Organizing a MOOC study group is an interesting small group challenge (some of my interests are in small group psychology and education). My reply only concerns virtual study groups, and I’m coming at this from a theoretical learning and small group psychology viewpoint. Let’s make the analogy that we do some ‘transfer learning’ for how large academic conferences are setup after the plenary lectures are given and apply that here: namely, people go into subgroup topic lectures, workshops, or small group discussions after the main lecture. The following is how we could do that for a MOOC.
Observations/Challenges for a MOOC small group:
- Different levels of knowledge
- Different goals for accomplishing each week
- Each person progresses differently over time during the course
- Temporal variability in when people can attend
Recommendations:
- Meaningful groupings of people likely revolve around: a) common levels of knowledge or b) common goals for the week.
- At the end of each lesson we formulate virtual fast.AI rooms centered around some common shared interest: a) discussing an academic paper (beginner, intermediate, advanced); b) creating a prototype based on the lesson; c) doing a review of the lesson for people with less experience, perhaps led by someone with advanced knowledge. For example, after the lesson is finished I could create a new topic entitled “Fast.AI virtual room proposal: discussing the ethical implications of AI (beginner)”. People can like or reply in the topic for that proposal which is directly related to the lecture that week.
- 24hrs after each lecture, people “join” into each of these “virtual rooms” to hash-out the specifics and decide on the pathway forward.
- After the next lecture, everything resets. If you enjoy a particular person’s company then you connect and join the same virtual room next time.