Introduction – Niall Watts

[Niall Watts]

Apologies for late introduction, I’ll post my intro here to avoid bombarding the group.

Since 2004, I have been an Educational Technologist working in University College Dublin.  Prior to that I worked in elearning/computer-based training design and development.  My role is to organise and often present workshops on elearning and media design. Topics include blogs, wikis, photography, image editing, podcasting and others.  I also help academics from all faculties to design and develop learning materials, working particularly closely with Psychiatry.

I have enjoyed and successfuly completed a MOOC on Designing a new Learning Environment run by Stanford University.  The workload was about 3 hours per week. By chance and good fortune I joined a project team that worked well together and produced a novel design on  ‘A Social Media Crisis Simulation’ .  Not everyone was so lucky. You can read my review of this MOOC in the Educational Technology and Change journal.

I failed to complete a MOOC run by the Open University. The time committment was too great. Multiple channels of communication also made it difficult to follow.

 

[ShunaMarr]

Hello Niall – here’s me doing my ‘caring tutor’ role, hating to spot someone make a post and seeing no one engaging or replying to them. So hello from me 🙂 This is my first MOOC – I tried to read your review of a previous MOOC but the link didn’t work. I have my doubts about how much I’ll get out of this, it all seems a bit of a disorganised rabble at the moment, but I’m trying to engage and see if I can mould it into something useful for me so I get something useful ou of it. All the best.

Shuna

[Niall Watts]

Shuna

Thanks. My third attempt at replying to your post – a few glitches in the system this afternoon

Sorry about link . This one works.

I find that multiple communication channels can lead to confusion or missing important things. Perhaps Course Reader will help.  Discussion Forum would seem better for introductions than email

[ShunaMarr]

Thanks Niall – yes that link worked and it was an interesting read. I have never even heard the term MOOC until Monday and so the learning curve on what it is and what it will involve has been steep (and somewhat in-my-face from a personal point of view), but your blog confirmed some of the limitations (and benefits) of what to expect from it, from what I’ve read elsewhere in the past couple of days.

Already I can see that many people (including myself) have identified some like-minded people through the forums and relocated from the big stream into a number of little ponds where we filter through the torrent of output as it goes past. As the drop out rate in these MOOCs seems to be high, and as the participants seclude themselves away using more accessible platforms, that torrent might become a lighter trickle as the weeks pass. I shall wait and see. 🙂

All the best

Shuna

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