Stephen Downes

Jeff Lebow, who managed an underground MOOCast during the summer's eduMOOC course, has changed the name to COOLcast: "Collaborative Open Online Learning." He writes, "I think MOOC's are great, but as we discussed on the final MOOCast, I'm not a fan of the name itself. Aside from just not liking the sound of the word, I see MOOC's as part of a larger movement toward educators and learners working together and sharing resources online." All very well, and he is of course free to focus on whatever he wants, but it prompted me to point out that MOOCs are not based on a principle of collaboration. I posted, "MOOCs and the connectivist approach to learning, as I have argued elsewhere, is by contrast 'cooperative'. There is no presumption of unity, order, shared goals or coherence. There's no sense of being 'in the group' or its opposite. If teams or groups form, they are tangential to the course, and not the core or essence of it."