How does the concept of an “eCommunity” relate to MOOCs?

An eCommunity can be both a good thing, and a bad thing, depending on how you are treated as part of that community online.

The recent ride of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) has been a good thing in that lots of people now have the opportunity to take a free course from a great instructor, but the dropout rate is very high (sometimes over 90% of the students fail to finish the course).

I suspect that loneliness plays a major role in this dropout rate: there is not much social support or networking built into most MOOC models.

EdX is one of the leading MOOC models, and HKU has signed up to this platform (although they don’t have any online MOOC courses yet): https://www.edx.org/how-it-works    https://www.edx.org/school/university%20of%20hong%20kong/allcourses

Personally I think that a good online course needs a strong eCommunity support, where the students feel they are part of a group, and there is a strong sense of belonging to that group.

Check out the 2U model in comparison: http://2u.com/about/

We will explore the use of Adobe Connect web conference meetings to support synchronous learning, which is similar to the 2U model.

If this discussion forum had 1000 students in it with no way to talk in small groups, do you think you could easily form personal connections with other students, or even maintain a coherent conversation?