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By: Matthew LeBar Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are often described as the future of education - or at least a significant part of it. But there may be a significant problem with them: a very small proportion of students who start them actually finish. This poses a serious threat to their legitimacy.

This brings up the question of what it means to complete something? And why is it so important to us? And why 'productivity', a thing somebody defined ages ago, is so important to our humanity? .. or is it anymore?

Because I am taking a MOOC course but also on campus at University, I receive credits and grades where this is definitely one of the motivations for me to contribute. Although I agree that completion of the course is not essential to attain knowledge, what about our motivations to learn? And what about our incentives? Not saying MOOCs are not interesting nor helpful, I like MOOCs, but I think people like recognition too. I think to just receive the "statement of accomplishment" is not enough to prove efforts made within the course. However MOOCs are not as well developed at this stage, there definitely will be adjustments in the near future.

"MOOCs offer opportunities but are also pose the danger of further exacerbating existing educational divisions and deepening the homogeneity of global knowledge systems."

Very interesting! Thanks. "MOOCs and MOOC-type courses have added a new dimension to the educational landscape by strengthening the non-formal educational space and providing opportunities to experiment with the disaggregated components of the educational experience"

After watching the Willinsky video, this hit home even more. I think the value of quality education is extremely important, and creating a "global village" of learning is still in its growing pains. Having a face-to-face instructor/professor/facilitator lets you ask the questions that pop to mind and being in a classroom setting allows an idea to flow and develop into other ideas. There are a lot of social media tools that are familiar to a lot of students living in a Western culture, but those social tools are not always available to developing countries; many do not have access to schools or even have a computer - as this article indicates, MOOCs are certainly a venue that opens learning opportunities for those who do not have access to learning in a formal environment, but may have access to the internet. What I particularly found interesting were the various MOOC categories - Gateway: MOOCs for prepping to get into higher learning; Research showcase: promote an institute's research areas; Professional skills: MOOCs for those who need to "upskill" or specialize…and there are others. The main reason for taking this course was to improve my knowledge of what social media is out there (MOOCs are part of it), how it is being used, and how useful is this "new" media is within the publishing realm. It is a challenge.

Subscribe to the MOOC Newsletter to keep up on the MOOC community's theory of MOOCs, new MOOC announcements, and news about MOOCs. Mooc.ca is provided by Stephen Downes ( books, newsletter) and George Siemens as a place to host MOOC news and information. Got a MOOC? Post it here on MOOC.ca.

Mooc is a sign and pioneer of open knowledge,but since it was born, it has had a bunch of problems. MOOC appeal to open access and open intellectual property, however, MOOC even has problem with their teacher who produce course in MOOC. Open is a good but ideal concept, but society needs time to change the logic and be more selfless to be open.

MOOC is licensed under Creative Common license.

If the University invested money in the project , they may feel they have aright to the MOOCs. Are MOOC, Profs and academics are very quick to use IP to avoid sharing their Knowledge.

The structure of MOOCs is continually evolving. Presently the major trend is the transferal of knowledge from the Western English speaking world, but this is changing. Collaboration and other countries' participation in creating this form of education are developing. I believe this is essential for specific regional needs to be satisfied and understood. It is technology and open education collaborating for the benefit of all, not only those with Western privileges. It's not education for education's sake, but brings in a more entrepreneurial approach - not only in Africa where one initiative has started. This article clearly illustrates these new developments in the MOOC arena, providing examples of projects underway and future plans for MOOC 2.0.

Es interesante notar que la propuesta educativa del MOOC sigue transformándose y expandiéndose. También me resulta desafiante que el terreno de aplicación del MOOC 2.0 sea el Asia (naturalmente, por la proporción de jóvenes) y no México. Esta es una interesante área de oportunidad.

I think MOOC will be much more effective as tool for learning exchanges between countries, especially developing stakeholder, rather than replacing high education.

"WHAT IS THE UBC MOOC? This MOOC is a non-credit online course offered by the University of British Columbia through the open education platform EdX. This self-paced course is to be completed in the span of six weeks. No real-time events are scheduled. For the full experience, students are recommended to participate regularly in the online discussions." My comments: What a great way for you to continue your studies with MOOCs! This course will deal with various aspects of indigenous education, including the importance of traditional knowledge, and it uses the EdX platform as well so you should find the interface very familiar. If you're looking for ways to continue your education now that the main run of the MOOC has finished, this is a great way to get started. It's also run by the University of British Columbia, where I completed a blended course version of the Open Knowledge MOOC, so I can highly recommend it!

Coming soon to MITx on edX is a new kind of MOOC-a MOOC to help high school students better prepare for college. Many students who arrive at college find themselves struggling with the courses they must take, as their high school experience has not provided them with the necessary preparation to do well at college....

Bookmarking this as I have two students at home who enjoy learning via MOOCs.

I took this coursera course in the summer - Learning How to Learn - https://www.coursera.org/course/learning It was really well put together with lots of practical ideas to implement right away. It's being offered regularly and is only 4 weeks long, very worthwhile.

David Wiley (aka @opencontent) is a long-time advocate for OER and the use of open content in education. He consistently blogs and tweets very relevant resources and information for this group.

I am a great fan of David Wiley. I follow his blog in my feed to make sure I get all his posts. He recently posted a great article about how MOOCs have hurt the open movement, rather than helped it since MOOCs are not using the word 'open' to refer to the same thing - one is open registration/participation versus open content. http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3557

@mbishon Marvelous article with one theme summed up in one of his sentences..."Their modus operandi has been to copy and paste the 1969 idea of open entry into online courses in 2014. " I have taken lots of MOOCs and they truly vary in quality. The best MOOC I every took was etMOOC that did exactly what David says open education should be--to revise, remix, and redistribute materials available for reuse, thereby adding value.

If you want to dig deeper in terms of copyright, this PDF might be helpful.

The issue of copyright has always been a contentious issue long before the introduction of MOOCs. The debate, now that we have MOOCs in our midst will continue as we try to find a common ground. The issue on the table is fair play.

The article addresses the copyright challenges in a MOOC environment. Very useful reading as it discusses the IPR issues we generally do not think of.

Comparto el blog de MIGUEL ANGEL AGUIRRE PITOL En su post nos explica que es un MOOC, la importancia de contar con este tipo de cursos, y el compromiso de quienes lo hacen y participan en el.

In the classroom, the MOOC material became a new form of textbook. The students found the video lectures easy to follow. They could watch each bite-sized two- to seven-minute video in its entirety and retain the information. The finger exercises following the video further reinforced their learning.

For those of you interested in taking upon more moocs in Mexico.

How valuable are MOOCs in certain learning demographics?

MOOC have burst into the sphere of education in an accelerated way. Firstly, the main US universities, and later many others -among them, some Spanish ones- have been developing courses under this format through various platforms on the Internet. Since MOOC are still at an early stage of development...

Thank you Susan. Interesante!

I was lucky to be in Berlin with some colleagues earlier this month for the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival and associated fringe events. There's really too much to distill into a short post-from Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for Digital Agenda, making the case for " Embracing the open opportunity," to Patrick Alley's breathtaking accounts of how Global Witness uses information, to expose crime and corruption in countries around the world.

A useful summary of some of the key take-aways from the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival, courtesy of Tariq Khokhar From the article: 1. There are some great open data initiatives around the world and two common themes are the need for a strong community of technologically literate data re-users, and the sustained effort needed within governments to change how they create, manage and publish data in the long term. 2. Spreadsheets are code and we can adopt some software engineering practices to make much better use of them. There are a number of powerful tools and approaches to data handing being pioneered by the scientific community and those working in other fields can adopt and emulate many of them. 3. Open data fundamentally needs open source software. App reuse often doesn't happen because contexts are too different. Reusable software components can reduce the development overhead for creating locally customized civic software applications and a pool of high quality civic software components is a valuable public good worth contributing to. Reading time: 15mins

I see that Google are the sponsors of the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival but despite having little knowledge about Google's role and interest in the Open Knowledge , I also feel they are the culprit when it comes to data manipulative for their own profit motives.