I spent ages thinking of some smart lyric to sum up MOOC MOOC, but given I went for the cheap shot of Giorgio Moroder.

My thinking was this song has the slightly barbed of hook of always being together, but only, and very much damningly only in electric dreams. Tempered as much as this is by the distant lament of “love never ends”, it remains a question of whether this is an aside, a disembodied lament or perhaps, to me at least, a sugar bitter pill of a white lie. Love may never end, but also, it may never have started in the first place.

I think my first MOOC experience has been really interesting – it is like being in a very intense conference, a perpetual late night ramble through the minds of others (and we hope they forgive us for our trespass). In many ways I think I remained on the back foot (in cricketing terms) in terms of being overwhelmed. Putting myself firmly into the nothing is impossible camp, I think the MOOC problems I expected to find and discuss (loneliness, barriers, networks) I did find, and also discuss and carp on about. These problems seem to have been widely discussed, but the movement towards solving them seems slow. I’m not a fan of “MOOCs are new” as a reason to excuse the problems in the system. That to me, is quitter talk, and I hate quitter talk.

So I feel empowered, slightly, and daunted, mostly by trying to solve these problems when I start to develop the thing I am which is MOOC like (but I don’t think it is a MOOC). But i’d sooner face a big problem than a small one. Hello Golliath, Hello Godzilla. The bigger they come, the bigger rug you get in the lounge.

So, for the sake of simplifying my ramblings down

1) Community is key, people need to be there. Silence of the LMS will kill the MOOC, Clarice.

2) Never, ever, make people feel like they have failed because they can’t take part. We can’t remove barriers and replace them with traps.

3) Talk, and then talk some more.

4) Share, share, and then share some more.

5) And if your argument starts “I think” then perhaps rephrase.

Thanks all, till we meet again.

Love never ends