By Wayne Hinson
A MOOC refers to a massive open online course and is a huge educational experiment as well as an enormous opportunity for learning. Several universities provide distanced learning (often using new and effective teaching methods enabled by digital technology) and enable students worldwide to enroll in any of hundreds of classes. Many courses attract literally hundreds of thousands of students – each — and make it possible for anyone in the world with Internet access to acquire a solid education. MOOCS are open to all and free. (Certificates may be associated with a fee, but courses are free.)
Here’s a bit of history…
Before the Digital Age, distance learning appeared in the form of correspondence courses and later radio and TV courses supported lifelong learning. In the early part of this century, online classes, popularly referred to as e-learning, became available and 2012 was coined “the year of the MOOC” by the New York Times. Several top universities collaborated to offer a broad array of courses and marketed them, including “Coursera”, which was founded by Stanford. Another collaboration of universities is called edX, founded by Harvard and MIT. Since 2012, edX has grown into a consortium of about 80 universities offering over 600 different courses in many disciplines with 5 million students taking these online classes around the world!
Local residents have many learning opportunities including our local Woodstock Learning Lab, (http://thelearninglabwoodstock.com/) led by Ron Miller as well as Osher, (http://osher.dartmouth.edu/) offered by Dartmouth College in Hanover. These classes reflect traditions of lecture and discussion with students in a classroom setting.
What NWPL is offering is a hybrid. We are encouraging patrons to enroll in a MOOC, read the book or watch the video on your own time. Then, come to the library and participate in a discussion about the material being studied. This allows everyone to learn at their own pace, read and watch videos over the course of weeks and then meet in the library to discuss the class. That’s it!
We started our first MOOC this month and a group of us enrolled in the Harvard edX MOOC: Robert Darnton’s The History of the Book in 17th- and 18th-Century Europe. (https://www.edx.org/course/book-history-book-17th-18th-century-harvardx-hum1-4x)
A group of us read at our own time, during the day, the middle of the night, whenever the time is right, then we gather in the library, on Wednesdays to discuss the topic @10:30 AM.
Join us for our current MOOC class, led by Wayne Hinson or pick another class and encourage your friends to join you. Contact Kerry Rosenthal who will dedicate library meeting space for your class discussion.
See you at the library!
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