#LTMOOC16 – Success in a MOOC

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8avYQ5ZqM0]

I started the Curatr ‘elearning…. beyond the next button!’ MOOC this week, facilitated by Craig Taylor. I found the introductory ‘Success in a MOOC’ video really useful. This is a video by Dave Cormier from 2010, shared under Creative Commons on YouTube and pulled in to the MOOC to provide some orientation / guidance. I’ve completed a few MOOCs over the years and have dropped out of many more and found Dave’s advice really useful. He suggests that success in a MOOC can be achieved in 5 steps.

  1. Orient – find where the materials and links are stored, get the live session times in your diary.
  2. Declare – find a space for reflection, use your blog and use the course tag, tweet your thoughts.
  3. Network – follow the course tag, connect with the community, reply to their posts, get involved in the discussion.
  4. Cluster – find a cluster of course members focused on your own interests to network more closely with.
  5. Focus – think about what are you trying to achieve with this course and start a course-related project, using your cluster for support.

I have to admit that my MOOC experiences to date have been fairly solitary experiences, but that’s more to do with the design of your standard Coursera type MOOC experience which comprises Video  > Task > Assess > Repeat. This 5 steps approach is different, and ties nicely into the more social experience supported by Curatr, the platform this MOOC is being run on. It’s an approach that moves away from your superstar-professor MOOC (not to demean you, Craig, I’m really looking forward to your leading this MOOC over the next 12 months!) towards what I guess what you’d call a cMOOC or Connectivist MOOC (see previous post for my thoughts on these spurious acronyms!) where the value is more in the connections made than in the big name professor.

So this blog post is me doing the DECLARE bit. Of course, I’ve tried this before with LAK 12 (didn’t post any reflections after Week One!) and again in LAK13 (oh dear, Week One again!). So let’s face it, this year the bar is pretty low. if I get to a single follow-up post, I’ll consider that a success. Heck, maybe this time I’ll even complete it!


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1 thought on “#LTMOOC16 – Success in a MOOC”

  1. Thx for the blog post Mark, much appreciated.

    I’ve curated this video into all of our current/future MOOCs as I think it acts as a useful reminder/introduction to seasoned/new MOOCers as to how they can increase their likelihood of success.

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