5 reasons to do a MOOC & 5 reasons not to

I gave a presentation last week with the above title. In my preparation it wavered between 10 reasons to do one, and 10 reasons NOT to do one, which indicates my ambiguous take on MOOCs, so I settled for half and half.

By "do a MOOC" here I mean for an instructor or an institution to offer one, rather than a learner take one, although you can infer some of the learner reasons also. Later in the week I followed the uniteMOOC session up at Newcastle via Twitter and some very similar responses were being given there. My presentation is below, but actually, you'd be better off looking at Sheila MacNeill's splendid Prezi on the subject, which was part of the Newcastle event.

 

5 reasons to do a MOOC & 5 reasons not to from Martin Weller

Comments

[Sheilmcn]

Like both those lists!

Thanks for sharing the link to my prezi Martin. The Newcastle event was really good as it gave an opportunity for discussion about why to run a MOOC from an institutional perspective.

Sheila

[Techczech]

I would add a couple more good reasons to do a MOOC.

1. To contribute to the public conversation on a topic.
2. To contribute resources for the public good.
3. Increase engagement and professional development of staff (may not apply in all contexts)

We just concluded a MOOC on Inclusive Technologies for Reading and the blog posts and videos the participants created are a genuine contribution to the information available on the internet. We even tried to create an eBook as a part of it using Booki.cc but didn't quite have the staying power.

I would also question how costly a MOOC actually is. The talking heads MOOCs from Udacity and Coursera must cost loads to develop but a connectivist MOOC should cost not much more than a regular course to run or develop. Certainly not the second time after the initial additional cost of figuring out new ways of doing things..