I started taking MIT’s Media Lab’s Learning Creative Learning MOOC (often referred to as #medialabcourse or LCL) at the beginning of February. It’s something I’ve done in my spare time rather than directly for work but it’s been a great experience and I wanted to reflect on what has worked so well for me.
1. Google+ communities. Google+ turns out to be really rather good for groups and group discussions. The combination of threaded discussion (with email notifications of responses) and micro-blogging type front-page (making it easy to scan through new posts) has certainly promoted impressively engaging and lively discussion. It’s even (and I can’t believe I’m saying this about a Google product) nice to look at.
2. Small groups. People who enrolled in time were placed into small groups, each with its own email list, and each encouraged to set up its own Google+ group. These small groups (my own included) have largely petered-out – but others have survived, often by picking up refugees from the less active groups, and I joined one of those. They provide a safer, less public, arena for discussion – especially for those people who are perhaps less confident or for material that doesn’t seem important / relevant / polished enough to share with the world.
3.Openness. LCL was designed to be almost entirely open, based on P2PU’s mechanical MOOC. Course reading is published on a public website and the main community is an open Google+ group. Weekly emails are sent out to remind people about this week’s activity and reading. Even with the small groups, I get the impression it’s those who left their Google+ communities as open who have survived because they could pick up new members. As well as being a Good Thing, this openness helps to make it easier to navigate the course, and to access the materials from a range of computers and devices.
4. Variety. Each week there are suggested readings, an activity, and further resources. There’s also a video panel discussion, and of course there’s continuous activity and discussion on the Google+ community. Early on the course, the course leaders stated explicitly that people should engage with what they can / what interests them and not feel they have to do everything. The variety of tasks and materials (some of the “readings” are short videos) make it possible to stay engaged even when you have little time to spare.
5. Events. There are live-broadcast panel discussion each week, directly relating to the week’s reading and activity. The video stream for these is embedded within a chat forum so that you can chat with your fellow students while you watch, and submit questions for the Q&A section at the end. These broadcasts feel very personal and inclusive, they are relaxed and conversational in tone. Course moderators join the chat rooms – providing helpful information, support with technical issues, and (maybe more than anything else) a real sense that the online participants do matter. In terms of a teaching device, I’m not sure how well they work – I find myself picking up fragments of the video and fragments of the chat and not properly engaging in either. But they can be useful place to reflect on and refine my ideas and they help give the course a nice pace.
6. Enthusiasm. Mitch Resnik, Natalie Rusk, and the rest of the course team exude enthusiasm for their subject, excitement about the course, and an openness that makes you feel like a real student. They seem friendly and genuinely interested in what online participants are saying. I think their attitude sets the tone for the community as a whole.
