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The History Of Mooc 's Have A Beginning With Educators Stephen Downes And George Siemens

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The History of MOOC’s have a beginning with educators Stephen Downes and George Siemens starting the first MOOC called Connectivism and Connective Knowledge/2008. These professors were building off a four-credit course at the University of Manitoba, Canada. This was the first college class executed behind the acronym of ‘MOOC’ a “massive online open course”. It used different platforms to engage students including Facebook groups, Wiki pages, blogs, forums and other resources (Marques 2103).
The term “massive open online learning” refers to the recognition that a very large number of students, interested in learning content online, may register to take an educational course over the internet. MOOCs create educational content to be learned online, over the internet, without a cost attached to it. (Marques 2013) The amount of registered learners can be in the hundreds (100s) and up to thousands (1,000s). Participating students can contribute to the course as often as they.
MOOCs evolved under the idea of “connectivisim”. The idea or belief was expanded by Stephen Downes. His connectivisim theory was very similar to concept of “active learning”. The term “active learning” was the idea of students participating in online discussion boards, watching created video instruction, and doing various types of “webquest” increasing active participation.
Early adopters of MOOCs include the University of Manitoba in Manitoba. Stanford University professors, Sebastian Thrun and Peter

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