Monday, July 6, 2015

Bringing the Social Back to MOOCs - Todd Bryant, EDUCAUSE Review

Various existing learning environments could scale to MOOC size and benefit learners by adding the social elements now missing, from citizen science to simulations, games, virtual reality, and augmented reality. In a recent report from HarvardX and MITx, participant growth was found to be linear, meaning that while the exponential growth appears to have ended, the user base is growing despite the backlash. Major platforms continue to find support for further course development and expanded partnerships: EdX recently announced a partnership with the Smithsonian and Microsoft to offer additional courses, and Coursera has partnered with Google and Instagram. For MOOCs to be considered valued spaces for learning, they need to adopt aspects of the earlier connectivist MOOCs (cMOOCs) and reintroduce social elements. http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/bringing-social-back-moocs