Overall the Community Empowerment MiniMOOC was a positive experience. It showed how a variety of programmes and applications can be used to support learning on-line. As a result I've now used Twitter, Google+, Skype and Disqus as well as previous use of Facebook. The format was to run weekly webinars with an input from a variety of practitioners followed by threaded discussion and in between each weekly session an individual task to complete.
The main challenges were getting used to the technicalities (some people had difficulty connecting due to unfamiliarity, poor waveband, employer's firewall, etc) and encouraging people to actively participate. For me this last point is the crunch issue. There were up to 40 individuals participating across all the MOOC sessions but in any one session only a handful moved from' lurking' to active participation. It is difficult to get many people to commit themselves to commenting in discussion threads and there is clearly a need to develop strategies for supporting, provoking and facilitating participation. This is an issue requiring ongoing consideration and I want to use this blog to follow progress.
The MOOC concluded with a face to face seminar which brought together a number of the active participants and the university staff. There was more input, group exercises and discussion around community empowerment CLD practice. This was enjoyable, instructive and consolidated the group amongst those who attended. But for me, this was ultimately an opportunity missed, as attention now turns to a new MOOC on a different subject, whilst this meeting could have been used as the springboard for an ongoing virtual network of community empowerment practitioners, strengthened by the face to face contact, and contributing to CPD outcomes. However that, it seems, is not what The North Alliance want.
So I think my main attention will now turn to my work with Footprints Connect... see my next post.
