Monday, January 28, 2013

So, I just looked at my Coursera site for E-Learning and Digital Technology #Edcmooc and I am feeling totally overwhelmed but really impressed. I wanted to get a few initial thoughts and impressions down before I start the readings and videos.

First, I can't help compare this to our Blackboard courses at my institution and it makes the Blackboard experience look so sad. The coursera course is an explosion of beautiful information. Open. Leading you out into the online universe - twitterverse, INTERNATIONAL Google hangouts - I had to convert timezones!, participant blogs, etc. Blackboard is dark and cluttered and contained.

This connects to the mindsets that I see in higher education. The old "sage on the stage" desire to keep you here limited to this institution and this specific course and discipline which is already delineated, is just (often badly) transfer "online."

After seeing all the participant-lead content in the past two weeks that is associated with the Edcmooc I was beginning to wonder if we needed the official Coursera content at all! I guess I am about to find out... on to the resources!

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