Not quite a course, but more than a conversation

Coming soon: A good, draft design for opening up my Winter quarter course #msloc430. And I’m going to ask for feedback (as in, would anyone participate?). I am at that point where I need to put structure to the whole event and see what people think.

But let me share a design bit that I am noodling.

One of the challenges of what I am trying to address is finding that good space between a course and a conversation.

I am not quite offering an open course. No badges. No certificates. No “instructor” feedback. But I’d like to offer more than just open conversation. I’ve had success with Tweet chats associated with my course. And they’re great. But I want to build something more than a one-hour conversation.

What does that look like?

I think that the topic-every-two-weeks pacing is right. And I really believe that providing a problem challenge is key: How might we combine meta-use-case models of networked engagement (MOOCs, crowdsourcing, communities-of-practice, working out loud, etc.) in innovative configurations to address organizational challenges? I can imagine a cMOOC style course design to do this.

But that design would be a course. A separate event that happens to run along the same time as my enrolled-student course. Two streams. Lightly integrated.

So where I am at, at the moment, is thinking about how you design something where “open” participants of different experience levels and expertise can:

1. Weave in and out of three, two-week topic segments. Maybe they don’t need week 1 or 2. But that wouldn’t matter.
2. Whichever of the first two week segments they participate in, participants get some value. Like dropping in on a live, enthusiastic conversation with a group of people.
3. Be motivated to participate in the brainstorming, let’s-innovate-around-a-problem section that is the final two week segment.

I’ll share my thoughts on how to do this in my next post.