It seems like a day doesn't go by without me tweeting another article or development related to MOOC's on my Twitter Feed (Massive Open Online Courses). So this past fall I decided to enroll one of the courses being offered by Stanford University Venture Lab. I joined the "Designing a New Learning Environment" course taught by Paul Kim, Chief Technology Officer at Stanford along with 18 thousand other students. I am not sure how many students were actually active in the course but I think it was at most 5-6 thousand. Overall I enjoyed the course and the interaction with students from Grenada, Russia, Canada, Israel and other places around the globe. I found the content interesting and the activities worthwhile and I was one of about a thousand students to recieve this "Statement of Accomplishment" for my successful completion of all required course assignments.
So, what's the big deal about all of this? Well, it turns out that not only is a MOOC a good learning opportunity but it is also a good business networking opportunity as well. My opportunity came about as a result of my being a team leader and inviting another educator to join my team. The other educator was from a private high school that has a grant to develop an new Moodle environment for her school and another partner institution in the same city. They needed a Moodle developer and hosting service that could also provide consultation and professional development. After seeing my profile and this web site my new team mate asked if I would be interested in consulting for their project and so we connected outside of the course. The end result was a new consulting and hosting contract for a 2 year project with a consortium of private schools with potential for more work from other project partners. So now I am convinced that MOOC's are not just a great learning opportunity but they are also a great business networking opportunity as well. Like I said, there is more to MOOC's than meets the eye!