THE COURSE IS YOURS: CONNECTING STUDENTS AND TEACHERS AS CONNECTIVIST LEARNERS WITH OPEN ONLINE COURSES

Open online courses represent one of the most interesting and promising trends in e-learning [1]. Openly available on the Internet and accessible free of charge, these courses invite an unlimited number of people from all countries and backgrounds to take part - therefore they are also known as MOOCs (massive open online courses). Within the project "SOOC - Saxon Open Online Course" that started in April 2013 a connectivist open online course is designed and conducted. Special about this course is it not only connects at least seven faculties at three different universities in Germany, but also enables a common learning by students and teachers of these universities and disciplines. Moreover it is open to all interested people via the Web. Another feature is formative assessment by means of the e-portfolio approach. In opposite to the traditional assessment methods the learners shall create and publish various artifacts in several social media tools and platforms like blogs or wikis. Artifacts can be commented and criticized by other participants and therefore enhance the learning results of the learning group as well as of the single learner. This paper introduces the concept of the Saxon Open Online Course (SOOC), addressing in particular the typical challenges of connectivist open online courses in higher education settings and presents potential solutions as well as first experiences and evaluation results.