with Paul Kim has been excellent.
There are also still cMOOCs, such as EdStartup101 with David Wiley (who had weekly live broadcasts with people like Jim Groom, Fred Wilson, and many other greats) and The Future of Higher Education with George Siemens, (sponsored by Bill & Melinda Gates, Chronicle of Higher Education, etc.)
But back to your question - which have been the most popular. The biggest I've heard of was Sebastian Thrun's A.I. MOOC - at the time he was at Stanford - which spun out to be Udacity. The rest of them range from a few thousand to tens of thousands of participants. If you are wondering what to take, pick the topic that interests you most, and then investigate the instructor. They all have hashtags if they have already been offered before - check out the activity on them (#CHFE12 for Future of Higher Education, for example.)
Have they taught online before? Is there peer to peer grading, or do they use teaching assistants, or ? Frankly you can have a fantastic instructor who is great at teaching face to face, but it's the online pedagogy (method of teaching online) that will keep you engaged throughout the whole course. If it has been given before, find out what people thought of it. Twitter should help you there. If it hasn't, look up the professor on Rate My Professors. There are some that have videos of instructors talking with little participant engagement other than with other students if they can navigate the software and discussion boards, and others where the instructor not only engages in discussion more personally, but travels the world doing "office hours" at coffee shops to meet their students (Dr. Chuck's Internet History on Coursera was very good, and he did that.)
The platforms are getting better and the classes a bit smaller, because there are so many now so the audience is diluting a bit. They all start with a high number of students and have a fraction of them left at the end. But "best" is really subjective, so pick something you like and give it a try. Good luck, and enjoy!
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Continue reading...
