I have sat in a few of the MOOC talks over the last few weeks. The proliferation of technologies used by the MOOC facilitators and the numerous methods participants have for interacting with other participants.
I’m a simple kind of guy and it seems to me that we as technologists ought to make the process easier for the less technically involved people. That could expand the reach of the whole MOOC concept to many more people.
Rather than limit participant’s choices of how to interact or to restrict the creativity of the participants, we (speaking as a Georgia Tech facilitator) ought to design the MOOC “button” or MOOC App for all participants. When you first register for the course you get a button. Push the button and it allows you to set up all the interactivity you wish to engage in relative to the MOOC and the user can change that over time. It would be like setting preferences in an application. It also sets up for you the mechanisms to watch the weekly presentations so that when you push your button it brings up the audio and video of the presentation for you with no other effort. If you missed the scheduled time for the presentation it replays the video for you.
I could go on, but it would appear this would be a relatively simple project that would benefit the MOOC participants.
I like one stop shopping.
Mike
mikemccchangeblog 
An excellent idea! Given the challenges with Big Blue Button at the start of this course, your button might need to be a different colour. 🙂 I vote for purple!
Hi Mike – good point about the proliferation of technology. On the one hand, learners need to have the autonomy to choose what they find interesting. On the other hand, if it’s too fragmented, we limit the potential for newcomers to participate. I’ve been arguing that the skills needed to participate in distributed courses are developed as a consequence of participation. However, that doesn’t address the needs of those who are most likely to drop out before they develop the skills. We need to work at it both ways: better systems/technical design and continued skill development of participants.
Thanks for raising this issue, Mike. I wrote a few bits yesterday about MOOCs (to clarify my own start-up thinking about MOOCs) and one of the pointers i mentioned about MOOCs is the proliferation of technology that is available, and the choice which is the participants’ to make. I have used Facebook groups alot and find that that works a bit for me and of course twitter.
http://newtecheducation.blogspot.com/