Creative and Multicultural Communication. I feel as though I am still cutting my teeth on this type of learning, but this course has helped me make leaps and bounds in a direction I had never been. As a returning student, things have changed in the decade since I last attended a course. Now to be fair, I still did a lot of independent learning as well as classroom learning, but nothing like this learning without walls through social media. I was not only curious about it, but I thought, “hey, if I want to continue on in a technologically advancing atmosphere, then I’d better get on the same page as the front runners, or at the very least try and keep up with the pack.” As I went about discovering themes and ideas about open education, I was shocked by how much ground I had to cover, but one has to start someplace. Sometimes I felt like I was in a time warp where I would learn something new only to find out how old and out-dated the information was and then have to start from that next point. There is constant motion, absolute progress. But in order to understand the “now”, you must have a background on the “then”. So to be fair to myself, I didn’t let discouragement take over. When trying something new like this, it can very easy to get discouraged or lost. I knew eventually I would have to jump in the line and take off, but knowing I could do it at my pace enabled me to build the confidence a little before making my presence known and facing potential failure. But I don’t think I failed at all. I think actually I started to not only “get it” but also contribute to “it”. Now I need to keep myself in the loop. I even found myself looking for a history MOOC the other day. That’s right, me. I went searching for another open education course, just to see what I could find. This course has taught me that there is so much more than in just learning in a traditional sense, it has also taught me some of the available ways to access it, but mostly it has allowed me to connect with other students, at all different learning levels and “potentially” from all around the world and share in a creative learning environment. Some of the toughest problems we face may be solved by such a unifying action. I am definitely a fan of learning, and therefore a fan of the many ways one can. This one in particular will just take some practice, that’s all.
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greycorderoy 
I like how well you capture the excitement I remember from my own first MOOC experience. Global contacts, exchanging ideas about the process of learning, contributing as well as consuming – it is heady stuff! Thank you for this piece that makes it fresh again. I find myself taking connected learning for granted sometimes – until I am brought up short by people who either haven’t the foggiest and are unwilling to dive into the unfamiliar tools that make it all possible. My own challenge is to keep an active practice going. I find it too easy to lurk on the periphery and suddenly realize I haven’t contributed for a long time.
Hi Jim, thanks for the kind words. I think it is responses like that which encourage people to join in more than to remain on the periphery (which is usually a favorite spot of mine, I learn best that way, sometimes). But in a course where so much is happening and many things are unfamiliar, I actually looked forward to people’s responses to what I had to say in case ‘I wasn’t’ getting it. I like to know if I’m relying on ‘old’ data and since I’m new, how would I know right off the bat that there is something updated to review? That’s what this course did for me. I saw the entire process like stepping stones, not ones that would lead me in a singular direction, but ones that I could move in any order from one to another, and back. I wonder if that makes sense to any one other than me.