1 00:00:04,755 --> 00:00:07,682 The Massive Open Online Course is a response 2 00:00:07,682 --> 00:00:11,326 to the challenges faced by organizations and distributed disciplines 3 00:00:11,326 --> 00:00:13,899 at a time of information overload. 4 00:00:14,375 --> 00:00:16,690 It used to be that when you want to know about something 5 00:00:16,690 --> 00:00:19,814 You could ask someone, you could buy a book, 6 00:00:20,152 --> 00:00:23,922 you could try to figure it out for yourself, or you could call a school. 7 00:00:23,922 --> 00:00:27,730 If that school offered a course in the thing you are trying to figure out, 8 00:00:27,730 --> 00:00:29,555 you could go there and take it. 9 00:00:29,555 --> 00:00:32,754 You could get access to information about a topic: 10 00:00:32,754 --> 00:00:35,374 an instructor had combed through journals and books 11 00:00:35,374 --> 00:00:37,912 to pull the information together from a library. 12 00:00:38,158 --> 00:00:41,957 You ight even find others who are also interested in the same things that you are. 13 00:00:42,741 --> 00:00:46,739 The MOOC is built for a world where information is everywhere, 14 00:00:46,739 --> 00:00:49,666 where a social network obsessed with the same thing that you are 15 00:00:49,666 --> 00:00:52,071 is a click away, a digital world, 16 00:00:52,071 --> 00:00:54,241 a world where Internet connection 17 00:00:54,241 --> 00:00:57,382 gives you access to a staggering amount of information. 18 00:00:57,998 --> 00:01:01,493 This video will introduce you to how a Massive Open Online Course 19 00:01:01,493 --> 00:01:04,224 is one way of learning in a networked world. 20 00:01:05,085 --> 00:01:08,760 A MOOC is a course. It is open. It is participatory. 21 00:01:08,760 --> 00:01:13,112 It is distributed and it supports life-long networked learning. 22 00:01:13,774 --> 00:01:16,974 In one sense a Massive Open Online Course is just that: 23 00:01:16,974 --> 00:01:20,427 it is a course, it has facilitators and course materials, 24 00:01:20,427 --> 00:01:23,588 it has a start and end date, it has participants. 25 00:01:23,588 --> 00:01:25,188 But a MOOC is not school. 26 00:01:25,818 --> 00:01:28,357 It is not just an online course. 27 00:01:28,357 --> 00:01:32,126 It is a way to connect and collaborate while developing digital skills. 28 00:01:32,126 --> 00:01:37,211 It is a way of engaging in the learning process that engages what it means to be a student. 29 00:01:38,134 --> 00:01:43,389 It is, maybe most importantly, an event around which people who care about a topic 30 00:01:43,389 --> 00:01:47,006 can get together and work and talk about it in a structured way. 31 00:01:47,775 --> 00:01:49,148 The course is open. 32 00:01:49,532 --> 00:01:51,753 All the work gets done in areas accessible 33 00:01:51,753 --> 00:01:54,341 for people to read and reflect and comment on. 34 00:01:55,049 --> 00:01:58,793 The course is open in a sense you can go ahead and take the course without paying for it. 35 00:01:59,423 --> 00:02:02,356 You might pay to get the credit though an institution 36 00:02:02,356 --> 00:02:05,828 but you are not paying for participating in the course. 37 00:02:06,151 --> 00:02:09,392 It is also open, in the sense that the work done in the course 38 00:02:09,392 --> 00:02:11,701 is shared between all the people taking it. 39 00:02:11,701 --> 00:02:14,574 The material put together by the facilitators, 40 00:02:14,574 --> 00:02:18,308 the work done by participants, it is all negotiated in the open. 41 00:02:18,308 --> 00:02:22,321 You get to keep your work and everybody else gets to learn from it. 42 00:02:23,090 --> 00:02:24,985 The course is participatory. 43 00:02:24,985 --> 00:02:29,179 You really become part of the course by engaging with other people's work. 44 00:02:29,179 --> 00:02:32,216 Participants are not asked to complete specific assignments, 45 00:02:32,216 --> 00:02:35,353 but rather to engage with the material, with each other 46 00:02:35,353 --> 00:02:37,843 and with other material they may find on the web. 47 00:02:37,843 --> 00:02:42,935 You make connections between ideas and between you and the other people, you network. 48 00:02:43,488 --> 00:02:48,610 One of the outcomes the people get from the course 49 00:02:48,610 --> 00:02:51,109 are the network connections they build up through engaging with each other. 50 00:02:51,109 --> 00:02:56,941 The course is distributed and all these blog posts and discussion posts, video responses, articles ,tweets , and tags 51 00:02:56,941 --> 00:03:00,609 all knit together to create a networked course. 52 00:03:00,609 --> 00:03:03,691 They're mostly not found in one central location but rather all 53 00:03:03,691 --> 00:03:07,215 over the Internet in different pockets and clusters. 54 00:03:07,215 --> 00:03:12,223 There is no right way to do the course. No single path from the first week to the last. 55 00:03:12,223 --> 00:03:15,306 This allows for new ideas to develop and for different points of views 56 00:03:15,306 --> 00:03:20,231 to co-exist. It also means that one of the side effects of MOOC 57 00:03:20,231 --> 00:03:24,648 is the building of distributed knowledge base on the net. 58 00:03:24,648 --> 00:03:27,608 The course is a step on the road to life long learning. 59 00:03:27,608 --> 00:03:31,442 MOOCs promote independence among learners and encourages participants to work in their 60 00:03:31,442 --> 00:03:35,109 own spaces and to create authentic networks that they can easily maintain after the course finishes. A MOOC can promote 61 00:03:35,109 --> 00:03:41,332 the kind of network creation that life-long learning is all about. 62 00:03:41,332 --> 00:03:47,048 The course part is just the beginning, and how can you go about finding one of these? 63 00:03:47,048 --> 00:03:51,258 Well news that a MOOC will be offered usually spreads on online networks 64 00:03:51,258 --> 00:03:54,775 People have reputation for interesting skills or innovative 65 00:03:54,775 --> 00:03:57,775 thinking on a topic decide to collaborate by offering an open 66 00:03:57,775 --> 00:04:01,143 online course covering that topic. Anyone who wants to join in 67 00:04:01,143 --> 00:04:05,110 can. In a MOOC you can choose what you do, 68 00:04:05,110 --> 00:04:16,832 how you participate, and only you can tell in the end, if you have been successful, just like real life.