Willkommen auf nicoleengelhardt.de

I am really excited - this is my first blogpost in English and I really hope it will be understandable ;-) If not - please apologize my bad English. When I decided to join the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) "Personal Learning Environments, Networks and Knowledge 2010" provided by George Siemens, Stephen Downes, Rita Kop and Dave Cormier I was motivated in two ways: First I wanted to learn more about learning settings for huge groups and second I saw a possibility to improve my English. So far, so good - but now I like to describe my first impressions of the course.

I am really fascinated by the open course structure. Everything is allowed. Every participant has his or her own goals, chooses different materials and takes different ways to discuss the learning content. Everybody can learn alone as well as with the whole mass (but in my opinion only the last option provides an additional value). It depends completely to the learners responsibilty to achieve his or her own goals. However I am asking me if this will function with all learner groups.

Since a few days I am working at the German distance university (FernUniversität in Hagen) as elearning supporter/consulter. The daily business of this university is teaching mass classes, therefore I am looking for pracitcal learning solutions. But there are other conditions at the university: The students have to take part on assessments at the end of their courses. Although I can act on the assumption of voluntariness by students, I also suppose that these final tests will be an argument against open courses by instructors (I am not sure - this is only a hypothesis). Indepentently from this question I am really curious about the methods and assistents we ill provided in this course.

Phew, it's not very easy to describe my thoughts in English, therefore I will stop for today. Maybe you will think, while reading my post, that my goals will not depend to the actual topic - but hey, everything is allowed - that' great :-)