C-wired article about professor who leaves MOOC
This is an interesting Chronicle Wired article about a professor who leaves a Coursera MOOC over disagreements about how to best conduct the course.
Professor Leaves a MOOC in Mid-Course in Dispute Over Teaching
I’m not sure if this professor has experience teaching online, but based on my limited MOOC experience as a participant, I think it is important that instructors teaching MOOCs have experience teaching in the online environment. I think that one of the reasons the E-Learning and Digital Cultures (#EDC) MOOC has been such a positive experience is that all of the instructors have extensive experience teaching online. These University of Edinburgh instructors teach in an online degree program and the MOOC they are teaching is a longer version of the EDC course within that program. They also invited their MA students to participate in the MOOC which I think is brilliant.
MOOC instructors should clearly understand how MOOCs are different than traditional online courses. I think this example as well as the recent cancellation of the Fundamentals of Online Education course also makes the case that MOOCs should be not be taught by an individual instructor.
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