Hi Mary
Having participated in Learn Moodle Basics and other courses at https://learn.moodle.org I am familiar with https://moodle.com/education/. A question on https://moodle.com/moodle-for-moocs/. It is about Moodle core as it is as a platform for MOOCs, right? I ask because we had discussions in the past about Moodle being made for "deep learning" and as such not ideal for the "mass teaching" in MOOCs.
Don't ask me what those things mean. In my bubble I understand deep learning as what we do in conventional tertiary education - small classes, blended setting, (trying to) go as deep as possible - vs MOOCs. I don't say MOOCs are shallow, been to some very demanding MOOCs which I ultimately gave up. The point is there the learning happens outside the LMS, say in a programing environment. The LMS is just organizational and for delivering the material incl. lectures.
The challenge in the case of MOOCs is to facilitate interaction, with the teachers and amoung the students arising due to the large number of participants. People casually call it "scalability" but it has nothing to do with the performance of the server, which is technical. No, this scalability is about communication, making the interactions organized and effective. My experience is Moodle is less than ideal for that. This is not a complaint, deep learning and MOOCs are different things.
Having participated in Learn Moodle Basics and other courses at https://learn.moodle.org I am familiar with https://moodle.com/education/. A question on https://moodle.com/moodle-for-moocs/. It is about Moodle core as it is as a platform for MOOCs, right? I ask because we had discussions in the past about Moodle being made for "deep learning" and as such not ideal for the "mass teaching" in MOOCs.
Don't ask me what those things mean. In my bubble I understand deep learning as what we do in conventional tertiary education - small classes, blended setting, (trying to) go as deep as possible - vs MOOCs. I don't say MOOCs are shallow, been to some very demanding MOOCs which I ultimately gave up. The point is there the learning happens outside the LMS, say in a programing environment. The LMS is just organizational and for delivering the material incl. lectures.
The challenge in the case of MOOCs is to facilitate interaction, with the teachers and amoung the students arising due to the large number of participants. People casually call it "scalability" but it has nothing to do with the performance of the server, which is technical. No, this scalability is about communication, making the interactions organized and effective. My experience is Moodle is less than ideal for that. This is not a complaint, deep learning and MOOCs are different things.
I have collegues who prefer Open edX even for their normal (university) teaching. (And some others MS Note, or Google Classroom. But they are OT here.) Just noticed that the Swiss academia has put up a MOOC service https://www.swissmooc.ch/ which seems to be Open edX too https://www.swissmooc.ch/faqs/. One should ask Why.
With that we are back at the old question whether Moodle should have a (stripped) MOOC version. That is exactly what this group did: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=364356#p1533303 - between 2017 and 2018. According to http://www.moodecx.ch/ the software is now 100% developed, and operational at https://moocs.hes-so.ch/, where you can see the design by attending a course. From what I see in https://bitbucket.org/cyberlearn/moodecx/src/developp-3.7/, they've marched their form from the original Moodle 3.1 to 3.7. I think this product should get attention of the Moodle HQ, for example to march it to 3.9 (LTS).
Disclaimer: I am not connected to them in any way.