Don’t Call It a MOOC (IHE)

“Two University of Texas at Austin psychology professors will Thursday night take the stage for the fall semester’s first session of Introduction to Psychology. Their audience will consist of a production crew and their equipment. In their years of working together, the professors’ research has shown their students benefit from computer-based learning to the point where they don’t even need to be physically present in the classroom.”

“Just don’t call it a MOOC. The university styles the class as the world’s first synchronous massive online course, or SMOC (pronounced “smock”), where the professors broadcast their lectures live to the about 1,500 students enrolled.”

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“Goslin and Pennebaker said they have set an upper limit of 10,000 students, but managing a course of this size “shakes a big bureaucracy to its knees,” Pennebaker said. Between lecturers, audiovisual professionals, teacher’s assistants, online mentors and programmers, the number of people associated with teaching one class has ballooned to more than 125.”