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What is a MOOC?

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The Massive Open Online Course

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is a response to the challenges

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faced by organizations and distributed disciplines

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at a time of information overload.

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It used to be that when you wanted to know about something

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you could do a few things

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You could ask someone

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You could buy a book

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You could try to figure out for yourself

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or you could call a school.

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If that school offered the course

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in a thing that you were trying to figure out

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you could go there and take it

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you could get access to information about a topic

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An instructor would comb through journals and books

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to pull the information together from a library

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you might even find others

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who are also interested in the same things that you are

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The Mooc is built for a world

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where information is everywhere

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where a social network obsessed with

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the same things as you are

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is a click away

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a digital world

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a world where internet connection

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gives you access

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to a staggering amount of information

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This video will introduce you

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to how a Massive Open Online Course

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is one way of learning in a networked world.

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A MOOC is a course.

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It's open.

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It's participatory

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It's distributed

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and it supports life-long networked learning.

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In one sense

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Massive Open Online Course is just that.

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It's a course.

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It has facilitators, course materials...

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It has a start and an end date.

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It has participants.

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But the MOOC is not a school.

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It's not JUST an online course.

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It's a way to connect and collaborate

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while developing digital skills.

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It's a way of engaging in the learning process

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that engages what it means to be a student.

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It is maybe most importantly,

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an event,

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around which people who care about a topic

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can get together and work and talk about it

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in a structured way.

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The course is open.

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All of the work gets done

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in areas accessible for people

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to read and reflect and comment on.

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The course is open in the sense that

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you can go ahead

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and take the course without paying for it.

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You might pay to get the credits through an institution

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but you are not paying for participating in the course.

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It's also open in the sense that the work done in the course

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is shared among all the people taking it.

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The material put together by the facilitators

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the work done by the participants

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it's all negotiated in the open.

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You get to keep your work

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and everyone gets to learn from it.

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The course is participatory

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you really become part of the course

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by engaging with other people's work

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Participants are not asked

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to complete specific assignments

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but rather to engage with the material

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with each other

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and with other material that they may find on the Web.

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You make connections between ideas

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and between you and other people.

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You network.

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One of the outcomes

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that people get from the course

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are the networked connections

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they build up through engaging with each other.

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The course is distributed

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and all these blog posts and discussions posts,

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video responses, articles, tweets and tags

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all knit together to create a networked course

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They're mostly not found at one central location

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but rather all over the Internet

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in different pockets and clusters

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There's no right way to do the course

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No single path from the 1st week to the last

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this allows for new ideas to develop

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and for different points of view to co-exist

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it also means that one of the side effects of a MOOC

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is the building of a distributed knowledge base on the Net

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The course is a step on the road

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to life-long learning

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MOOCs promote independence among learners

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They encourage participants to work in their own spaces

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and create authentic networks

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they can easily maintain after the course finishes

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A MOOC can promote the kind of network creation

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that life-long learning is all about.

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The course part is just the beginning

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How can you go about finding one of these?

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Well, news that a MOOC will be offered

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usually spreads on online networks

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people who have reputations for interesting skills

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or innovative thinking on a topic

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decide to collaborate

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by offering an open online course

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covering their topic.

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Anyone who wants to join in, CAN

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In a MOOC you can choose what YOU do

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how you participate

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and only you can tell

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in the end

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if you have been successful

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just like in real life.