MOOCs and D2L

MOOCs are nothing new although we always like to act like something is new.  MOOs have been around since the 90s (over 20 years ago).  Many of the first online courses in the 90s, which were usually delivered via public website (and email), could have been considered MOOCs.  My first online course I taught in 2001 at ASU was on communication technology and I had a section on MOOs.  So, again, the phenomena in of itself is not new, but its popularity and potential to transform education is.

Last week at the UWM Online Program Council meeting, I discussed some considerations in MOOCs on our campus.  Also, I discussed some potential driving research questions to position a MOOC initiative on our campus.  One of those was "Can MOOCs be offered within D2L to introduce and orient potential students to our online programs?"  At UWM we are looking to use D2L's eCommerce add on to explore offering courses (or some version of a course) in one of our fully online degree programs to anyone who wants to take the course at no charge.  This course would be offered to support a larger institional need and that need  is to orient students to and familiarize students with the:

1.) Curriculum offered through the online program,
2.) Course design and online pedagogy at UWM, and 
3.) Desire2Learn, our learning management system.

Students can then determine if they are a good fit for our online degree program.  Our strategy in offering a MOOC is to meet the needs of our students (or potential students) and increase our enrollments in our online degree programs.  

Our strategy is not to imitate MIT or Standford and provide a content delivery mechanism.  It is not the imitate the social and organic network growth around content in Web 2.0 or other social media spaces like Siemens and others, but to find ways we can offering MOOCs to meet the needs of our students and the our community as well as promote the work (teaching and researching) we do at UWM.   To view my blog post on MOOCs from last week, click:

http://professorjoosten.blogspot.com/2012/10/mooc-what-is-it-and-what-do-we-do-with.html.

In the last 24 hours a couple new articles popped up discussing traditional learning management systems and their roles as MOOC providers.    

http://hackeducation.com/2012/10/31/instructure-canvas-network-moocs/index.php
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/course-management-companies-challenge-mooc-providers/40734

Although D2L is not mentioned, and our project is only in theory, many campuses can be looking to their own LMSs to harness the potential of the MOOC in meeting their students needs (current and future).  We have over 90% saturation of our app. 30,000 students in using D2L and  move to sustain a continuity in student experience with the LMS and with student-centered, active learning course design in online courses.  Further, the D2L eCommerce tool to facilitates selecting a "open" course product with a zero value, putting it in a shopping cart, and checking out.  Once a user creates a username and password they can gain immediate access to the open online courses.

Now, our initiative is theoretical at this point.  We hope to implement the eCommerce add-on and pilot it in the spring.  Let's home the technical doesn't now limit our proposed practice and process. ;)

One other way that we will be looking to use D2L as a MOOC is to answer another question, "can MOOCs be offered to share practices and research at UWM with other institutions?"  Whether or not we use the D2L-faciltiated MOOC is still unknown.

The title was to draw attention.  It is really about how can institutions make the appropriate choices about technologies to meet their needs rather than using technology for technologies sake.  

Stay tuned!


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