Get on the MOOC and tell Houston we have a problem!

Evidently you don't need to be a rocket scientist to create a positive MOOC (massive open onlinecourse) experience, if the fallout from the recent failed Coursera offering on� Fundamentals ofOnline Education: Planning and Application is anything to go by.

You don't even need to be a world-renowned expert in online learning and instructional design. Ineed to keep this in mind consideringESL activities for kids is my job. On the other hand, I would nottend looking at something as it were being carved in stone nor should you. It's an fascinatingthought though and could well be worth more debate. Let's get return to it and see how far we'llarrive through rolling this further.Ask Fatimah Wirth, the Instructional Designer for Georgia TechProfessional Education and an instructor for� one of the NASA Electronic ProfessionalDevelopment Network (ePDN) courses.

No, if the� Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application� MOOC provesanything, it is that you need to be something much more (or much less?) than that.

Apparently (and this will be old hat to the 41,000+ � who joined the MOOC) the planned six-weekcourse crashed out after the first week, and there were quite diabolical problems right from the firstday.

For a very detailed (and in my opinion, insightful) account of how it all went pear-shaped, Irecommend reading Chewing Thistles' 24 Hours - A long time in online learning. � There is alsothis account from the Washington Post: How online class about online learning failed miserably.

Perhaps knowing something about Artificial Intelligence is a better predictor of one's capability toreally plan and deliver effective massive open online courses, as this article demonstrates.

Personally, I wouldn't be trusting anyone to teach me about online learning if their MO is readingaloud word-for-word over the bullet points of a PowerPoint (including material about the dangers ofusing PowerPoint...), never mind expecting 41,000 people to efficiently access a Google Doc thatonly allows in 50 users at a time.

And the fact a course about online learning, planning and application failed quite spectacularly onall three fronts... well, beyond the easy irony and as much as I sympathize with Ms. Wirth, there'smore than one lesson to be learned in all of this.

Despite the time wasted and copious frustrations, at least those 41,000 didn't have to pay for thefailed course. I had a somewhat similar experience with an online MA unit in ICT for Education, andI had to pay through the teeth for it.

;-D

Related articles

http://jasonrenshaw.typepad.com/jason_renshaws_web_log/2013/03/get-on-the-mooc-and-tell-houston-we-have-a-problem.html

If you like to learn more aboutESL you shouldcheck out this site. It has endless supply of greatideas to explore. I would quite like to learn youropinions on the subject when you have anythingto share. Leave a comment anytime you fancy.