Connectivist Massive Open Online Courses

Connectivist massive open online courses (cMOOCs) are out-of-school opportunities for participants to connect, interact, and collaborate openly with one another in order to develop, extend, and amplify learning. With an emphasis on peer-to-peer teaching, and open, distributed content creation and sharing, learning in a cMOOC is driven by the connection among participants rather than by predetermined content. A cMOOC often operates more like an online community than a traditional school-based course. Stemming from Canadian experiments in open online teaching, the cMOOC design affords learners—to this point in time, primarily adults—with ongoing connected learning opportunities with distributed, emergent content to complement school-based learning opportunities. cMOOCs are also distinct from other online courses with high enrollment, typically referred to as MOOCs or xMOOCs, which are often offered ...