It's been a couple of years to see the term MOOCs without reading any research about it. The article "The Emergence and Design of Massive Open Online Courses" by Dr. Bonk gives me a good opportunity to learn more about it.
Dave Cornier from the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada, introduced the term MOOC for the first time and the initial purpose of it was to attempt to provide unlimited participation in an educational experience via the Web (Bonk, 2018). Since very beginning, there are some controversy about the MOOC. One point they were debating was whether or not the MOOC was truly open. Later on, there are some similar ideas or platforms shew up, such as cMOOcs, xMoocS, and pMOOCs. Along with more and more Universities' involving, particularly those top ranking ones, there are more types of MOOCs emerged.
Interesting thing for us is to discuss the reason why instructional design and technology professionals should care about MOOCs. There are a couple of reasons mentioned in the article: they are asked to do so, more job opportunities, it could be a meaningful work, it could also related to other fields, and it's a good area that they can gain experiences (Bonk, 2018).
The process of the developing of MOOCs seems to similar as the Human Performance Improvement, which is defined as "the systematic process of linking business goals and strategies with the workforce responsible for achieving the goals" (Stolovitch, 2018). The term HPI, contains three key words, Human, Performance, and Improvement. In order to active HPI, HPT is what we use to achieve, which is also a key principle and tool for instructional designers (Stolovitch, 2018). It is also mentioned in another article by Stolovitch that HPT provides a good source and pathway from research and theory to practice (Stolotich, 2015). In this article, some other factors that could lead to performance improvement, such as job satisfaction, feedback -- particularly the immediate feedback, successful performance training, etc.
References:
Stolovitch, H. D. (2018). The development and evolution of human performance improvement. In R. A. Reiser & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (4th Ed.), (pp. 121-131). New York, NY: Pearson Education.
Stolovitch, H. D. (2015). Human performance technology: Research and theory to practice. Performance Improvement, 54(3).
Bonk, C. J., Lee. M. M., Reeves, T. C., & Reynolds, T. H. (2018). The emergence and design of massive open online courses. In R. A. Reiser & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (4th Ed.), (pp. 250-258). New York, NY: Pearson Education. Preprint available: http://www.publicationshare.com/3 or: http://publicationshare.com/pdfs/MOOCs_Reiser_book_by_Bonk_Reeves_Reynolds_Lee_Final_with_citation.pdf
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