I am excited to be part of the e-Learning Ecologies MOOC which has started today. My University (UCT) in SA has just opened enrollments for its first MOOC (see Humanising Healthcare). I work for the unit responsible for the planning behind this UCT MOOC and will be joining the team on some of the curriculum design planning on the next phase of MOOCs.

I enjoy MOOC-ing about because I don't just get to learn about topics relevant to my professional development, but I also get to engage in experiential learning related to various platforms and tools through using them in various online spaces as a student. This impacts on my outlook of educational technologies and e-Learning at various levels: as a practitioner, scholar and researcher.

What attracted me to the e-Learning Ecologies MOOC:

1) The facilitators. I first encountered the work of Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis during my honours thesis and have come back to their work on multiliteracies over the years. I am interested in engaging with their new work on affordances. I see this MOOC as scaffolding this process for me.

2) The assessment topic (practical case study) is similar to courses I am involved in on emerging technologies for Higher Education practitioners. I look forward to doing the assessment to get a new perspective on how this kind of more practical engagement with technology is taught. This will help me to get a new perspective on my own teaching on this topic.

3) The social media interventions that are part of the course. I am interested in trying out various combinations of tools and platforms as part of the course to see how they work together. I think this will help me gain a new understanding of MOOCs where I feel like sometimes the platform is seen as a holding space for content such as videos. I expect to see more community engagement with this kind of social media-fied MOOC and imagine this resulting in a powerful network and community of practice spanning scholars and practitioners.

4) Finally, I would like to attempt to do the signature track and hope to have it funded by my unit. I received a small start-up teaching grant and therefore in deciding to go this route, I am also making a claim for the validity of MOOCs for professional development in Higher Education. 

I will be posting updates as I MOOC about and look forward in collaborating and networking with others.