Another week has ended and we are three quarters through the second block on MOOCs and community cultures.

My course on songwriting is going really well and I have started writing my first lyrics according to the structural framework provided in the course. It will be interesting to see how the elements will come together further down the line.

My lifestream this week once more had a focus on MOOCs. After last week’s news that the tech industry is accrediting Coursera courses I was drawn to this article via Jin’s tweet which is a fascinating in-depth analysis of the MOOC industry from a couple of months ago. While the jury is still out on whether MOOCs can create a sustainable business and stay relevant in the marketplace, it is great to observe the creativity with which this nascent industry is coming up with experimental business models.

As my previous how to manual was well received by my colleagues I followed it up this week with another little guide on how to make your lifestream more effective with the help of tags which I also announced on Twitter. As the lifestream grows it can look a little cluttered at first sight after a little while. Tags can help to put some order back into things.

Lastly, my colleague Ed tweeted a fascinating network analysis of reddit which analysed 84 million comments by 200 thousand people. It gives a very real overview of what topics are of interest and are being discussed within the reddit community.
Analysing large datasets to generate understanding is one of the main approaches in artificial intelligence and this topic ties really well into our first block and likely the third one too. I’m already looking forward to it.