Dr. Kay Abernathy, Lamar University
http://www.slideshare.net/kayabernathy/moo-cs-for-professional-development-tcea-feb-2015-44308825
Lamar University sponsored the MOOC on Social Media Communication Tools for Educators which Dr. Abernathy facilitated. It was free, but offered a certificate of completion. Participants can later pay a fee to get college credit. Partial purpose was to recruit future students for online masters programs.
Built in openeducation.blackboard.com. You can build up to five MOOCs for free on this platform.
Dr. Abernathy also put all of the course information in her Word Press blog. She said we can use it!
What is a MOOC? - Massive Open Online Course
Video Explanation by Dave Cormier
More Characteristics
- Courses do not have specific assignments but active participants are required to stay up to date with rough schedules.
- Participants and instructors aggregate, remix, and repurpose that content during the course.
- Classroom is one of many hubs where interaction occurs, including blogs or portfolios, websites, social networking sites, and more.
Topic and Purpose
- To investigate a MOOC of social media content for PD related to initiation and implementation of social media tools for PD concepts transference to PK-12 educators and students.
Participants
- 112 Enrolled
- 100 did not complete (MOOC Option)
- 12 completed course and survey
- 10.75% response rate
Participants
- Examination of blogs, Facebook postings, and Twitter posts representative of participants who completed the MOOC course during the same timeframe as the 12 survey respondents
- Analysis revealed three themes: Social Media Tools, Reflective Writing, Transference to Practice
Questions to Consider
- Who is the audience?
- Why are we encouraging the use of MOOCs?
- How will we show evidence of learning?
- How will we encourage others to express their voice?
References and Resources
- Facebook: LU Social Media for Communication MOOC
- openeducation.blackboard.com: Search for Social Media Communications Tools for Educators
MY THOUGHT: K-12 could really benefit from all the MOOCs out there in Coursera, edX, Canvas, etc, by allowing teachers to gain PD credit for completing them!
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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.
