Levels of engagement

One fundamental difference between conventional courses and a MOOC has to be the optional level of engagement. In both cases you only get out what you put in, but with conventional courses there seems to be an expectation that the student will fully engage with a view to gaining the credits (study points). In fact, with present-day funding models, joining a course to dip in but not attempt the assignments will probably be quite unpopular. With a MOOC any contribution a student makes is welcome, but lack of contribution really doesn't let anybody down (I suppose if nobody contributed it would be a bit of a flop). Like I say, you get to take away in direct proportion to what you put in.

Andrew Ng's ML-Class (Stanford, 2011) was not an example of a true MOOC

• it was massive at 70k students
• it was not open in that the subject matter was prescribed
• it was online
• it was a course

But it serves to make the point about levels of engagement... the student could engage at a Basic level (watch the videos, do the review questions) or at the Advanced level (watch the videos, do the review questions, do the assignments); and they could switch between Basic and Advanced at any time.

The way this desirable feature could be incorporated into conventional e-learning programmes would be to allow guest students to "sit in". If they enjoyed the experience, then next time around they could enrol proper.

It's like you're mountaineering: if you aspire to one day gaining the summit you might like first to be one of the team that carries the gear to base camp. You get to meet the gun climbers, you get to look at the mountain close up, and you can start to gauge your own fitness and preparedness.

What's MOOCology?

MOOCology is a subclass of lifelong learning. You sign up for and participate in Massively Open Online Courses not so much to study the subject, as to study the genre. Along the way you get to meet a superabundance of interesting people (players in some ethereal game), and you get to learn (or discard) a lot of fascinating stuff. But the real value (for me) is the way the genre seems to transcend, bypass, nullify, disarm and maybe eventually destroy the institution. Are we seeing a paradigm shift, or simply another technology-driven fad?