I
feel so fortunate for choosing this course which focuses on massive open online
courses. It is maybe the only course which has concrete content and one
particular topic I have taken in the University of Alabama. I like it because
it is not abstract, and also it is about a popular and advanced way of
learning. The form of this course is quite fresh for me, and I never took a
course like that. The teacher helped students to build a community online
mainly through blog and also twitter. We read the readings and watched the
videos that our teacher provided us every week, and then we posted our own blogs
about what had we read and watched. We shared our opinions on blog and twitter,
which allow us to hear different voices about a same topic and to see how
diversity our perspectives are. It is so beneficial to read classmates’ posts
which give me new information, and the different angles of view among us let me
well rethink my opinions. Moreover, our teacher gave us many reading materials
which come from many different people with all kinds of ideas arranged by
different and gradually developed topics on MOOC. It helped me to see a whole
process of my opinion toward a thing, MOOC. I perceived that when you want to
judge something it is better to cumulate information about it as more as
possible and as comprehensive as possible. Actually, I found my opinion became
more mature and comprehensive toward MOOC through studying it from all kinds of
angles week by week. It taught me that be careful to make a judgment, because
things have many facets waiting for me to see. At last, I learned a lot of
technical things in this course that must be very useful in the future, like
Bookmark, Slideshare, Screenr, Survey Monkey, and so on.
In
this course, like I have mentioned I learned a lot through reading and watching
the materials that teacher gave us. I finished all of these readings and
videos. I really enjoyed them for their diversity content and also the reading
materials were not that long as the articles in journals. Therefore, I
carefully read them all, which allowed me to bring some great ideas into my
posts. I also saved some interesting videos into my laptop, because I want to
share them with my friends when I introduce MOOC to them.
Our discussions
in this course were mainly through blog and twitter. It was open, online
discussion. One advantage of this kind of discussion is that we can see other
people’s discussion besides our own discussion. Meanwhile, what is important is
all of the discussions can be saved online which allow us to retrospect
anytime. It also builds an online community of our classmates, even class over,
the community still exists. I read most of our classmates’ posts every week,
and I replied to the posts which I was more interested and resonating. I also
read all of the classmates’ discussions on blog. It is an interesting and
inspiring experience. I think Jim and Keith, especially, had some great
opinions on their blogs.
According
to the course requirement and my own interest, I signed up for a course about Chinese
history figure—The First Emperor of Qin on Coursera. It is the most interesting
history course I have ever taken. At the beginning, I felt stressful because it
seems I took one more course for this semester, but I did feel more and more
relaxed, for I found that I liked this course and it was freer in managing my
time to learn it. I watched the lectures on line and finished most of the
assignments, I missed two, actually. One of it is too hard to answer and the
other just need too much time to finish, honestly. Even though I missed the two
assignments, I think I learned a lot in this course through the lectures, and
discussions with classmates.
Based
on what I had learned about MOOCs and my own knowledge in intercultural communication,
I opened a micro- MOOC, Intercultural Communication on Coursesites. It is a
five-week course, and the first class is an introduction which helps students
to know what is intercultural communication, and why we learn it; and the
second, third, and forth class are respectively on three popular and basic
topics in intercultural communication. The fifth class is an integration and
case study that I will help students to bring all knowledge what they have
learned together to analyze one case from my own experience and also some
movies. The three topics I have chosen are very useful in daily life and which
are not abstract but interesting. It can attract students’ attention on and
interests in them. I provided the students many reading and watching materials;
and the way and the pace of learning was under my careful arrangement. I spend
a lot of time on choosing the study materials for them, for I hope I can give
them the most useful, inspiring and also interesting information. As to the
assignments, I believe I have clear purpose after careful consideration when I
gave them an assignment. I do think all of the assignments in my micro-MOOC are
useful and helpful for their understanding of intercultural communication. I
also tried to help students to build a community online through blog, and
motivate them to make best use of discussion board which can be a massive opinion
and information pool. After all, I hope what I have done are really helpful.
In
the end, I want to owe my sincere gratitude to my dear teacher Dr. Major, who
led me into the world of MOOC, and I also want to express my thankfulness to my
classmates who have had great discussions with me, who have spent their time on
reading my posts, and who have inspired me. By the way, I have signed up for a marketing course on Coursera last week, I think I like to continue using this learning platform to grab some knowledge after my graduation.
