Building on Detlef's last insightful post I would like to throw a few further ideas into this conversation and perhaps also request a little input as well.

Bit of brainstorming:
If we view the online SuSanA platform as an enabling tool to facilitate / host a MOOC from the technical side, what does a MOOC require from the technical side of things?
My thoughts:

1. An online space for the MOOC material to be stored and called up
2. A tool allowing the MOOC participants to communicate amongst each other
3. A registration system

What else is needed from a technical side?

From a content side, a combination of powerpoint slides, articles, videos, photos and video presentations or lectures as inputs to stimulate the learning experience. So I suppose the challenge here is to put a course outline together and then fill it in a logical manner so that it becomes a guided learning experience, with all the room to enable collaborative learning.

So the SuSanA platform with the discussion forum, possibility of setting a registration systems up (like we have done for SuSanA meetings in the past) and has the online space to store the material, seems to be able to provide the enabling environment! Or have I overlooked something?

So as I see it, we should rally a group perhaps within the WG 1 framework to be brave and try to put a small trail MOOC together. It is worth a try!

In order to embrace the spirit of MOOC we should probably perform all the preparation and brainstorming for the MOOC here in the forum, as then the process that we undertake to attempt to put this together can in turn be a learning experience for others as well.

Thoughts, support, collaboration, critic and enthusiasm are all welcome.

Rgds
Trevor

Dear Forum Users,

What a great initiative considering the poor students who cannot afford university cost in particular the African Community.The media platform indeed has open doors to greater opportunities.

Well done to those who intiated this concept

Lesego

Dear Cor,

I am very much business orientated too, as "for free" is some time real useless.

Susana is not based on altruism, the aim of Susana is different and in my opinion based on equal participation to support "collaborative dialogue and knowledge building". The "service" of Susana you can not purchase...

But in real live basically nothing on Susana is "for free", as all people "spend" their own time to contribute, exchange and use, "Time is money!"

I am not altruistic at all, but I would like to follow more the collaborative path, as in wiki on display:

An earlier list (2005) of Connectivist principles[55] from Siemens also informs the pedagogy behind MOOCs:

Learning and knowledge rest in diversity of opinions.
Learning is a process of connecting specialised nodes or information sources.
Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known.
Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.
Decision making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

It is suggested that connectivist MOOCs are in a better position to support collaborative dialogue and knowledge building than models adopting other approaches

Best Regards,
Detlef

While I very much support OpenCourseWare and MOOCs, they are never free. They need a "business model" to be sustainable, which goes beyond an initial grant or voluntary contributions to develop up a course.

The "business model" behind the MOOCs run by large US universities apparently is that it is a way to identify and attract top talent who bring in big grants and donations.

How successful the above model is I don't know, but it obviously only works for universities large enough to put resources into developing and maintaining attractive MOOCs.

And what is the latest trend? MOOCs are morphing into MOCCs (Mid-Sized Online Closed Courses).

Cor Dietvorst

Dear Colleagues,

I had an exchange with Mr. Joe Iles, Digital Marketing Coordinator of Ellen MacArthur Foundation, on the platform issue, and asked him for permission to quote him on that:

"Coursera and EdX are very different platforms for MOOCs = xMOOCs (professor-centric education).

- Firstly, only partner universities can run courses on these websites, whereas CourseSites is open for anyone to use.
- Secondly, the courses found on Coursera etc are what is referred to as an 'xMOOC'. This type of learning focuses on one expert telling you what they know.

What we are trying to do is provide some small events, some pieces of content, and let people find things out for themselves during the 4 weeks...." = cMOOCs (education built around connectivity)

Additional these articles on the subject:
degreeoffreedom.org/xmooc-vs-cmooc/
www.elearnspace.org/blog/2012/07/25/mooc...e-really-a-platform/

chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/good-moocs-bad-moocs/50361:
"...At the heart of the work of Siemens and Downes is connectedness. Both have written importantly about the social character of learning, the way that actual learning means entering a community of persons asking tough questions, with a shared passion, etc. Relatedly, both insist that knowledge is not “a thing to be acquired,” but an activity. As any working researcher knows, academic, professional, medical, industrial, and pharmaceutical knowledge doesn’t stand still–it moves with the community of researchers, with vortices of conflict, ebb tides, and occasional tsunamis of unreason.

Good MOOC’s, in their view, foreground and sustain the social dimension of learning and active practices, i.e., knowledge production rather than knowledge consumption. To a limited extent, certain experiments in MOOC’s that foreground social media participation over “content mastery” realize some of the ideals of Siemen and Downes..."

In other words (my words) xMOOCs like Coursera and EdX are more a "Top to Down" approach and you may have to pay for.

The "good" MOOCs = cMOOCs I had in mind are more

"...bottom-up - which certainly is a great branding opportunity for the SuSanA network!" by Mr. J. Eichholz

see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course

and
www.slideshare.net/damom7/the-case-of-a-...college-of-education

Poster, entitled "MOOC, every letter is negotiable,"

By the way I managed with CHROM browser my dummy-issue with the CourseSitesplatform.

Best Regards,

Detlef

Just FYI: The (static, tiny, .., but still very loved, particularly be me) ecosan online course at UNESCO-IHE is to be (just plain old regular..) open course ware within the next few weeks. I'm perfectly fine with sharing all that material for any MOOC to be set up.

For the rest I find it hard to form an opinion on the MOOC system. I know TUDELFT is working on it, not particularly for ecosan but on water and sanitation in general. I believe their idea is that students access all materials but have to pay for doing the exam (in that direction). The costs for putting it all together is seen as a kind of extended business card: seeing what lectures are held at TU, which teachers are there, should work as an attraction for students to enroll in a program at TU.

That would of course be different for a MOOC run by Susana.

Either way, I will be happy sharing our materials - would have to check how to do that technically with my colleagues.

Mariska.

Dear Elisabeth and Chris,

To my surprise this "test-balloon"- topic attracted many of the SUSANA-users in very short time, particular many "Novice Forum User". Maybe an elaborated evaluations even with proper science background, for taking the Susana-network much further, is not the only way and do not attract too many people. Maybe pumping up some more test-balloons could be an additional "tool" for steering Susana in the "right" direction?

It seems to me "outside there", is a real need for easy accessible learning tools and key-information/-know-how on recourse orientated sanitation as a part of a possible circular economy!

Coming back to the possible platform for MOOC's. Maybe I am too much of a dummy? Up to now (since Monday) I can not take part very direct on the mentioned MOOC-example run by Ellen McArthur Foundation, it is for me still too cumbersome to set up the webinar. Maybe this is a first lesson, the platform have to be made much more simple for users, for "MOOC-dummies" like me...

Like Chris' Sandec/EPFL, the Ellen McArthur Foundation is "using" their very first MOOC on "Circular Economy" as their very own "test-MOOC" to bring up much more improved MOOCs in future (learning by doing ...). The Foundation is very businesses orientated in a good and realistic way, which I like very much, it is using a lot of their own money to targeting businesses and learning people very direct, to "help them to survive" in coming resources "developments" by teaching (e.g. via MOOCs) and good business cases.

There is some discussion of recovering nutrients from waste water on page 45 that may be of interest, and the case study on the beer industry may also provide some insight for you.
circulareconomy.coursesites.com/bbcswebd...CE_Report%202013.pdf

As Chris' Sandec teams up with state owned EPFL to have the funds to do MOOCs, Susana might do so with Ellen McArthur Foundation too. As long it is "circular economy" orientated too and on real/honest business interests orientated, as "resource orientated sanitation" is probably going for. The Ellen McArthur Foundation likes to have power-partner/doer's like Susana.

Last not least the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have funds to do this kind of practical projects in a collaborative way. Just have a phone call with a key-player and send a drafted MOOC-proposal after that.

Having a first "NASS-MOOC" of Susana established in collaboration with this Ellen McArthur Foundation will attract through their own network (much more present in the medias) many more people them only the mentioned limited numbers of Susana, learning by doing it better...

I disagree with Elisabeth, again , this time on "UNESCO-IHE look very old fashioned, static and tiny". It was to me a first MOOC-experience, just it was not for free, unfortunately. The used platform was easy to use. OK! not much fancy and cumbersome like the "blackboard"...

This existing UNESCO-IHE course content "recycled" could be the first joint and nice "NASS-MOOC" of Susana in collaboration with Ellen McArthur Foundation, lectured by Dr. v. Muench

Best Regards,
Detlef

Hi
Sorry to be quite anonymous until now. My forum profil is now updated.

Most univ also use the MOOCs for their own students so MOOC development is part of their lecturing strategy/development, i.e they cover their own costs. The near future might see that to obtain a certificate will cost some small fee. That is the principle of selling Apps: small fee * many customers = lots of money.

Tutoring: self-test with multiple choice and often also in forums by peers (students). I have no experience with this....will tell you more in december.

No of students: 50'000 referred to a Physics class. Yes, Sanitation will probably have less customers. Good info dissemination will be key. I feel the advantage of a MOOC compared to a platform is that (if done well) it directs and leads the student through a learning process, i.e. takes a didactic approach. Info platforms do that in a lesser degree.

regards
chris

This is all really interesting (thanks, Detlef for bringing it up), and also confusing at the same time because it is so different.

It makes the ecosan online courses that I ran during 2007 and 2008 while I was at UNESCO-IHE look very old fashioned, static and tiny. Detlef was one of my students by the way! Seems like his interest in online courses continues.

Those ecosan online courses (which are still being run now by Mariska Ronteltap) had between 20-40 participants. How a course could run with 50,000 participants is beyond me. Is the idea that the participants answer each other's questions rather than there being a tutor-student relationship?

Also, we speak about that they should be "for free". Well, you could set it up so that the participants don't have to pay a fee but somewhere someone has to pay for the time of the persons who are putting it all together and who are investing "real time" in running it. It could be funded by some grant, government funding or advertising or something, but money is needed somewhere along the line. The video that Trevor posted said "we will build up our clientele first and worry about where the money comes from later." (same way as Skype, Facebook, Flickr works; there are free parts and later add-ons which cost money)

My other question is how could one attract so many people to a particular topic? I mean with all the great work we have done here on the forum, we have barely 2500 registered users. (and I actually think this forum is a brilliant place to learn) What sort of advertising does one need to do to get to 50,000 participants? What sorts of course topics would attract such crowds (probably not sanitation but more general topics like certain maths topics or science, medicine, poetry)?

Chris, could you please tell us a bit more about what type of topics have been successful there at EPFL? Good luck with your own trial, please do keep us posted about it.

Regards,
Elisabeth

Hi Detlef

The Blackboard CourseSites www.coursesites.com are just one of the many platforms for MOOCs.

I prefer Coursera (www.coursera.org) or EdX (www.edx.org) with more structure and quality control. I have lurked into courses on "sustainability", and "Game Theory". There is still very little on water and sanitation. TU-Delft offers a course (edX) on water treatment, but focused on the high-end Dutch context.
For all courses (duration of about 4-7 weeks each) you can enroll for free. You can take lectures and do exercises, etc. If you regularly do everything, i.e. submit your homework on time and pass the exams you can also obtain a certificate.

We at Sandec have just obtained green light for a partnership with EPFL (swiss federal institute of technology in Lausanne) to develop a first MOOC on "household water treatment for low and middle income countries". This will allow us to gain some experience in the film studio and with preparing all the necessary background information, and with conducting the course. Following this MOOC (to be launched in November) we plan to follow up with other MOOC courses on "sanitation". We will keep you informed through SuSanA.

Note, some recent EPFL statistics on one of their MOOCs: 50'000 students registered and 10'000 did everything (timely and in good quality) and obtained a certificate. That is what I call reaching the education hungry masses with ONE course.

Regards
Chris

Have your own try on a running MOOC course (as an appetizer to a possible SUSANA-MOOC):

"To what extent have we come to the end of the linear economy?"

Date and time: Tuesday, 11. June 2013 20:00
Europe Summer Time (Berlin, GMT+02:00)
Duration: 1 hour

Description:
Ken Webster, Head of Innovation for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, provides the first official webinar of this course, posing the question: "To what extent have we come to the end of the linear economy?"

Ken will present for around 15 minutes, after which we welcome questions.


Best Regards,
Detlef

We should also take stock of what is already on the SuSanA website. Here for example is the free "Sustainable Sanitation for the 21st Century - online course" www.susana.org/lang-en/conference-and-tr...entury-online-course

This Sourcebook and 600 animated power-point slides provide the trainer (researcher, teacher, instructor, mobilizer, etc.) with a science- and experience-based material that covers all aspects of sanitation. It gives a topic-based and integrated understanding of the available possibilities to provide comfortable sanitation arrangements that recirculate resources in hygienic, affordable and socially accepted ways. Examples abound of systems and arrangements from various parts of the world.

We should invite the main authors to this discussion:
Main authors:
Jan-Olof Drangert (coordinator)
Associate Professor, PhD Linköping University, Sweden &
Vatema Capacity Building Consultant, Sweden

Caroline Schönning
Chief Microbiologist, PhD Swedish Institute for Infectious
Disease Control, Solna, Sweden

Björn Vinnerås
Associate Professor, PhD
Swedish University of Agricultural
Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden

As this could be a great basis to put together a MOOC SuSanA.

Rgds
Trevor

Academics view on MOOC