I enjoyed the introductory video by Cris Crissman, if for no other reason than it was professional and entertaining. The expanding opportunities for everyone to learn by distance education are exciting, especially as the quality of online education improves. I take several online classes every year for professional continuing education and they are informative but I now realize how much more interesting they could be. It motivates me to focus on keeping my own courses more interesting for my students.
The chapter in Ko & Rosen was very timely for me. I’m teaching my first hybrid class this spring so I read the text very carefully. I’m almost finished with my new class website and I know it is much better than it would have been if I had not learned so much from this POT course. Next I plan to update my f2f classes to likewise incorporate more of what I’ve learned so that I can provide a better learning experience to my students.
I’m not sure what I will do for my project but I think it could be fun since we covered so many great topics. Finally, I did have to laugh a little to myself at what I saw as George Sieman’s obvious envy of the more well-funded MOOCs and the high opinion he seemed to hold of his method of teaching versus the more “corporate” models.
Your experience with taking online courses yourself makes me think that we’d all be better online teachers if we took online courses and critiqued them.
I’m beginning to hear a lot about MOOCs as professional development for the corporate world. Here’s an interesting article: http://poetsandquants.com/2014/04/01/20-essential-mooc-courses-in-business/ Do you think this effort will be successful? Maybe more interesting than those online courses you’ve taken?
So good to hear that your POT experience is paying off! Best of luck with your first hybrid course!
Thanks for the response Cris. MOOCs seem good for those who truly want to learn for the sake of learning, not for the sake of getting a degree, since most MOOCs don’t seem to give much more than a certificate of completion, if that. It’s hard to beat a price of free but if people don’t have any “skin in the game,” e.g. they haven’t paid anything for the course, then they also don’t have as much commitment to finish the class, which is partly why MOOCs have such a high percentage of students who never finish the courses. I suspect there may be more people completing MOOCs in the future as more employers recognize employees’ efforts for earning the certificates and students recognize the benefits and requirements of MOOCs.