This definitely requires coffee. So my official start is tomorrow morning (CST U.S.).
But here’s the setup.
For the past few days I’ve been noodling how to tweak the design of my course – which deals with enterprise social networking and knowledge sharing – and include others in a larger learning experience. It was serendipitous that I joined in on a recorded conversation about #etmooc this month as well. ETMOOC set a standard for designing and facilitating courses out in the open. As Alec Couros explains during our Google Hangout reflection – the whole thing was really designed in an open Google Community by a number of contributors. Then it was launched and facilitated using co-learning and working-out-in-the-open as foundations.
Since then, I’ve bookmarked inspirations by others – like fellow ETMOOCer Christina Hendricks – who have experimented with changing the way we work in higher education by openly sharing work-in-progress on syllabus development.
So off I go in that same direction. Work to be shared manana.
I’ll be working through a couple of questions over the next week:
- What is a good design for the “open” part of my course (in which the goal is to integrate other enterprise social networking enthusiasts with students enrolled in my face-to-face class)?
- How to I integrate research and activities on idea management into the content of the course? I know this is a topic that deserves attention. The question is how many topics I can effectively cover, given the time constraints of a 10-week quarter.
Jeff Merrell 
Hi Jeff. Jump into the Partner pod. We’re talking about how we can help you with this.
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Jeff:
The Connected Courses (#ccourses) MOOC seems to offer a good model here (similar to what we saw in #etmooc): new topics once every two weeks so participants have a chance to review, reflect upon, and absorb material while interacting with each other. Interactions online seem to drop off toward the end of the second week, so it appears we have just enough time to move through what we’re exploring before we move on to building upon what we’ve learned while exploring new material and themes.
Hope that helps, and hope to keep up a bit with what you’re doing in the new course.
–Paul
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Thanks, Paul. Agree – there is definitely something about that pacing (every two weeks) in the open course structure. Which is the bit I am noodling some. On the one hand, I will have my traditional course going along over 10 weeks. There, the expectation is that students will be spending 8-10 hours per week on assignments, readings, etc. If I then overlay an open segment on top of that – it’s different pacing. Am thinking out loud here…maybe the open piece is 6 weeks long, which gives me 3 two-week cycles.
Honestly I think you are hitting on the one subtle design part that is either #1 or #1a in importance.
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