Our First MOOC
Conference Presentation, InstructureCon June 2014
Following are materials made available for my session at the InstructureCon 2014 conference titled, “Our First MOOC,” in which I share the story of creating and delivering a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). The referenced MOOC was General Semantics: An Approach to Effective Language Behavior offered on the Canvas Network during Jan-Feb 2014, presented by Mary Lahman (Manchester University), Greg Thompson (BYU), and me.
Slide Deck
[metaslider id=”3014″]
Links and Downloads
Resources available from the session:
- Full Powerpoint with video clips (33 mb). This is the complete Powerpoint from the conference session, including slides not presented. It includes the two video clips with Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs.
- Full Powerpoint without video clips (3 mb). The same Powerpoint without the two video clips. (See below for just the clips.)
- PDF version of the Powerpoint, 4 slides/page (6 mb). This is the same Powerpoint saved as a PDF with 4 slides per page suitable for printing.
- Emails received from course completers in response to request for comments about MOOCs (pdf). Prior to attending the conference I emailed everyone who completed the General Semantics MOOC and asked them to offer suggestions or comments regarding their MOOC experiences. This file contains those emails without the names of the emailers.
“Blue Box”
In this clip from the 1995 documentary “Triumph of the Nerds” by Bob Cringely, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs talk about their early “device to cheat the phone company” they dubbed “Blue Box.” Consider how MOOCs, now in their early days, are similar to the Blue Box in their ability to command and utilize a world-wide infrastructure for (virtually) no cost.
“Bicycle”
The next clip is from a 1980 Steve Jobs’ presentation in which he compares the new personal computer to a bicycle. Like his comments about the Blue Box, I think the bicycle/computer analogy can be extended to MOOCs as a generalized “tool … to amplify an inherent ability.”