Week one of the ecosystems MOOC

I have now finished week 1 of my first MOOC:  Ecosystems (from the OU) and have survived, kept up and enjoyed it.  I was a bit concerned that interacting with the community might be overwhelming – however there was only one discussion ‘step’ (which is how the course is organized).  The task was to discuss the definition that we had been introduced to and as it has a simple and fairly linear organization, essentially what you get is the most recent comments, so although posts are put up in reply to others, it is not easy to see which posts are being replied to as if there is a lot of traffic they may be a long way down.  I was a little disappointed at the lack of a feel of the community.  I don’t know how many people are following the course or where they are from – it would have been good to know.  One of the features of MOOCs is that they tend to have a high drop out rate.  My colleague Doug Clow has written about the metaphor of  the ‘funnel of participation’; and as he says, such courses have a much higher drop out rate and in this paper he explores this steep drop-off in three different contexts.

Of course, one consequence of courses being free is that people can dip in and try to see whether or not they like the course, whether or not they can cope with the course and whether or not they have the time – with no penalties if they discover that they don’t. So is the Ecosystems course going to lose a lot of people?  In week 1 videos have been used quite a bit to explore and to illustrate the concept of an ecosystem – and for me that has worked well.  I was very engaged with the Wicken Fen example which is also within visiting distance for me – so may well take a trip.

Interestingly, Countryfile, a weekly BBC programme about various aspects of the countryside was discussing some of the early ecologists tonight such as Gilbert White, who carried out a detailed study of the natural history of Selbourne, through painstaking observations.  I have intended to visit his house which is now a museum and his garden and the combination of the programme and course has reminded me: so hope this will be a trip for 2014 - and I may also dig out his book.

So, looking forward to week 2.

Computer says "No": Workarounds in setting up the blog

So I had about 10 minutes before a meeting this afternoon and thought I would set up this new blog.  I already have a small number of blogs already on blogger .  Two are not currently very active, but my Welsh one is, and my profile therefore was in Welsh.  Hence I needed an English profile (as the original would probably be a tad inaccessible). I thought it would be problematic setting up a new blog with a different profile (in English) so thought I'd explore setting up my new blog.  

Guess what?  After filling in the required form to enable me to have a blog, the "submit" button on the form was not active - and I could get no further.  I checked again and could not see where I was making an error - so reloaded the form and tried again.  Still no luck.  Googling led me to see that others had had similar problems - but no advice on overcoming it.  With 5 minutes of my time gone, I resorted to going back to Blogger.  As it was ages since I had originally created my profile I could not remember how to edit it, and it was not obvious how to do it.

But after a little while (probably now over my 10 minute limit), I had a new blog - with a title in print that is larger than I want - and that has somehow lost the photo I previously had (as I played with the design), and has a profile that now does not quite fit the other blogs. 

All I want is a design where what I need to do is intuitive and simple.... but enough moaning and on with the course.