Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs for short) are emerging into the educational marketplace amidst a great deal of contention. A quick look at an issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education often finds passionate discussions on all sides of the argument (a search for the term MOOC on the Chronicle’s site reveals 411 hits, 330 of which are from the past year). I certainly have my concerns, which include questions about how students are intended to demonstrate mastery of their subject matters in such a forum. From an educational perspective (rather than an economic one) this seems to be one of the major problems with MOOCs. How do instructors determine whether the students in such courses are actually mastering the content? In an educational environment where any one can join with hundreds or thousands of others how can real feedback occur to push students to develop better understandings of the subject matter and how can that understanding ultimately be measured? A satisfactory answer to that question has yet to be discovered, and that is one of the issues that impacts the output from MOOCs, right now they don’t provide any kind of educational credential. Until some kind of actual ways of determining mastery of content begins to emerge, it seems to me that MOOCs will continue function as more in-depth versions of the kind of materials one can get from outlets like The Teaching Company, which packages course lectures and sells them in various media. I don’t think that is ultimately a bad thing, it helps people come into contact with new ideas, engage with interesting topics, and is a step towards a more informed general public. The fact that MOOCs are open access is wonderful, making them far more egalitarian than the expensive package lectures on the market. But as of yet, I do not think it is actually college work, because it lacks the rigor of actual college work.

But there are still interesting things going on with MOOCs and I do like at least part of their mission. I like making educational material open to everyone (I really like the movement towards quality open-access journals that is currently underway) and I like that MOOCs are often interdisciplinary and can operate outside the specific course structures and topics that majors sometimes demand. A case in point is the following MOOC, one which I am now enrolled entitled “Society, Science, Survival: Lessons from The Walking Dead.” From the course description:

From understanding social identities to modeling the spread of disease, this eight-week course will span key science and survival themes using AMC’s The Walking Dead as its basis. Four faculty members from the University of California, Irvine will take you on an inter-disciplinary academic journey deep into the world of AMC’s The Walking Dead, exploring the following topics:

• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—is survival just about being alive?
• Social order and structures—from the farm and the prison to Woodbury
• Social identity, roles, and stereotyping—as shown through leaders like Rick and the Governor
• The role of public health in society—from the CDC to local community organizations
• The spread of infectious disease and population modeling—swarm!
• The role of energy and momentum in damage control—how can you best protect yourself?
• Nutrition in a post-apocalyptic world—are squirrels really good for you?
• Managing stress in disaster situations—what’s the long-term effect of always sleeping with one eye open?

Registration is going on now, and the course officially starts next week. Here’s a write-up from The Chronicle.

I thought this might be an interesting way of seeing what the actual user experience of such a course looks like. I’m also interested in being exposed to areas that I really don’t know much about, and I’m curious about how the instructors work from the material this is centered on. And y’know, Zombies.

I’ll be posting about some of my experiences as a student in a MOOC over the next few months.