This week I’m starting study at Georgia Tech. Cool!
I’m studying Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application, through the Coursera learning management system (LMS).
The best part is that it’s free. The course is what’s known as a massive open online course (MOOC). I thought I’d blog about it as we go.
My first lesson has been that I’ve forgotten what it was like to be an external student! I’ve never studied online, but I did my MBA in the days when we received a bulky folder, readings and a text book. It always arrived a week or two before the start of term. CQUniversity where I do most of my current teaching requires us to have our course materials ready via Moodle (our LMS of choice) 2 weeks prior to the start of term. I comply, but thought it was a bit unnecessary in that it stretches out the length of a term. However, even in a free course such as this I was wondering yesterday why we hadn’t heard from anyone. Nuff said.
I’ve logged into the site and it’s a clean and easy to follow site. The Week 1 menu isn’t accessible, due to some error, but the material can be found from other links on the home page. Possibly not the best of starts.
There’s a Google Spreadsheet to organise ourselves into groups, and we’re then encouraged to interact and engage more closely with them.
There are a number of forums all organised to guide the conversation. I’ve played it safe with two fellow SMAANZers, but there is some interesting diversity amongst the groups. We’re also asked to introduce ourselves in a whole of course forum.
Looking forward to learning online about learning online – so meta.
Looking forward to starting Fundamentals of Online Education w/ Georgia Tech! coursera.org/course/foe @emmaesherry @geoffschoenberg
— Danya Hodgetts (@danya) January 27, 2013
@danya @geoffschoenberg it should be great! I panicked last week thinking I missed the start 🙂 — Emma Sherry (@emmaesherry) January 27, 2013
@emmaesherry @geoffschoenberg I checked today too. Surely we’ll get an email and course link?!
— Danya Hodgetts (@danya) January 27, 2013
@danya @emmaesherry Im surprised there’s been no communication yet. I guess the class will officially start on our Tuesday due to time zones
— Geoff Schoenberg (@GeoffSchoenberg) January 27, 2013
@geoffschoenberg @emmaesherry maybe that’s our first lesson, comm. prior to week 1 instead of being annoyed at swottie organised students!
— Danya Hodgetts (@danya) January 27, 2013
A Time for Thinking 