Mooc Massive Open Online Communities

¶ … Knight & Casilli (2012): "in today's world, learning can look very different from how it was traditionally imagined. Learning has evolved from simple 'seat time' within schools to extend across multiple contexts, experiences, and interactions" (Knight & Casilli 2012). Learning has grown increasingly democratic as elite institutions like Harvard and MIT now offer their courses online, for all persons to access and experience. All that is needed is an open mind and a willingness to learn.

However, despite the expansion of online learning, there can be no doubt that an elite education still conveys substantial social advantages. A critical component of admittance to a competitive institution of learning is high SAT scores. However, SAT preparatory courses and materials can be extremely costly. With this in mind, I would suggest developing a series of YouTube videos in which an online network of high school and first-year college students who 'aced' their SATs offer free instruction on various components of preparing for this critical exam.

This video series could provide an invaluable service to low-income students both in the U.S. And internationally, providing high-quality test preparation without the cost of a Princeton Review course. For the students who provided the instruction, this could also be beneficial: they could include this on their college resumes or work resumes as volunteer experiences and gain the ability to be a teacher even before leaving college.

For students who are not low-income this instruction could also be beneficial, as sometimes a peer perspective on a standardized exam can be more useful than one provided by an adult instructor. Students who were successful at increasing their scores could post feedback in the YouTube comments section and even apply via video to become instructors themselves.

Progress could be measured as well via the comments on the YouTube page, as students watching the videos for instruction could post what strategies worked and did not work for them, as well as how their scores on practice tests were affected by watching different videos. References Knight, E. & Casilli, C. (2012). Mozilla open badges: Educause Open Causes. Retrieved from: http://www.educause.edu/library/resources/case-study-6-mozilla-open-badges Activity 2 The community of practice I am involved in is an online message board and website called Serious Eats.

The website itself posts content such as recipes, restaurant recommendations, information about food, and other bits of news relevant to 'foodies' all over. There is a 'Talk' section which invites members of the community to discuss site-related information, to share or ask questions about recipes, or talk about food in general. The section is subdivided based upon the subject matter of the food-related issues (there are separate sections for sweets, cooking, food-related media and so forth).

Frequent posters get to know one another, based upon starting interesting discussion threads or making a contribution to other discussion threads. The members of the community have a wide range of backgrounds and eating habits. Some are accomplished home cooks (or restaurant chefs) while others are students looking for 'hacks' for their dorm room cuisine. Some are devoted omnivores while others are vegans.

Some take pleasure in downscale as well as upscale foods (there was a recent 'thread' about Arby's) while others are more stereotypical, snobbish foodies who love exotic cheeses. The original intention of the forum's creators was to encourage return traffic to the website.