Might be I'm being too strict on the definition of "open" (which is a
subject on its own). The more I read on openness the clearer it is
that an open course has to respond to input from students by altering
content or delivery. DS106 seems to qualify by having incorporated
student work into the course? Made different by participant
contribution? The Stanford AI course fails this test. The content is
written and unalterable and the only student input is to take tests
with predetermined answers or write essays on what you learned from
the content, not what the content "learned" from you.
Think you are right about sticking to a basic short list of MOOC
attributes. MOOCs are embedded in a much larger environment of social
and educational change and we could end up writing a history-of-
everything open and free here. Understandings of what MOOCs are is
going to continue to evolve and I agree with you we should draw a line
around a particular era or maybe differentiate by course leaders'
philosophy? My feeling is to draw the line pretty soon and I'd justify
that by no particular proof but the gut feeling that the genre has
passed from an emerging phenomenon to a self-conscious deliberate
activity. How else is history divided up?
As an arbitrary cut off I'd say Carol Yeager's upcoming "Creativity
and Multicultural Communication" should be declared the last authentic
MOOC and Change MOOC can be placed into the Era of the Pretenders?
Agree we need more people here. There's energy gathering to write a
MOOC presenters guide, which sounds like a natural recruiting ground
to steal volunteers from but I'm going to assume those interested will
contribute as they can. For me, there's a sense of having found the
easy stuff and a desire to search deeper with fewer trips in to add
contributions. There's also a little voice saying "don't leave this
unfinished because you know when this MOOC ends everyone will scatter
to the wind." Most important though is this seems like a good project
to keep working at so I guess I'm here for a while yet.
Reading "Designing Open Educational Technology" by David Kahle. See
what fits into the Wikipedia entry.
I wonder how many contributors work on a typical entry and how they
know they are done?
Scott
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