Going over this week’s readings, I found the topic of Enrolment within the John Hopkin University Press’ “Teaching Online: A Guide to Theory, Research, and Practice” book to be quite intriguing, particularly with the term ‘MOOC’ – Massively Open Online Courses (2015). Within the chapter that covers online teaching and various key aspects of open learning, the first topic is that of enrolment, and the eye-catching MOOC term and all its discussed variations or alternatives has made me reconsider, or rather re-envision, the possibilities of open learning.

The term MOOC is simply that – an open course open to many, many people. When I was reading the term the word ‘Massive’ was what truly caught my eye. In the past the only term I had also seen Massive in regards to Internet or online platforms was MMORPG – Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Personally, I always thought that the term was quite ironic, as the few games I played or knew about as a child had relatively small user bases compared to other consumer media – Facebook, Yahoo, G-Mail, YouTube, TV ratings, etc. Also, you never heard the likes of Facebook called ‘Massive Online Social Media Network’ or YouTube as ‘Massively Online Video Sharing Platform’, though as I type this I’m starting to think the use of ‘Massive’ just so happens to allow for the creation of a nicer sounding anagram (MOOC, MMORPG).

Nevertheless, as with alongside the description of MOOCs and cMOOCs, and from my experiences with interactivity between other users on MMORPGs, I can see now how MOOCs can still encourage users to connect within such a seemingly vast and open network. Despite being entirely enclosed within my own goals and actions, simply having the knowledge that I was within a greater community motivated me to continue. In comparison, MOOCs (and perhaps more specifically cMOOCs) can offer its attendees/students the opportunity to network to others within the course through personal discussion and production, or at least recognition of others action within the course. I wonder if the greatest potential for MOOCs and other forms of open learning to almost paradoxically be able to offer a large number of participants a sense of participation within such a great number of participants. Just as with my repetitive use of participant in the previous sentence, I do think a weakness with open learning with large class sizes is repetitiveness and a lack of motivation due to lack of engagement. But MOOCs and the odd application of my own perception of MMORPGs onto these massively sized courses has made myself rethink the possibilities of open learning as a more engageable form of learning. Though most MOOCs may still remain but a shade of other learning environments in terms of interaction and engagement, perhaps opportunities to network or just the reinforcement of the progress made by others can be enough to encourage engagement.

References:

Johns, Hopkins University Press. Teaching Online : A Guide to Theory, Research, and Practice, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/lib/uvic/detail.action?docID=3318874.