MOOCs and Correspondence Courses

This morning, there was a Letter to the Editor in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled, "MOOCs: Glorified Online Correspondence Courses?" Now, I've spent a lot of time over the last year thinking about MOOCs and have given several presentations on the implications of MOOCs for community colleges. I'm a big fan and I think that MOOCs have many appropriate applications for both learners and teachers. They are not, of course, exactly like taking a face to face class with a small group of people on a formal college campus.  That, according to most critics, is their problem. This really annoys me. Like any  online learning, the goal of a MOOC should not be to identically replicate the face to face, campus experience. We already have that, why duplicate it online? The goal of any online instruction, whether traditional or MOOC, should be to move beyond what we can effectively do in the classroom, taking advantage of technology to move teaching and learning to the next level.

Ok, rant finished.I generally don't read articles about MOOCs anymore because they just make me mad. But this one caught my eye. Why? Because, this time last year, Seattle Central launched its first MOOC on the Canvas Network.  I was the instructional designer for the course. Seattle Central is the only community college in Washington still offering correspondence courses. I think correspondence courses, done well, have a lot to offer learners. The learners think so to - we have robust enrollments in our correspondence courses every quarter.

So, last year, we took two of our correspondence courses and converted them, essentially unchanged, into MOOCs. They were also a big success, with hundreds of students enrolling each term. Our instructor, Nate Weston, just won an award for his work on the MOOCs.  So, I was curious to see what the Chronicle letter writer had to say about correspondence and MOOCs.

Sadly, it was nothing. Correspondence was never mentioned again after the title. The letter went on to be exactly the type of MOOC idiocy that I try to avoid by not reading articles on MOOCs.
So, don't bother reading that letter. Do rethink old misconceptions about any kind of learning that does not exactly duplicate the campus experience. Rather than asking yourself, "How can I do this thing that I usually do in the classroom online?", ask yourself "How can I take advantage of the tools I have available to help the students meet the same outcomes in innovative ways?" That question is bound to have a better answer, for both your students and yourself.