by Melissa Robertson, Learning Technologies Support Specialist, Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning, VIU

I am in the second week of my very first MOOC, History and Future of (Mostly) Higher Education. It certainly has been a learning experience for me.

I have just finished Week 1 and am near the middle of week 2. So far, I am finding the content really interesting, but the navigation really frustrating. The look and layout was foreign to me and I had a hard time focusing at first.

At the same time, I was fascinated by many things within the course, from its setup and organization, to the format and the content.

The first week was very eventful and the course kept me busy. There were several activities that I had to complete and I did appreciate the tracking, especially as the content is very compartmentalized. I also really appreciated the weekly overview because I was able to keep track of everything I was required to complete.

I really struggled to find my way through the course and the activities themselves. Each activity is housed in its own “module” and nowhere in the course is there a linear flow or table of contents – like in VIULearn. Things really seem scattered and I feel like I am always moving from one area to another to find what I am looking for.  It has been a challenge orienting myself to this new platform, but I am getting more accustomed to it.

I have to say I wasn’t too impressed with the quiz, even though the instructor is a critic of standardized testing, these questions bordered on ridiculous and I had to wonder what the point was. It did not reinforce my learning nor did I really have to think. You basically could check all the boxes or all of the above and you would get the question right. I was especially confused that I had 10 tries to get 70%, and it gives you the answers after you take it. With an initial score of 14.8/15 – due to not knowing what the “old twitter hash-tag for the course was”, I realized I could probably take the quiz without having to watch the videos or do the readings. I wouldn’t do that, but some people might.

I have learned a great deal just in the first week alone. Did you know that the Founding Fathers of the U.S. Constitution feared the impact of literacy on democracy? They felt the novel would cause distraction, ruin your memory, deplete your morality, make you vulnerable to sexual predators and would make you prone to anarchy!

These fears seem familiar and are often the same fears associated with modern day technology. Interestingly enough, I have learned that almost every generation has feared the new and innovative technology that emerges for the future generations that every generation seems to fear the technology of the next.

I am great lover of the whiteboard – one fascinating little fact I also learned is that Yale students rioted over a new radical technology – the whiteboard – which I found rather amusing, especially given my great passion for whiteboards.

I look forward to this week’s topic: The iPod Experiment: Or, Learning vs. Education