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"Suggestions for improvement To be fair, the cons that I have listed above are not unique to the EDCMOOC, nor to online learning in general. I remember similar problems from my uni days on campus. Nonetheless, they inform my following suggestions for improvement… Week 1 should be set aside as a social week to allow the happy greeters to get their social proclivities out of their systems. It may be tempting to set aside a pre-week for this purpose, but the truth is it will bleed into Week 1 anyway. The instructors need to be much more active in the discussions. I recommend they seed each week with a pinned discussion thread, which marks the official line of enquiry and discourages multiple (and confusing) threads emerging about the same concepts. More importantly, the instructors should actively prompt, prod, guide and challenge the participants to engage in critical analysis. Explication of the implications for e-learning must be the outcome. A moderator should delete the spam and ban the spammers. A support page and discussion thread should be dedicated to helping the lost souls, so that they don't pollute the rest of the course with their problems. All in all, I am glad to report my first mooc experience was a positive one. I won't rush out to do another one in a hurry, but that's simply because I know how demanding they are. But one thing's for sure, I will do another one at some stage. I look forward to it!"

" Instructional design is generally executed by instructional designers. According to scholars, instructional designers are typically educators, trained in emerging technologies and pedagogy, who possess specialized skills (Steven, 2013). They must be able to conduct needs assessments, write objectives, and choose content, method, instructional strategies, and best practices (Schwier & Wilson, 2010). Professionally, instructional designers should be able to build interpersonal and trust-worthy relationships, communicate clearly, motivate, solve problems, manage projects and deadlines, outsource, train, and adapt. In addition, instructional designers should be intuitive, supportive, encouraging, organized, persuasive, flexible (Schwier & Wilson, 2010), capable, energetic, pragmatic, and helpful (Stevens, 2013). "