Two Distinct Course Formats In The Delivery Of Connectivist Moocs

Authors : C Osvaldo RODRIGUEZ

Pages : 66-80

View : 16 | Download : 8

Publication Date : 2013-06-01

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :Massive Open Online Courses based on the principles of connectivist educational pedagogy known as connectivist MOOCs insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(c-MOOCs); have been carried out with great success during the last years with hundreds of registered participants. Examples are CCK08 insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(2008);, PLENK2010 insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(2010);, MobiMOOC insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(2011);, EduMOOC insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(2011);, Change11 insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(2011/12);, and LAK12 insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(2012);. Their implementation required conceptual changes in perspective from both “facilitators” insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(tutors); and learners. They are so novel that much research needs to be done for their understanding and improvement. Basically two very distinct delivery formats have been used: Ø Those that use what’s referred to as an aggregator, an emailed daily newsletter, called “The Daily” that captures contributions from tutors and participants mainly from their blogs: Format A. Ø Those where all events go through a “centralizing” web page or wiki and discussions happen with the use of a mailing list, in most cases using Google Groups: Format B. In this paper we study in detail representative courses. From their comparison we establish that connectivist MOOCs delivered with formats A and B share many common features but that their differences are such that the learner’s experience and the outcome of the courses are very different depending on the format used.
Keywords : Open Online Courses, MOOC, and Learner Experience