About a month ago, Tim van der Zee wrote a guest post on “Guidelines for designing educational videos” for our blog. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are in vogue, although genuinely good MOOCs are often hard to find. I (Carolina) have recently started several MOOCs to explore the variety of approaches to teaching online courses and, for me, one aspect of making a MOOC engaging is to have elements of predictable unpredictability – meaning that the overall MOOC has a clear structure, but that individual steps within a session bear surprises on what will happen next: Will I have to do a quiz, will I watch a video, or listen to a podcast? To emphasize, this is completely anecdotal. Thus, in today’s digest we provide different resources on key aspects on how to make MOOCs successful.

1) How to make the best use of a massive open online course by David Gatrell, @legaladvert

This post highlights five things that learners can do to make the MOOC experience meaningful to them. Try to take an active role as a learner and shape your progress in the MOOC. This post outlines how this can be achieved.

2) MOOC design and retention impact factors by by Matt Cornock, @mattcornock

Let’s put the ball in the MOOC developer’s corner: What may MOOC designers want to pay attention to when creating their MOOC? Which are the factors that contribute to committed online students? Find out in this post.

3) What makes students stick with a MOOC? by Joan Brasher, @vupeabody

This post provides a summary of a research article that looked into important factors to keep students motivated to complete a MOOC. The findings are rather surprising and quite easy to implement in existing MOOCs.

4) The MOOC Experiment by Mariappan Jawaharlal, @jawa13

MOOC’s past, present, and future are evaluated in this article. What have MOOCs archieved in the past, but what needs to be done in the future to make improvements to students retention which is between 5-10% only?

5) Will MOOCs be flukes? by Maria Konnikova, @mkonnikova

This article takes a more critical view on MOOCs and is an interesting read. Plus, it mentions the importance of introducing findings and ideas from cognitive psychology when creating MOOCs. We think that’s great!

Every Sunday, we pick a theme and provide a curated list of links. If you have a theme suggestion, please don’t hesitate to contact us! Occasionally we publish a guest digest, and If you'd like to propose a guest digest click here. Our 5 most recent digests can be found here:

Weekly Digest #61: Does Mindset Matter?

Weekly Digest #62: Digital Literacy: A Crucial Skill in Today's World

Weekly Digest #63: Summer Safety

Weekly Digest #64: Preparing a Learning-Focused Syllabus

Weekly Digest #65: The Case Against Inquiry-Based Learning