Last year, I took many MOOCs on different platforms, MOOCs with very different didactical approaches and I had a short look at the first Justice MOOC on edX when it was already finished. At the time, I was more interested in looking at the structure of edX courses, however I was very impressed with the topic and lecturer. When the famous Harvard course started again as a MOOC in April 2014, I decided to really engage with it. I had to catch up this week with lectures 1 to 4, but maybe this is a good thing because I got deep into the topic.
The pre-course survey asked about English skills and I think, this is a very good aspect because I realized that my combination of being „not at all familiar“ with moral reasoning and not being a native speaker was challenging when answering the self-tests and graded quiz questions. In other MOOCs it wasn’t necessary to weigh every word and meaning in order to differentiate between options. As for philosophy, Sandel said „once the familiar turns strange, it’s never quite the same again“. I like the course concept / structure very much: starting with the video lectures, answering the polls and rethinking the answers when an additional factor appears in the setting. For me, the recording conveys the atmosphere in the Sanders Theatre and that is exactly what a MOOC provider could wish for.
There are many benefits in being an e-learning professional, one of them is you get to know many different people, cultures and topics – and this time a glance at „What’s the right thing to do?“.
by Ingrid Dethloff