Monday MOOC News

This week a few pieces of MOOC news.

Wesleyan wants to change the world
Wesleyan president, Micheal Roth, announced a new course offered through Coursera called How to Change the World. Its a six week course that covers a range of topics (the environment, poverty, gender, etc.) and has a recommended workload of 3-5 hours. Given the breadth of the topics and the amount of time that will be taken to go over them, I'm not expecting much world changing from the course. Mashable might think so, but then again they sponsored the event this course was announced at.

Europe's MOOCs
The Gray Lady did a piece on Europe's MOOCs. What most interests me about the European market is the dynamic between the course provider's country of origin's culture, language, and local-specific issues, and how they relate to the wider market. However this may just be an American's fascination of countries that are smaller than most US states.

New UK MOOC provider, Future Learn
Staying on the other side of the pond, there is a new UK MOOC provider, Future Learn. From their course listings it seems that they are focused on humanities (Corpus linguistics, Muslims in Britain), science and related issues (Sustainability, society and you, Cancer in the 21st century - the genomic revolution), The discovery of the Higgs boson, and the almost required technology courses (Begin programming: build your first mobile game, Web science: how the web is changing the world). A good set of initial courses, I'm excited to see what they offer next.

Newish site for corporate elearning
eLearning Mind is a new company that provides corporate instructional design services, but has offered some of their best practices. While not groundbreaking, it is nice to see a semi-fluid exchange of ideas in that world.


My MOOCs

I've fallen off my current MOOCs, but am looking forward to Foundations of Virtual Instruction, Common Core in Action: Math Formative Assessment, and Big Data in Education all through Coursera. I may have to enrol in the signature track in at least one of the courses, just to make sure I finish it. The Moodle MOOC was interesting, but I found myself with a bit too much work this last month. I also found myself kind of annoyed with their badges. They offered only two, a basic 'you've posted something' and a completion. I was hoping for a "Helper - respond to 25 questions" or a "Reviewer - review 10 other student courses".



Monday MOOC News comes out every Monday (hopefully) and contains my thoughts on current MOOC news, and a brief summary of the MOOCs I am taking. Feel free to join the conversation.

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