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

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Links and Downloads

Resources available from the session:

“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.”

 

The Canvas Network Course “General Semantics: An Approach to Effective Language Behavior” (public access)