Topic 2 - Open learning - Sharing and Openness

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Before I started this course, I didn´t know much about MOOCs and other concepts related to open online courses. When I searched information for topic 2, I came across the expressions cMOOC and xMOOC, which I had never heard before. Admiraal et al. (2015) explain the two concepts and describe the differences. The cMOOC stands for connectivism, which is a theory of learning where the networking is a central part (Siemens, 2004). Admiraal et al. (2015) further describes a cMOOC with words as autonomy, diversity, openness and interactivity.
Autonomy – the students can decide the content by themselves and what skills they want to learn.
Diversity – different students choose different tools and content.
Openness – the students have free access to content, activities and assessments.
Interactivity – the students collaborate and communicate.
An xMOOC is more like a regular course at a university, with video lectures, automated assessment methods with pass/fail tasks. The interaction with the teacher is more limited than in the cMOOC, where the teacher is more of a facilitator whose role is to enable the students’ collaboration (Admiraal et al., 2015).

When learning about these two different types of MOOCs and having the impression that a MOOC is kind of open, I realize that the word “openness” can be considered from different types of views. Between an online course and a regular course but also between different online courses. Openness in a MOOC doesn´t just consider the fact that the course is free for all, that everyone can participate, the material is open etc. The term openness could also be described in terms of how open the environment is, how open the “learning atmosphere” is.

In the ONL-course, there are both smaller groups with a facilitator and a bigger community, where there are discussions going on, interactive webinars, group meetings, tweet chats etc. and we are encouraged to communicate with each other. I consider this course to be very open in terms of the possibilities you get to communicate, be interactive, ask questions and so on.
Comparing the ONL course with the characteristics of an xMOOC, I could consider the xMOOC to be not that open, since it doesn’t have that open relationship between facilitator and participant.
I could also compare with my experience of distance courses.  I have taken several distance courses at different universities in Sweden where some of them have been very “open” in terms of the communication with teachers and other students and some have been more “closed”. Sure it´s nice with some sort of communication during a course, but I don´t think it’s necessary. I liked all of the different distance courses I took, even thought they had different approaches. I think the different concepts suits different people, and it depends on what you want to achieve by participating in a course.



References

Admiraal, W., Huisman, B. and Pilli, O. (2015) Assessment in Massive Open Online Courses. The Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 13:4, 207-216

Siemens, G. (2004) Connectivism - A Learning Theory for the Digital Age [online] http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm [Accessed 27 Oct. 2017]


Comments

  1. Alastair CreelmanDecember 6, 2017 at 6:51 AM

    All types of course are good in certain contexts. Sometimes a more linear and traditional course is best because I want to get an overview of a topic as quickly and efficiently as possible without any distractions like group work etc. Other times I really need the collaborative learning experience.
    Sorry I'm commenting late here but I didn't see this post earlier.

    ReplyDelete

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