Day Three - 500 Word Challenge

Day Three

Are you taking a MOOC Reggie?

Why MOOC?    Why not watch Reggie Perrin?

In yesterday’s post Slowbow made the following comment in response to my post about the MOOCs I had chosen to take.

“Hmm. I understand your desire to do things purposefully. But, if you don't mind my meddlesomeness, what is the higher level goal? To what end will these MOOCs contribute? I won't hesitate to state my opinion that if there is no greater goal you might as well turn on the TV and watch reruns of Reginald Perrin.”

I think I understand where the question is coming from in terms of what Slowbow calls purpose and so I will try first today to address his questions.

I want to start with the second question asked “To what end will these MOOCs contribute?” and then move on to the higher level question.

So why these MOOCs, what do they contribute?  Well at one level that is really easy to answer, my job involves training educators and it is therefore essential that I stay current in the trends and ideas associated with learning, which is what all three of the MOOCs listed are really about. They represent Continuing Professional Development.

At a second level, I am fortunate to get invited to speak on educational topics, for example in April a conference will pay for my flights, hotel and food for a three day conference where I will speak for one hour on the future of higher education.  Thus using free online courses to keep myself current on trends seems to me at least a reasonable return on my time.

Connected to that is a duty and responsibility to stay current as a professional educator, just as I would expect a doctor, lawyer or accountant to stay current in their own fields.

A life as a professional learner.  

 I think our world has changed and today we have to go on learning throughout our lives.  There was a time I think in education when it was considered that learning was mostly over and your role shifted to transferring the knowledge you had acquired into the heads on the next generation.  

 That is no longer true in my opinion.  We all have to be lifelong learners and I enjoy continuing to learn and I honestly think I will be taking courses of one type or another until my dying day, because I enjoy knowing more about the world and the more I know the more I realize that I do not know.  I do not do it to just walk the talk, I do it because I love it.

Higher Purpose?

Which I guess bring me to the higher purpose part.  What is the purpose of life?  Sure there is the sexual imperative of passing on genes and thus trying to ensure the survival of the species. But what else gives us purpose?  For some that might be found in religion and some others seek it in the accumulation of as much wealth and stuff as they can in their lifetimes.   Neither of these work very well for me at all.

For me life is about learning and in some ways I do feel that life will keep trying to teach us the lessons we need to learn until we have taken them on board.  I think maybe that is what Jagger and Richards were getting at the lyrics of “You can’t always get want you want”.

I also want to clarify here that not all the courses I take and things I read relate to work, far from it.  I have taken courses in history, storytelling, cyber security, hacking and the dark web and in propaganda in politics.   Why?   Because I am interested and want to learn more about these things, more than I want to watch a rerun of Reggie Perrin even though that was very funny the first time of watching. 

   

There is also a social aspect that I think is interesting and worth mentioning.   For example on the FutureLearn platform I have now started to meet the same people online taking those very diverse courses listed about.  Many are older, some in fact retired and they are from all over the world.   In this case I think MOOCs do fuction in a similar way to the MMORPGs from which the name is derived.  They have become social places where people ask things like “Are you going to be taking the course next month in xyz?”

Some may feel that this is a sad reflection of not having enough friends In Real Life (IRL) – and how I hate that tag anyway, as if online was not real.  For in my opinion it is a reality, just a different one, but that is I guess a different discussion.

I am now starting to feel as if this post is defensive and I do not want it to sound that way – as I do not feel the need to defend how I choose to spend my time.  

This post has rolled into over 800 words today.  You may not agree with me on everything, or anything and that is fine, feel free to tell me in the comments, though I cannot guarantee a response like this one for my friend Slowbow.

Till tomorrow –

Abide