I belong to a computer user club for which I often give presentations (as well as organising others to do so). This month, I assigned myself the task to find out what was going on in the online learning world.
I spent many years of my career in alternative education programs, distance learning in all sorts of formats from TV to radio to audio- and video-teleconferencing, mostly pre-Internet, so I was curious to find out what had happened in the last 25 years. Just as I was leaving that role back then, online was emerging. One of my first forays into online teaching was organising a first year college English subject to be delivered to students in Moscow during the Glasnost period. It was just a glimmer of what was to come not long after with the emergence of the World Wide Web.
My research and preparation for the talk last week was an eye-opener. But I shouldn’t have been all that surprised.
Here is the PDF of my talk slides, complete with links. If you’ve wondered what a MOOC* is, you’ll find it here, along with free, fee, formal, informal, a range of countries and levels, in almost any subject you may have wanted to learn about on your own time (mostly) just for the love of learning it.
If you have a favourite or more to promote, feel free to leave a comment.
*MOOC: Massive Open Online Course