Higher Education to Investigate Massively Open Online Courses

With all the hype about massively open online courses this summer, educators are scrutinizing the methodological approach of these classes in their own massively open online course starting August 12.

Started by Hybrid Pedagogy, an open peer-reviewed journal, the so-called "MOOC MOOC" already has 300 people signed up for the weeklong course. This course goes along with the Hybrid Pedagogy mission: to critically investigate technology for teaching and pedagogy.

"We thought it was really important as part of our mission to actually start talking about MOOCs because they're such a phenomenon right now in higher education," said Sean Michael Morris, partner in Hybrid Pedagogy.

Originally, Morris and the rest of the team thought about doing a massively open online course on the topic of faculty development, since that's what the journal focuses on.

"It really became clear that before we dove into using the MOOC form for these other projects, we really needed to investigate the form itself," said Jesse Stommel, assistant professor of English and digital humanities, and director of the English and Digital Humanities degree program at Marylhurst University in Oregon.

Other instructors, universities and curious people are signing up for the course. Together, they'll go through exercises and ask questions. By doing so, the founders hope that everyone will figure out for themselves what massively open online courses are, what they're capable of and whether they'll work for their needs, Morris said.

The course will emphasize producing knowledge rather than consuming it, Morris said. So it won't contain a history of these types of courses or top-down instruction of what they are.

"What we're hoping for is to have an investigative experience and a playful experience to try to figure out what is this form," Morris said.

This is just one of the activities Hybrid Pedagogy is planning. Next up is THATcamp Hybrid Pedagogy, part of a digital humanities series of "unconferences." The event will take place in-person in Portland, Ore., and will have an open online component.

If you're interested in signing up for the MOOC MOOC course on the Instructure Canvas platform, you can do so on the course website.