Put another way, doesn’t the first part of this reflection — where you acknowledge that you know about audience awareness but somehow blew it anyway and are now attuned to it in a new way — argue that the peer reviews did matter, that you are learning and are therefore that you are “doing the work effectively”?

It’s a tenuous theory extended to an uncertain case, I know. I hope it doesn’t come off as antagonistic. Just exploring some other possible interpretations.

It’s nice to be able to take classes without the hassle of enrolling in a university or degree program. Their free, and signing up for them is easy. Unlike other non-credit distance education methods, there’s at least the opportunity for interaction, as opposed to something like DVDs or audio downloads from Great Courses/The Teaching Company or lectures from ITunes.

Also interesting is how many MOOCs are lead by a team of teachers, with the opportunity for MOOCs to become interdisciplinary. That seems to happen rarely for more traditional courses.

Susan Antlitz
Online Writing Instructor

Robert McGuire
Editor, MOOC News and Reviews

I’ve looked at a few MOOCs, and I’ve seen the “talking head” approach where there are videos and weekly quizzes. Although there are discussions, I found myself skipping those and just dealing with the videos and quizzes. My interested faded fast.

I find Writing II: Rhetorical Composing (#WEXMOOC) to be more engaging. While there are videos each week, I don’t feel it comes across as “talking head”– and some of the videos from Week 1 were examples of literacy narratives from different writers, and the videos on World Englishes had different people telling about their experiences as well. So, in the videos, there are different voices, experiences, and perspectives, and it’s narrative, not just lecture by one person.

I approach it more with the mindset of it being a writing workshop, perhaps reminiscent of Peter Elbow’s _Writing Without Teachers_. Because it’s a writing class and workshop models have been for a long time, I think it makes the focus on peer interaction rather than teacher-student interaction work in ways that might not for other subjects.

Added to the workshop-like feel of the course, the diversity of participants is interesting. There are people room all over the world with different levels of experience with writing, but also a variety of life experience and expertise in their different professions. This means that regardless of the person’s experience with writing, the participants have a lot to say and can offer some insightful responses to the content of the essays.

I think it would be a mistake to imagine that it’s like 10,000 first or second year students who don;t have previous experience with writing. Among the participants are creative (fiction) writers who want to try a new kind of writing, business people, people whose jobs involve writing, people who work in editing or publishing, people whose first language is not English but who are working on graduate theses or dissertations, and even teachers. I’ve just a few days, I’ve connected with five or six English teachers in the discussion forum, who like myself, are there to bring some renewed passion into their own writing or teaching. All of these different kinds of people are out there in the discussion forum providing feedback and conversation, and I think it lessens the need for the course faculty to try to respond to everyone individually, though they have been posting in the forums, too.

Another difference to note is that the participants are there by choice rather than because of a requirement, and my sense from reading the essays and posts is that the people in the course are motivated, want to be there, and are putting a lot into their involvement as a result.

I know I couldn’t have an experience like this in a traditional setup. But because it’s freely available, I can afford it. And because I’ve found other teachers who are there for similar reasons, I feel less awkward about it than I did at first. As I posted in the MOOC, I’m there to be a writer in a community of writers. And I think the MOOC can work for that.

It would be interesting to see what an entire discipline or professional organization could do with this kind of platform. What would it look like, for example, if the teachers and other professionals from TechRhet set up a MOOC as a space that could operate more like a research collective for various collaborative, community projects? Maybe it could be opened up so that instead of one leader or team creating content, members from all over the professional community could make guides, publications, resources, or even lessons available for teachers to draw on, but also for graduate students (who I’m sure would be writing a lot of their own contributions to share), as well as the general public to explore.

I’m not entirely sure exactly what I’m thinking there, but this format could be a way to organize some larger effort like that– something scholars and professionals could use, but organized in a way that people could share it with students, and students themselves could sign up to be a part of. I feel some of these kinds of other uses of paradigms could be more productive than just limited MOOCs to trying to fit into the mold of traditional courses or formal education.

It could be an interesting platform to try to use for an online conference, perhaps.

My answer to your last question is to listen to serious feedback from students who are actually taking the MOOCs, which is what we’re trying to provide.

Good for you for signing up for one. When you finish, we’d love to have you develop a review for us.

Robert McGuire
Editor, MOOC News and Reviews

What about one of these:
1) Ways to deal with misbehaving students
2) Ways to Brain storm writing ideas (meta)
3) When you use more formal (3rd person) vs personal (1st person) writing styles
4) Write something about commas. I always use way too many commas.