Thursday, January 31, 2013

Being a MOOC Star


The way I see it, there are two principle ways to contribute in an important and/or recognized way to a MOOC.  You can:

1) Think great thoughts.  Come up with a new take on the issues being discussed that your readers and viewers have never heard of or thought of before.

or

2) Bring the great ideas of others to the attention of your readers and viewers.

People participating in the EDCMOOC that I'm in right now are doing a lot of both - mainly number 2. 

I'm not doing either particularly.  But I am doing something else - so I guess I'm adding a third category.  One that won't make me a MOOC star, but will be a good contribution I think, and that is I'm an encourager.  I'm reading and responding to others' ideas and trying to applaud what I think is good and useful.

I'll probably end up focusing on "MOOC identity" during this course, and perhaps in my course artifact.  So I'm thinking of a short. simplified taxonomy of MOOC participant roles.

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13 comments:

  1. Steve MackenzieJanuary 31, 2013 at 10:55 AM

    You are on the way for number 1. You have an angle - it's all about getting an angle. This is an interesting angle -

    So to recap and expand - We have 1) thinker 2) broadcaster (quality counts) 3) Encourager 4) Helper 5) Funster 6) Creativator 7) Curator

    have a listen to these tunes, hoefully you'll like :-) http://wave.cat/?mood=Feet

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    1. LettybJanuary 31, 2013 at 1:23 PM

      Hey Steve - you're going to make this quite easy on me! I have some names running round in my head - not far off yours. Thanks for being a 3!

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  2. UnknownJanuary 31, 2013 at 1:17 PM

    This is an interesting perspective and I will be looking out for "MOOC identities" now. Thanks.

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  3. LettybJanuary 31, 2013 at 1:23 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. Ronald LJanuary 31, 2013 at 1:25 PM

    Stars need their audience. Who'd applause otherwise ...
    ;-)

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    1. LettybJanuary 31, 2013 at 1:26 PM

      So true. We are the machine - and we are the performance!

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  5. gbaileyhJanuary 31, 2013 at 7:04 PM

    Nice and funny angle :)

    This is the third MOOC I've signed up for. But the first one where I have the time to interact. Until now I've just enjoyed to learn by watching the videos and reading the articles. I do not know the name for that sort of participant, but I think there is a lot of them/us.
    260,000 signed up for this EDC course. 40,000 has attended the class. When I read the names in Google+ and Facebook foras It does not give me the feeling that we're more than maybe a few hundred that participates in the discussions.

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    1. LettybJanuary 31, 2013 at 7:29 PM

      Gitte, I think it is called a 'lurker', but you are officially out of that category since you made a comment here! ;) Thanks for stopping by!

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  6. UnknownFebruary 1, 2013 at 4:50 AM

    Letty, you're definitely an Encourager! Thanks for commenting on my blog. I'm doing HEAPS of lurking & trying to get a blog out a couple of times a week as well as exploring lots of tech. But I also tried to set up a f2f meeting through the Meetup site, in my hometown today, unfortunately without any success. I'll try again next week, so I guess that puts me in the category of either a `Try-Hard' or a persistent little bugger, lol.

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    1. LettybFebruary 1, 2013 at 5:41 AM

      Ha Cath! I'm thinking I'd have to use 'try-hard' - the word 'b'word is hard to fit into serious academic writing! ;)

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  7. AnonymousFebruary 14, 2013 at 11:54 PM

    Hi Letty, I totally agree with your discovered ways. I would like to add one more: successful networking.

    I am also part of this #edcmooc and it's also my first time participating in a MOOC. I was trying a lot of the offered activities here (blog, flickr, discussion board, google+, facebook, texts+videos) and now – after week three – I still feel lost in this digital world. Although I am not new at this (on the contrary I would say I am somehow quite routined, since I work in a project for emerging media and new was of learning).
    The mass of people we are all dealing with reminds me more of the real world, than of a (closed) environment of learning. Therefore I would say a lot of mechanisms that work in real world are also working here in the #edcmooc. For example, if you could manage to built up a network in the first week, your chances of being mentioned more often and increasing the number of people in the network is bigger, than trying to do this now.

    My question then is – there is a difference: the teachers - what is the role of the teachers then? Gatekeeper? Agenda-Setters? Framers? Motivators? Are they still part of the MOOC or some kind of 'beyond'?

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  8. LettybFebruary 15, 2013 at 7:00 PM

    Yup really good questions. I just watched a vid today that ties in with your thoughts really well. You can see it here: http://youtu.be/lciR7wx18V0 I think you're really onto something with the idea of how much it is open and real-worldy. Thanks for stopping in and leaving a comment!

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