Thanks for your comment. I agree entirely, effective participation is new to us all right now. I think much more attention needs to be paid on support and helping learners to contextualise where and when they interact online, so that they can make effective contributions and not feel lost, overwhelmed and isolated.

Thanks for your comment – I think there is potential for elements of some mooc course designs to be used very successfully, however I think that it will take a lot more research and recognition of the need for more investment in student support/staff development.

Sheila

I think that is actually the crux of the matter. I have seen educators look at how successfully discussion boards and video games (possibly now MOOCs) have been for recreational purposes (not educational) and think how can we synthesize those very “essences” that make it great but within an educational context – however, most of our students are not as self-motivated, disciplined and enthusiastic as the people on the MOOC courses. So, it is potentially going to be an interesting challenge (or else we will be going up yet another blind alley).

It could very well be the wrong question, I really don’t know any answers, it just was a question that came to mind.

Thanks for your comment and I’m glad I’ve been able to contribute to a good start to your Friday, and I’m glad your finding #edcmooc a utopian experience.

thanks for your comment. I suspect that there will be a bit more organisation of the final assessment, and yes you are right there are ways to do this. In this instance from a personal point of view, the final assessment isn’t that important for me (shock, horror!) – I’m really more about “the journey”. But I will be sharing more as we get nearer to it and my views of the assessment experience.

Sheila

I’d be concerned in this case about how effective the peer assessment is going to be in the course you’re taking.

> “The final assessment is the creation of a digital artefact which will be peer assessed. Contributing to online discussions is encouraged but not mandatory.”

It sounds as if the instructors are not setting up the conditions for it to be effective. The articles that have come out on the other experiments with peer assessment seem to say that it’s really important to think about grouping of students for review (by region, native language, mixture of expertise, etc.), the use of rubrics and examples for grading and to organize the reviews, the importance of expectation setting and lots of practice. We’ve had one of the Coursera faculty talk here about his experiences and the limitations of the platform and student expectation and skill. There are ways to build this into the course, a single end of term peer assessment does not sound like it’s a recipe for success. (And there’s another one we know well which we should chat with.)

As with many educational experiences, having the right structure and organization can immensely improve the experience and outcome.