#NRC01PL A Personal Learning #MOOC

…for your consideration. Stephen Downes explains in his post on Half an Hour 

This course should interest self-paced learners, ELL instructors, other educators and more advanced English learners. Stephen Downes' Personal Learning MOOC runs February 22-April 8 (7 weeks) and

...explores the topic of learning in three ways: first, through an examination of research and development issues related to the topic; second, through interaction with a personal learning environment (specifically: LPSS) to take the course; and third, through activities supporting the development of a personal learning environment at a conceptual level. 

Course objectives: participants will develop an appreciation of different models of online course delivery, ranging from the traditional LMS through connectivist MOOCs to potential future models of personal learning and performance support.

#NRC01PL Course Registration now open: https://openedx.lpss.me

A look at Massive Online Open Courses

…also called MOOCs. The video below is a VOA Special English Education Report. You can subscribe to Special English videos and also follow on Facebook

A class with tens or even hundreds of thousands of students might sound like a teacher's bad dream. But a big idea in higher education these days is the massive open online course, or MOOC. Some universities offer free, non-credit MOOCs available to anyone in the world. Others charge for courses and provide credits. The idea is still developing.

Learning about MOOCs

vcrary has shared a Delicious stack with you. A stack is a collection of links and comments around a theme. "Has anyone in the study group checked out MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses? A number of them would be good learning experiences for those at upper intermediate and advanced English levels. The Coursera course I recommended is one. As I come across them, I will post others that seem suitable...." Learning about MOOCs 40 links stacked by stranack | 78 views Cheers, Team Delicious Find us on: Delicious blog / Twitter / Facebook

Fantasy and Science Fiction:The Human Mind, Our Modern World

Here's a free online course that might suit more advanced learners, I'd say high intermediate through advanced. The course would be good reading, writing and listening practice. If the syllabus seems overwhelming, you can join just to follow and doing what you can manage. There are many students from around the world ~ more non-native than native speakers and many there to practice their English. 


We understand the world — and our selves — through stories. Then some of those hopes and fears become the world.

About the Course
Fantasy is a key term both in psychology and in the art and artifice of humanity. The things we make, including our stories, reflect, serve, and often shape our needs and desires. 

A Language Learning MOOC for English

I wrote about MOOCs (☜ watch the video) or Massive Open Online Courses a while back when I was taking the PLE/PLN course - a MOOC called PLENK (for Personal Learning Environments and Knowledge Networks). Remember all the PLE and PLN graphics? Back then that we could adapt the ideas here for an open online study group. Now someone is doing just that, although a class rather than a study group.

What do you think?

Read the post, think about it and let me know. Then we can start planning how to do it.

"A MOOC course structure seems to usually be centered on topics such as online learning, teaching practices (M-learning), learning about connectivisim, or other such related fields as education and e-learning. Adapting the MOOC structure for some topic not related to the field of education itself would pose some challenges considering the participants would likely not be comprised mainly of educators or even people with an affinity for Distance Education technology and innovation. As others have pointed out, the effectiveness of a MOOC structure is partially dependent on the subject matter; not all subjects lend themselves to this style of information presentation. However, some especially do. Language Learning might be ideal for this type of course design.

Since being introduced to the MOOC earlier this year, I have often thought about how a Language MOOC might play out. This post is an explanation of why I think Language Learning suits the MOOC structure"

A Language Learning MOOC #EFL #ESL