January MOOCs: Teaching with Video and Teaching with Moodle

If you’re on the lookout for some professional development in 2017, there are a couple of MOOCs starting in January that may be of interest. MOOC means ‘Massive Online Open Course’. They are usually free, ran through some kind of ‘Virtual Learning Environment’ platform and have participants enrolling from all over the world. See our earlier post on MOOCs to find out more about what they usually entail.

1. Teaching with Moodle – starts 2 January 2017

I took part in this MOOC back in September and found it extremely useful as someone who was new to using Moodle from a staff perspective. This MOOC is perfect for those who are either new to Moodle or new to lecturing and using a VLE. However, even if you’re familiar with the software, you can use this course to find out more about functionality you’ve never used before and learn something new that can be applied to your teaching. The September iteration had people enrolled from all over the world; educators and teachers from Primary Education right through to Higher Education. Teachers, academics, learning technologists, librarians and other professionals all learning together about what Moodle can do to enhance teaching practice.
The workload for this MOOC was very manageable – about 2-3 hours a week for four weeks. As with all courses, it is possible to spend more time on this if you find further reading that interests you or want to spend more time playing around in your ‘sandpit’ Moodle course. You can also earn some Open Badges for taking part in the course and completing it.
For more information about the Teaching with Moodle MOOC and to sign up, visit the learnmoodle website. You can also follow the #learnmoodle hashtag and the @LearnMoodle account on Twitter. There will be another version of this MOOC running in September 2017, too.

2. What and How to Teach with Video – starts 13 January 2017

Emma and I have both signed up for this MOOC, beginning on 13 January and running for four weeks, and we think it will be invaluable when it comes to advising tutors and other staff here at York St John. This course is being taught through a platform called European Multiple MOOC Aggregator (EMMA) and is led by Jack Koumi, who spent 22 years working for the BBC Open University producing audio, video and interactive multimedia for Maths, Science and Media Design courses. Jack has since worked as a freelance consultant, producing media content and training up others to do the same all over the world.
The four weeks of this course cover a different topic each week:
Week 1 – The ‘what’ of teaching with video; learning outcomes that video can achieve powerfully. Part one will look at 34 possible roles for video in teaching.
Week 2 – The pedagogic design principles that will enable teachers to use video to its full potential. The ‘how’ of teaching with video, which will look at around 30 different pedagogic design principles.
Week 3 –  Putting what you’ve learned so far into practice by producing a screenplay for  a video, which will be peer-evaluated by others on the course.
Week 4 – In the final week, you will produce a second draft of your screenplay which will be evaluated by the course tutors.
The weekly activities will be supplemented by online discussion with course participants and tutors and, if you’ve never studied an online course before, will be a great example of what is possible when putting together online resources for your existing modules at YSJ.

 
To sign up for the What and How to Teach with Video MOOC, visit the EMMA website.
If you are planning on participating in either of the MOOCs mentioned in this post and would like to write a guest blog post to feature on the TEL blog, please let us know! If you come across any other MOOCs or free online courses that you think we should be promoting, please don’t hesitate to let us know by emailing tel@yorksj.ac.uk or tweeting us @YSJTEL. 
Rosie
Blog post featured image from Eko Priyanto Lo on Flickr Creative Commons.