2.+Introduction+to+MOOCs

Presentation
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Narrative

 * The concept of a MOOC was first birthed by the inspiration of an online course developed and taught by Canadian scholars Stephen Downes and George Siemens. In 2008, the online course, Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (CCK08) was opened at no charge to to anyone who was interested. More than 2,200 students registered (Morrison, 2013)!


 * In an effort to describe this new type of education event and open course, another educator, Dave Cormier coined the term MOOC: Massive Open Online Course. (Based on:@http://moocnewsandreviews.com/ultimate-guide-to-xmoocs-and-cmoocso/)


 * 2011. The first xMOOC was offered by Stanford: //Introduction to Artificial Intelligence//. The course size was massive with 160,000 students worldwide in this course alone. This came as quite a surprise. As a result, the learning platforms, Udacity, Coursera, edX were born to handle massive class sizes.


 * 2013. While MOOCs have evolved since originally introduced, the original vision was of a central website that housed diverse content contributed by a variety of educators open to any and all interested learners. The courses were to be open and free for the purpose of individual growth or available for a fee for credit. Since their arrival, interest in MOOCs has skyrocketed amongst educators and learners alike largely in part of their ability to reach people on a large scale. Due to their sheer size, MOOCs allow (require) students to participate at their own pace, with their own learning style, and responsible to each other for assessing, evaluation and feedback.


 * Both original MOOCs offered open educational resources, blended learning, and crowd-sourced interaction. MOOCs utilize the benefits of cloud-based services such as YouTube, Google Hangouts, Twitter, Blogging and WikiSpaces such as the one you are in! These media allow for the creative sharing of ideas, videos, discussions and other activities that encourage connective, communal growth in a modern online learning environment. (Based on:@http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2013-horizon-report-HE.pdf )

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 * MOOCs and Instructional Design. MOOCs are a relatively new, and large addition to education. While still being defined and explored to realize their full potential, MOOCs offer tremendous opportunities to the life-student, educator, and in particular, the instructional designer. MOOCs are sources of boundless opportunities for anyone interested in virtually any topic. With such a buzzing emergence in the field, it is imperative that Purdue Learning Design and Technology graduate program students become familiar with what MOOCs are, why they are important, and how they can grow from using them. An instructional designer may one day be asked to create a MOOC or enhance/re-design one. Undoubtedly, with the attention MOOCs are receiving since their recent development, an applicant does not want to be left speechless upon receiving a job interview question about MOOCs.

Check out these MOOCs:Educators and Instructional Designers

 * === Learning Technologies at: http://ci484-learning-technologies.wikispaces.com/  ===
 * === Engaging Pedagogy and Online Technology at : https://etop12.wikispaces.com/Welcome ===
 * === Educational Technology and Media (#ETMOOC) http://etmooc.org/ ===

Practice
Check your knowledge of the basics of MOOCs