sowecontinuewithourthemeofgettingthemoocoffthe.docVIP

So we continue with our theme of getting the MOOC off the ground with our next session, and joining us to talk about their three different experiences in designing and implementing MOOCs to support student learning is Seth Anderson, Academic Technology Consultant at Duke University, Amy Collier, Director for Technology and Teaching at the Office of the Vice Provost for Online Learning, Stanford University, and Cassandra Volpe Horii, Director of Teaching and Learning Programs at Cal Tech. Seth, Amy and Cassandra, welcome to the focus session and thanks for joining us today. Please begin. Thanks so much. And we’ve enjoyed very much following the conversation both in the Chat window and on Twitter, so please keep that up as we go through. Since there are three of us, we are going to be moving pretty fast through three different sections. We’re going to talk about what is unique about online learning and MOOCs. We’re going to look at sound design principles for a course design in MOOCs. And then we’re going to look at organizational structures and ways to support MOOCs at your institutions. And we do have a poll down there at the bottom, so please go ahead and fill that out as you are getting ready to listen to what we’re going to talk about. So Kurt Vonnegut once said that I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. And out on the edge you can see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center. And you’ve already heard in this session that universities across the globe have been offering online courses in programs for decades, and even MOOCs in their earlier forms have been around since the early and mid aughts. Today’s MOOCs are taking more and more faculties and universities to the edge to reach learners that they hadn’t or maybe couldn’t reach from the center. Today’s massive online courses reaching large numbers of students from varied backgrounds present a unique design challenge. They challenge our long-held beliefs about