Moodle as a MOOC platform

Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Matt Jenner -
Number of replies: 29

This is an investigative post to enquire from the community's thoughts on weather Moodle is capable of supporting a Massive Open Online Course / MOOC? I ask because I fear if it doesn't then it emits some warning signals. The reason for this is primarily two-fold:

  • If Moodle isn't capable of running a MOOC, what is? 
  • If we have something for running MOOCs, should/can we bring our more traditional/blended stuff in too? 

Is Moodle capable of running a MOOC? 

I've not seen much evidence to suggest it is already - which is OK, in fact it gives me motivating ideas to start something. I see little reason why it couldn't. We may be waiting on MITx's open source download link for some time, only to find it's totally unfit for any other institution's requirements. Sakai may be better, but it’s not likely, after all a VLE is a VLE (most of the time). What separates Moodle from the rest is its community, in usage and development. Moodle seems eminently capable of running a MOOC, it's got the social constructivist roots but it also needs some development direction to get there and fully support the constructs of the connectivism pedagogical model. One outcome of posting this message is to garner other's views of weather Moodle can/should head in this direction. 

So, in a way, I was hoping to keep this simple, to hear other's thoughts on Moodle as a MOOC platform. Maybe it could work for a handful of courses, but would it scale up? If a department in my university wanted to open up and fly free, would they use the institutional Moodle service? Maybe Coursesites or TEDEd are more attractive, or distributed among many online environments, or something custom and bespoke?

My view is that Moodle needs work to satisfy wholly learner-driven, MOOC-style open learning, it's got a lot of potential but it's not been on the roadmap, so it's not quite catered for at this stage. Moodle 2 brings a platform for so much potential, but what direction does it head in? 

I'll stop here, but your thoughts, views or ideas on this would be most welcome, as I have not the answer, just the curiosity and my opinions. 

 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Matt Jenner

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Marcus Green -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Your question seems a bit vague to me Matt. Part of it is about scalability and I am very curious as to why you mention Sakai in the context of scalability/massivity...

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Matt Jenner -

Forgive the vagueness, it was largely intentional. I mention Sakai because sadly when people think 'can Moodle do x' they are comparing it against other VLEs and Sakai is often cited as a 'competitor' to Moodle, hence the reference. This is based on an initial evidence gathering exercise from looking at the QS Top 50 world ranking universities and researching which VLE they use, Sakai appears to support some echelons of the list. I am being slightly hyperbolic in a vain hope of getting a discussion going smile

As for Tim's response, of course Moodle.org is MOOC oriented (minus the moniker) but we are somewhat speical in our approach, certianly not commercialised and less driven by aims and timed objectives, which often universities focus on as their business model which in some way may drive the MOOC movement and evaluations of existing environments...

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Matt Jenner

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by ben reynolds -

I suspect your question is more hardware oriented than MOOC oriented. Sam Marshall (Tim, correct my spelling, please) of the OU has spoken elsewhere on Using Moodle about how the OU load balances Moodle.

So, the question, Does Moodle scale, is answered, "Yes, if you've got the equipment." (My institutuion is working on load balancing.)

On the foundations of MOOC, I am less sanguine. The idea of a lot of people interested in a particular course helping out those less able in the same course *sort of* makes sense. But, as we've all experienced in real life, a person can appear to know more than s/he really does.

A convincing tone doesn't substitute for real knowledge. IMO, anyone can watch/read/listen to a subject area expert's lecture. But, not much substitutes for interaction with a subject area expert *after* the lecture, when the good questions come in.

We think the value-added in our courses isn't the "lectures" but rather the subject area expert who is present to help students.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to ben reynolds

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Matt Jenner -

Ben, a very reasonable response but I must admit I was thinking more along the lines of how Moodle could support the holistic, student-centred approaches adopted in poular MOOCs. For example, MITx has a wonderful Question rating system, a bit like StackOverflow - Moodle lacks this kind of tool. Features Moodle does have, such as forum, wiki, glossary are all good - but I was curious how well they would scale. I think the OU have proven that they don't scale so well, hence why they have their own versions (which seem to be in line for 2.4 integration with core anyway). 

I was really just curious to find out people's opinions on weather Moodle could support very large, student-centered classes. It's part of my natural curiosity of thinking about weather Moodle will support our institutions planned growth, and how we can balance contributing back to Moodle core, reviewing other systems and comparing it all to our requirements and planning. 

If Moodle is being used to support a MOOC (except Moodle.org), I'd be interested to see. 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Matt Jenner

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Glenys Hanson -

Hi Matt,

What does MITx's "Wonderful Question rating system" actually do? Could you give some concrete examples?

Cheers,

Glenys

Whether the weather be fine
Or whether the weather be not
Whether the weather be cold
Or whether the weather be hot
We'll weather the weather
Whatever the weather
Whether we like it or not.

wink

Average of ratings: -
In reply to ben reynolds

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by john attwood -

I hate to have to correct you Ben.. but not really.  The idea of subject area experts is somewhat contraire to Social Constructivist Theory. The idea is that a little bit of knowlege that each participant contributes is greater than the "whole" of one one "subject expert".  Have you ever heard of "death of a professor". So what is needed is an excellent facilitator which is transferrable. The subject expert is not transferrable. Besides "Subject Experts usually have huge ego's which hinders learning for everyone else. Our new subject expert is the internet which is so hard on the ego's of human limitations. To me this is the whole idea of MOOC. The simple question is this. Can moodle be used as a MOOC ? By the way I'm not a subject expert of MOOC. I play games like League of Legends (MMOG) and have been intrigued by the power of them for behaviour modification which is involved in learning.  How could we harness this in learning ie... MOOC. So the question still stands how could we use MOODLE as a MOOC? Where is the discussion for this ?

Average of ratings: -
In reply to john attwood

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Marcus Green -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Saying that the internet is the new subject internet is a bit like saying "the library is the new subject expert", i.e. neither meaningful nor helpful. However being an expert in a subject can mean a person finds it hard to get in the minds of people who do not understand the subject.  That is what separates a subject expert from a good teacher.

 Who is the better golfer Tiger Woods or his Coach? Probably Tiger, but he still benefits from having a coach.

To answer your question "Can Moodle be used as a MOOC?" the answer is yes.

 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to john attwood

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Christian Herman -

I'm a little leary of the Internet as a SME.  Don't get me wrong; I loves me some Wikipedia, and most of what I know about technology I learned from online sources.  Still, I have had to learn to be discerning about my sources of knowledge, to recognize trusted sources and compare new knowledge against them.  Many users are not so discerning (chain mail, anyone?).

IMO, social constructivism has great strength as a framework for problem solving, and the mutual transfer (or generation as it's proponents might term it) of knowledge within that context.  It leverages diverse experiences that are not possible for a single individual to possess.  In reality, all the learning I have done from the Internet was to solve problems.  Even though my SME isn't a person, but a particluar website, I'm still going to a trusted expert source rather than gambling on social consensus.  For truly accurate knowledge, discerning learners seek out experts.  With the connectivity the Internet provides us it may be an experts forum, but they're still experts.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Matt Jenner

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

I would argue that Using Moodle (this course) has been a MOOC since long before the MOOC buzz-word was invented. Speaking for myself, I have learned a lot here.

Average of ratings: Useful (6)
In reply to Matt Jenner

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Brian Gormanly -

Great post! I have been wrestling with the same questions.. With mitx source promised, but not yet delivered (and no estimated date for release that I am aware of) how does a institution go about trying to put a stake in the ground as to a platform to work with if they want to explore something similar?

I have experience working with both moodle and sakai (and also webct about 5 years ago) and none of the existing systems I am aware of would serve well for the format I have seen in the modern MOOC classes (mitx, coursera, udacity, etc).  And I agree with much of what you said regarding moodle’s positioning, I am not sure scalability is as much an issue as a re-thinking of the tools and the way users interface with the course content is.

In response to the post about the differences in the tools and the rating system, I suggest you try one of the above sites to get a feel, but basically if you have ever used stackoverflow it is very similar.  Also the wiki enables you to create collaborative circuit diagrams and test current flows right in the wiki!  Allowing for a whole new level of technical collaboration.  I have a feeling that there might be much more to come here as more courses are offered this fall.

I personally would love to hear more feedback from a software agnostic point of view as possible, having used the above sites I am fairly certain that none of the existing LMS are built the same way, but I would really love to hear if anyone else is considering something similar and if so how are they going about it?

 

 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Brian Gormanly

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Brian Mulligan -

Hi folks.  This is the only discussion I could find on moodle.org on using Moodle as a MOOC platform and I'm a little concerned that it has run into the ground after 8 days.  Can I ask if there is any discussion going on elsewhere?  Is it on the roadmap for Moodle development?

Some have commented that Moodle is already a suitable platform for a MOOC, however I'm not so sure as it does not seem to have a few features that I think will be required for MOOCs.  If I were to describe what I'm looking for I might phrase it as "automated organisation of peer support and assessment".  I feel I need it to be able to allow learners to join a course and be automatically assigned to appropriately sized groups (or even formed on other criteria such as preferred language).  I would also like to have what might be referred to as "calibrated peer assessment" which allows students to assess other student's work and allows a tutor to sample a small number of peer assessments and with this information adjust grades in a way that will ripple through the system and calibrate all grades awarded.  These are the sort of features that will probably be available in Coursera and possibly Edx when the code is made available (or perhaps they are going open-source so that others will help develop the code), so I am likely to use that system for any MOOCs we develop if those features are there.  I'll then be managing two systems, so if EdX does most of what I can do in Moodle there will be a significant temptation to move all our courses onto that platform.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Brian Mulligan

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Marcus Green -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

No, I don't think there is discussion on this going on elsewhere. Yes it would be very nice if there were more peer assessment flexibility and options. But I am not aware that anyone is working on this. Workshop offers some nice peer assesment, but learning how it works is not a trivial task. 

I would recommend not making firm plans on the assumptions that the source to Coursera or Edx will be made available or usable in the near future.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Fabian Banga -

Thanks you everyone for starting this discussion, I am very interested in this topic. We should first define what we understand by MOOC. Because, perhaps I am wrong, I do not see MOOCs from the platform perspective, but as a technique that can be applied even using a WordPress site and a Twitter account. So MOOCs are a type of online classes that are offered without the limits of the regular class creating a different paradigm.
If you want to use Moolde for a big online class, for example, with the use of groups, you can split classes and delimit discussions to specific clusters, use external material, broadcast a lecture... however, I am coming from the humanities, therefore in my area the final assessment of work has to be done by the instructor (if we want to recognize the class as part of the curriculum). I will need a final paper and me or another instructor reading the paper. Otherwise we are talking about a completely different paradigm, or a MOOC.

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Fabian Banga

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Brian Mulligan -

Yes, Fabian, we do need to define what we mean by MOOCs.  Actually it is probably OOCs that I am interested in, insofar as they do not have to be Massive but they do have to be Open or free.  For that reason they need to be extremely cheap on a unit cost basis.  Current MOOCs have shown that this is not a big problem with content delivery (making them massive, drives down unit costs), but other than for topics where objective testing is effective, formative and summative assessment seems to be a problem to scale up.    Although i suspect that it may be true that an instructor will be needed for summative assessment (and associated accreditation), I think that it may be possible to massively reduce instructor requirements for formative assessment if a calibrated peer assessment technique is used.

Average of ratings: Useful (2)
In reply to Brian Mulligan

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Fabian Banga -

Exactly, I agree. I am also interested in this topic because I am preparing a MOOC or, more precisely, a large OOC for the spring and my concern is not about content delivery or discussions but how to reconcile the characteristics of the course with the specifics of an accredited online course. I am afraid that even though we will have a common place for most of the course, I will have to, in some areas, divide the population, so I can authenticate some processes and assessments of the students that are taking the course for official credit.     

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Fabian Banga

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Brian Mulligan -

I think that this topic is important for Moodle and I'm not sure if it is figuring strongly enough in the Moodle Roadmap (I may be wrong on this so will be pleased to be corrected).  For that reason, I have posted about this and an interesting MOOC from Stanford in the Developers forum here: (http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=212057)

Stanford are about to launch a MOOC of Designing a learning environment, where participants can choose their own groups and assess each other's contributions.  Apart from "the medium being the message" this  might be a useful opportunity to influence the Moodle roadmap in regards to MOOCs.  So if any of you are interested in joining the MOOC we could get together as a group and use the course as a general way to refine our ideas.  I'm going to try this anyway.  Some details below.

Brian

Welcome edu-preneurs!

I am very excited to connect with you and work together to design new, effective learning environments!

The course officially starts on October 15 and will run for 10 weeks. During the course period, you will watch a series of short lecture videos, work on individual and team assignments, evaluate your peers’ individual and team assignments, and ultimately design and pitch a new learning environment as your final team project. Examples include learning management systems that do more or are better than existing tools, mobile learning models or e learning pedagogies, a technology that supports learning and assessment, new school system models, or a blended learning program. The strongest designs will trigger and facilitate active, constructive, real-world problem solving and collaborative learning, and will leverage the 21st century communication media.

During the first two weeks, you will focus on individual assignments and learning about and connecting with your classmates. There are already 6,000 students enrolled, and I expect more over the next weeks leading up to the course, so make your presence known in the discussion forum! It is very important to share about your background, skills, interests, philosophies, and experiences during the early course period because by the 3rd week, you will use these connections to form project teams. You will form your own teams—they are not assigned—so make sure people in the course know your project ideas and work style. You may only belong to one team at a time and you are encouraged to create or join a team that consists of classmates who share a similar interests or beliefs about education, but with a broad range of experience and skills (particularly any skills or experience you don’t possess that would help your work).

There are no quizzes multiple choice questions in this course. Learning here is not memorizing— it is creating, designing, negotiating, presenting, evaluating, and building the working relationships and being the active contributor that it takes to do all of this on a team. Instead of exams, you will be evaluated by your classmates on the level of quality and originality of your work, as well as on your level of active participation and contribution in the class. Your course “rank” is on a 0-5 scale. Completing only your individual assignment will not earn you enough points to complete this course. You need to earn a ranking of at least 3 out of 5 to have successfully completed this course. Your active engagement throughout the course will be crucial. I estimate that you will need to spend about 4 hours each week, though actual time needed may vary depending on individual experiences and team effectiveness.

Those highly ranked teams presenting excellent solutions will be featured on a Stanford website so the world beyond this course may learn about your work and perhaps help your team make its design a reality.

I am glad to see so many people from all over the world interested in this course, and in our shared vision of helping every student reach his or her full potential regardless of age, color, or nationality. We are here to cause a paradigm shift in education settings around the world.

Once again, welcome my fellow innovators! Let’s design a new learning environment. If we imagine it together, we can make it happen.

Thanks for your passion.

Sincerely,

Paul Kim 
Chief Technology Officer and Assistant Dean 
Graduate School of Education 
Stanford University

http://venture-lab.stanford.edu/education

P.S. If you know of someone who might be a good teammate for your project idea, don’t be shy to have her or him join!

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Fabian Banga

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Derek Chirnside -

Fabians comment: "If you want to use Moodle for a big online class, for example, with the use of groups, you can split classes and delimit discussions to specific clusters, use external material, broadcast a lecture..."

Yes, but there are some things you may want to do in a big course, and taking just the aspects mentioned:

  1. self selected groups amongst students
  2. quickly set up groups
  3. visit a group, join a group and know who is in the group
  4. click a button and promote "member" to "admin role"
  5. manage stream of communication from group activities
  6. choose bits of activity in a group to watch and engage with
  7. visit a forum/group and easily search for items
  8. manage issues as to who is new, who is here
  9. flag as spam . .
  10. tag

These are a few areas that Moodle out out of the box really is not able to do easily and quickly  There are plugins. 

  • Groups self signup (only available for 1.9)
  • ForumNG (plugin, provides more powerful forum)
  • change permissions manually to provide admin permissions for a forum (but not the course)
  • set up RSS feeds (easy, if you know how)
  • have a better search function (have you ever tried to find material on Moodle.org?)
  • knowing who is new and has just arrived (there is no system admin functions to do this, even as a third party plugin, only hacks) . . .
  • tagging (exists for Moodle blogs)
  • flag as spam (set up drop downs maybe?)

These are not show stoppers, just making things hard work.

Even the most simple activity of getting 24 people in a course in a group they want to be in when there are 1000 people on the course.  Of course it is possible.  But who would want to do this manually, especially if there are 20 groups to set up, each with their own interests???  MOOCH platforms should partly be about automating basic activities.  Then we engage at a higher level . . . 

"Teaching a MOOCH with Wordpress"  Much like using a bunch of forums in Moodle?  But (as a user) it is very hard to know who is there, who is engaging, who is merely watching and who has just stopped reading the notifications, what posts are unreplied to, what threads are done . . . .

Some of these weaknesses are made up by user skills.  This then cuts out the slower inexperieinced users.

I'm not sure Moodle out of the box is up to easy and efficient use in a MOOC.

-Derek

Average of ratings: Useful (2)
In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Fabian Banga -

These points are definitely valid if we visualize the situation from the perspective of a classic online class in which the instructor has complete control, provides the content, coordinate the discussions, etc. Perhaps the MOOC requires a completely different pedagogical approach; focusing on independent learning, OERs, clear SLOs, etc. 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Wen Hao Chuang -

Just a quick update: edX code is now available online (just few days ago). See  http://code.edx.org/

Would love to hear people's comments and thoughts about this...

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Brian Gormanly

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Wen Hao Chuang -
Good points everyone... By the way, a quite interesting recent development. I don't know if you guys noticed this but Minnesota was trying to ban free online courses but then backed off. http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/morning_roundup/2012/10/minnesota-backs-off-ban-of-free-online.html As Brian mentioned, feedback from humanities MOOCs is poor on the assessment end. However, we have also start to see some exciting new development, like TurnItIn added the new GradeMark/PeerMark future, which teachers can easily set up rubrics and drag and drop frequently used "pre-programmed" comments. Imagining if computer AI continue to improve, I think that in the near future technologies might be able better assist human teachers to reduce their work in terms of grading papers, etc. It's already happening and I think no computer programs can ever 100% replace human teachers, but it will make teachers' lives much easier for those who teach MOOCs. Personally I think the challenges of MOOCs (other than technical issues such as scaliability) are: Interactivity and engagement design: How do you design the course in a way that it's still interactive (enabling students to ask questions in asynchronously or real-time), and how to better engage students (especially for undergraduate students)? Assessments: Yes it continue to be a big challenge regarding how you can give detailed and meaningful feedback for so many students in MOOCs... Thoughts or comments?
Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Matt Jenner

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Derek Chirnside -

Matt, your comments:

This is an investigative post to enquire from the community's thoughts on weather Moodle is capable of supporting a Massive Open Online Course / MOOC? I ask because I fear if it doesn't then it emits some warning signals. The reason for this is primarily two-fold:

  • If Moodle isn't capable of running a MOOC, what is? 
  • If we have something for running MOOCs, should/can we bring our more traditional/blended stuff in too?

----

These are slightly poorly formed questions, but that is OK.

"Warning signals"?  no warning signs for me.  Not sure what you mean here.

"What is capable?"  the other posters are correct.  I wouldn't hold your breath for the code to become available for the other projects.  I may be wrong of course, and I get the feeling the market is a bit clouded with Google activities and the several big players in the field.

"can we bring our more traditional/blended stuff in too?"  Of course.  And probably in any platform you care to use you can run the MOOC + formal assessed.  Even if I am not sure what you mean by "traditional/blended stuff".  (What does not fit into this?)  "should"  (Is there ver a should these days?)

"What is suitable?"  as another poster said, this depends on your goal in the MOOC, and what forms of interaction are envisaged etc.  I have limited experience, however, the NZ group the Virtual Learning network has a very powerful site.  http://www.vln.school.nz It's nice, you can leave, join, follow, link, connect, blog, post.  IMO, a good mix of a public and private, personal and group work areas.  File handling is good.  Well set up.  Could IMO do a MOOC.  In the past I have enjoyed Webcrossing (Ref 1), which in my opinion was 10 years ahead of it's time.

eg: just one group page to give you a flavour:

Good luck Matt.

Let me know if you decide to run a MOOC.

-Derek

Ref 1: this is sort of off topic.  My first online community experiences were like "mini-open-online-courses".  One early one used a a product called Webcrossing.  Here is a single page from 2005: http://www.d.umn.edu/~hrallis/professional/presentations/cotfsp06/indiv_tools/webxscreenshots.html

Why this is of interest: they wrote their stuff from the ground up to support Learning Communities.  I have not looked at them for a while, they have been taken over, but are still operating.

They still have a remarkable guide on building community, now here: http://www.bayspire.com/Community_Design_Workbook.pdf  They quote Amy Kim for example.  Howard Reingold uses this stuff: http://www.rheingold.com/Associates/tools_webcrossing.html

My personal view is this: I dislike MOOC without the personal community aspect.  I can find it in a horde of 1600.  (The biggest I have seriously engaged with).  Tools for me need to be easy to do certain basic things, from the point of view of the Admin and the Member.  And the tone/attitude of the learning endeavour should support interactions and feel not like a traditional "classroom".

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Matt Jenner

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Roel Cantada -

There are generally two types of MOOCs (at least as discussed in blogs). The cMOOCs and the xMOOCs.

The first MOOC was a cMOOC called Connectivism and Connective Knowledge. It was not a platform but a network of online learning paces wherein the learner decides where they would like to have their "centrality" e.g. the main entry point to the MOOC. One node or space used in this course is a Moodle site with 537 active users out of 560 registered.

The xMOOCs on the other hand runs on a prescribe entry point that is a platform. The underlying pedagogical assumptions of this type of MOOC appears to me to have conflicts with the constructivist assumptions underlying Moodle.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Matt Jenner

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Paul Nijbakker -

Hi all,

From what I've seen and read there is no one recipe for MOOCs. Open on-line courses are nothing new and vary widely in approach and structure, the MOOC really only adds the "massive" element and therefore (in theory) has adapted its set up to cater to large groups of users. The latter implies having access to a hardware infrastructure that can support massive numbers of users and a pedagogical approach that would enable a limited number of teachers/tutors to initiate and guide the learning of that many users.

Moodle has shown that it can support thousands of users and it is flexible enough, what with all plug-ins, to allow for a course structure that allows few teachers to handle many students.

In my view the only issue at hand here concerns the definition of massive. The Moodle servers at my school (Kemi-Tornio University of Applied Sciences) can support thousands of users, but not tens of thousands. However, for a relatively small school in the arctic, having 1000 students in one course is already "massive". Add to that that tuition in Finland is free by law and our summer courses already come close to earning the label of "MOOC". wink

Rgrds,
Paul.

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Paul Nijbakker

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Doug Moody -

Not to get too philosophical here, but IMHO, subject matter experts are always going to be needed. I simply cannot trust content generated by a consensus of opinion. Anyone heard f "Tyranny of the Masses"? Here's a definition from Wikipedia:

"The phrase "tyranny of the majority" (or "tyranny of the masses"), used in discussing systems of democracy and majority rule, envisions a scenario in which decisions made by a majority place its interests so far above those of an individual or minority group as to constitute active oppression, comparable to that of tyrants and despots.[1] In many cases a disliked ethnic, religious or racial group is deliberately penalized by the majority element acting through the democratic process.["

Average of ratings: Useful (2)
In reply to Matt Jenner

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Jerald Dana Cole -

Our MOOC is initiated! 38,000 and counting in week 2.

Visit The Graduate Institute in Bethany Connecticut USA and please give us feedback!

smile

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Jerald Dana Cole

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Helen Foster -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Jerald, thanks for posting about your MOOC. For anyone else interested in joining, here's a link to it: flexible.learn.edu.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Helen Foster

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Timothy Takemoto -

What is the most open, moodle based MOOC portal?

I would like to MOOC (is it also a verb?) a course of mine on cultural psychology.

Tim

 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Timothy Takemoto

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Randy Thornton -
Picture of Documentation writers

Take a look at http://www.freemoodle.org/

Open, free, and hosted by a very reputable Moodle partner.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Randy Thornton

Re: Moodle as a MOOC platform

by Timothy Takemoto -

Thank you very much Randy.

There is also Moodle.net

”Moodle.net (formerly known as MOOCH) connects you with free content and courses shared by Moodle users all over the world.  It contains:

  • courses you can download and use
  • courses you can enrol in and participate
  • ....

"

So in other words, If I am understanding this correctly one can make any of the courses on ones own server into a MOOC using Moodle.net to publicise it.

Does anyone know the sort of interest that publishing to Moodle.net creates or have stories of MOOCing their courses using this route?

 

Average of ratings: -