Educational MOOs?

“Not only do MOOs connect students locally, they connect students at a global level, with each other and with resources otherwise inaccessible.” (Haynes and Holmevik 1)

My learning experiences in Tech 566 showed me the great charm of MOOs. The whole class was doing a project for a company, including a comprehensive website and an attractive brochure. We were divided into different groups and we worked in virtual groups which is the students in the class may work with different people in different groups. Therefore throughout the semester we changed our partners quite often for various small projects. Every of us had a busy schedule and the students in that class came from various departments, we tended to forget who our partners were. Then the online blackboard helped us a lot. We were divided into two groups which were divided into several smaller groups with quite specific assignments to finish. As long as we logged into MyBGSU, we knew who we were working with and what we were supposed to do. We could actually visit other groups too if we wanted to know the overall pace of the class. The cool thing was we could leave messages there and email other members to check the updated information without disturbing the other classmates by selecting users. Files were attached and feedback was given. It worked like a classroom but we were not so restricted by time and place. If something popped up and everyone needed to know it, the project manager would email the class. So blackboard features like emailing, discussion board did help connect students and provided sources otherwise inaccessible.