After extensive exploration within my MOOC these past few weeks, I have come to realize that the method that is used for communication during the course is either highly ineffective or perhaps not attractive.The main form of communication or discussion was the online forum. When browsing through the forums, I noticed a trend of comments and posts slowing down as the weeks progressed.This could be for a number of reasons but participants have clearly lost interest in the material or perhaps they have gotten tired of each other.
The irony of it all is that the course I selected was about web 2.0 tools. Web 2.0 tools are those software programs that allow for more content creation and collaboration among users (e.g. Facebook, twitter, blogs). It seemed a huge disappointment that even though we were presented with these wonderful tools for communication and community building, we still had to leave our suggestions and comments on a forum. It was boring to be honest.
There was one opportunity that people were able to community through a web 2.0 tool. This tool was padlet which was a open digital canvas where people could leave artifacts and sticky notes, videos and images. It was a great tool with quite a few people using it but the opportunity was missed to use this as the community building tool. It was only used once. What a shame!
In the campustechnology article by Robert McGuire, it is stated that forums do not offer the opportunity to thread together ideas. Ideas are kept very isolated and can at times get lost in amongst the rest of the large threads of comments. There is also no way for topics to be linked or shared amongst the participants. In the Fig 1 below, participants in an online course are discussing their views of a particular web 2.0 tool but instead of all views put on a single thread people posted on separate ones. It was really hard to navigate and find all the comments to ascertain what peoples thoughts were on the topic.
Fig 1. Participants leaving software reviews in the forums as separate threads.
I found this all too prevalent in my MOOC. The forums just seemed like an after thought at times and no other meaningful effort was made to building a real online community. It is sad because there was great potential here.
What could be the alternative to the forum? Is is possible for a MOOC to grow out of it and venture into territory more akin to collaboration, creativity and community building? I believe social media in this case is key.