MOOCs, Open Course and the Open Online Movement

Primary Presenter: Kae Novak

Co-Presenters: Chris Luchs and Kate Hagerty

Organization: Front Range Community College

Role: Instructional Designer

Track: Presentation/Discussion

Level: For Mere Mortals

Abstract: What is a MOOC? A MOOC is a massive online open course. The Massive Open Online movement is using ubiquitous digital tools and online access to frame the way individuals learn and even think about information. This session will introduce participants to various MOOCs, other open courses and how institutions and educators are utilizing them to engage current and potential students and faculty as well as provide high quality, peer to peer, professional development.

Bio: Kae is an instructional designer for online learning at Front Range Community College. Her interests are online collaboration, immersion, role-play, virtual environments and games. Social network knowledge interests her because she sees so much learning happening outside of formal learning environments. She has been the program chair for Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference (VWBPE) for the last two years. VWBPE is a free online conference that has over 2000 attendees from around the world. She is also currently teaching open courses on virtual worlds, games, and Machinima at P2P University.

Description: This will be a part lecture and part discussion. MOOCs are a new concept in learning. The popular press has emphasized the size of Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence course from Fall 2011 over the pedagogical emphasis of earlier connectivist based MOOCs. These two types of MOOCs will be shown and discussed as will open course opportunities. The objective of this session is to provide participants with an overview of MOOCs and discussion on how they might impact or influence the future of education. The expected outcomes are that attendees will gain insight into what a MOOC is and learn the history as well as current applications and opportunities provided by this new online format. The session facilitators have designed and facilitated three open online courses in P2PU.org and have participated in several MOOCs. They also just received a Colorado Community College System Immersive Learning and Games-based Learning Faculty Challenge grant to develop four online open courses for faculty in the system.