MOOCed into Learning via #etmooc

I’ve been MOOCed. And it’s not as if I could have avoided it. I knew, as soon as I began exploring the topic of massive online open courses (MOOCs) in November 2012 with colleagues on the New Media Consortium (NMC) Advisory Board for the 2013 Higher Education Edition of the Horizon Report, that it would only be a matter of time before I stepped into the vortex and was completely immersed in learning more about the topic.

It’s not as if I fought it very hard; when Google recently announced its Advanced Power Searching MOOC, I registered for that course. But the increasingly frequent references I’ve been seeing to ETMOOC—the Education Technology and Media course organized by University of Regina professor of educational technology and media Alec Couros and several “co-conspirators”—made me curious enough to dip a virtual toe into the MOOC surf. And, as so often happens when we stand too close to the water, I’ve been swamped by an enormous wave of MOOC.

This is a community under development, a place where trainer-teacher-learners are working with each other to explore a variety of topics in two-week chunks: connected learning, digital storytelling, digital literacy, the open movement, and digital citizenship. The use of technology is not only at the heart of our learning explorations, but provides the tools for those explorations: live online sessions held in Blackboard and archived for those who can’t attend the live sessions; a network of blogs; a twitter hashtag (#etmooc); a Google+ community with connections via Google+ Hangouts; postings on YouTube; and content on social bookmarking sites including Delicious, Diigo, and Reddit.

And while Couros is clearly at the center of the process, his conspirators and the learners are, with his encouragement, very much building the course by developing content as we go, as Sue Waters did in a blog post that about working harder and staying connected in a learning community—her guide to how to use the various course tools to engage in effective learning opportunities.

Less than three weeks into ETMOOC, there already is a robust and still-growing archive of programs including a very lively 80-minute orientation session; introductions to Twitter, social bookmarking and content curation, and blogging; and an introduction to connected learning. The orientation itself included a wealth of resources, including links to online articles about how we can assist learners in building out “their digital presences in an environment made of the medium of the web itself” and how the development of open learning systems can “dramatically improve learning.”

There is also a “Dynamic Guide to Active Participation” that could serve as a primer for anyone interested in developing great contemporary learning habits, and a “Dynamic Guide for Facilitators” that will be a tremendously valuable resource for any trainer-teacher-learning working in online environments.

“Think of #etmooc as an experience situated somewhere between a course and a community,” the course developers tell us on the website and in that engaging introductory session. “While there will be scheduled webinars and information shared each week, we know that there is a lot more that we will collectively need to do if we want to create a truly collaborative and passionate community. We’re aiming to carry on those important conversations in many different spaces – through the use of social networks, collaborative tools, shared hashtags, and in personalized spaces. What #etmooc eventually becomes, and what it will mean to you, will depend upon the ways in which you participate and the participation and activities of all of its members. You may even establish and grow your personal and professional learning network (PLN).”

And by encouraging us to learn by participating, by creating content and establishing new online accounts in platforms including about.me, and by engaging in conversations that extend far beyond any formal onsite or online classroom walls, they are inspiring all of us to contribute our own learning objects—like this blog post—that extends the conversation and the learning even further.

N.B.: This is the first in a series of posts responding to the assignments and explorations fostered through #etmooc.