I’m in week 5 of the OU course on Technology Enhanced Learning. As part of the course, we had to participate in a Massive Open Online Course (or MOOC), mainly to find out how MOOCs work, but also to learn more about online education.
I can recommend the course, by the way. It’s free, it’s on FutureLearn, the OU’s MOOC platform, and is called The Online Educator:People and Pedagogy.
As well as studying the course content, we had to study how the course was presented, which is where I am now in the main, paid-for course. We’ve been asked to consider activities associated with teaching and note how these relate to the teaching/mentoring in the live MOOC.
The comments section of FutureLearn doesn’t allow formatting, so I thought I’d just link to my blog from there.
Teaching and mentoring in MOOCs
Teaching activity
Who does it?
Presenting information
Educators
Curating links to external resources
Educators
Designing learning activities
Educators
Moderating comments and conversations
Mentors
Posing questions
Educators (but built on by the mentors in the comments)
Roles that weren’t really covered in the MOOC included connecting learners and encouraging external networks.
The review process seemed to take the form of a concluding article, with a list of references for further reading attached. I’m not sure if too many people looked at the reference lists, but they’ll come in handing for our TMA.
Sarah Slade 