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What is a MOOC?

Armando Fox, Academic Director, Berkeley Resource Center for Online Education | 4/24/13

Given the inordinate media attention and recent flurry of legislative activity around MOOCs (massive open online courses), I wanted to clarify the position of Berkeley’s Resource Center for Online Education (BRCOE) on the role of this new technology in our overall instructional system.


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    I just took a MOOC in a field quite putside my aceiamdc training (PhD Education). In my opinion, it has and will have value as an option for postsec study, but as a learning experience, it does not offer anything close to a live, small-ish class experience. In my coursera MOOC, the prof was basically not there’. We watched/read his materials weekly and took quizzes. For working through concepts/course material we were on our own. On discussion boards students attempted to help other students. Some students, like myself, really struggled due to lack of a context to get good answers to questions. There was an unbelievable range of students taking the course from all over the world, with varied life experiences and ages. This made the experience exciting and unique, but also created some challenges that we had to solve on our own We were talking to each other across great differences and distances. Sometimes there were misunderstandings and we were fumbling about trying to learn together. The technology for the course was very easy to use. No problems there. Having taken one, I see MOOCS as good for some kinds of disciplinary material (not all), some kinds of learning goals, and particular audiences. It is not a one size fits all but that is ok. I’m looking forward to taking another MOOC in January.