Making the Most of my MOOCing
June 2, 2014
Thom Whiffen (left, in photo below), postgraduate researcher exploring Energy Storage Technologies, will be less involved in our MOOC Sustainability, Society and You this summer as he is busy writing up. Here Thom shares some of his thoughts on his experiences facilitating the first run of the course earlier this year. While aimed at his …
To Frack or not to Frack?
May 30, 2014
Since March 2012, academics from the Schools of Geography, Politics and International Relations and Sociology and Social Policy have been running surveys of public attitudes to shale gas extraction in the UK. The survey has tracked changes in awareness of shale gas, views on the environmental impacts of its extraction and use, as well as …
Living sustainably
May 28, 2014
As someone interested in living sustainably, I subscribe to blogs, Twitter feeds and Pinterest boards of a variety of sustainability-related organisations, firms, and individuals. This way I tend to see a lot of discussion of the details of how to live sustainably, often in the form of steps one can take to move towards a …
Learner reactions to the MOOC: Sustainability, Society and You
April 2, 2014
Sarah Speight has been reflecting on the first run of Sustainability, Society and You (starting for its second time on 16 June). She writes: over 37,000 comments were posted by learners and tutors during the 8 weeks of Sustainability, Society and You. We had our contentious debates: for example over the contribution of the arts …
All MOOC-ed Out!
March 28, 2014
Sarah Speight writes: The University of Nottingham’s inaugural MOOC for the FutureLearn partnership, ‘Sustainability, Society and You’ (SSY) finished a few weeks ago after what seemed like a mammoth 8 weeks. As I write, the second Nottingham MOOC, How to read a Mind, is coming to a close. Sustainability, Society and You was both exciting …
First HEA report on research into MOOCs
March 17, 2014
The Higher Education Academy has published its research into learning and teaching of Massive Open Online courses (MOOCS) and finds that ‘the teacher persists’. The Pedagogy of the MOOC: the UK View by Sian Bayne and Jen Ross from the University of Edinburgh also contains snapshots of five current UK MOOCs with an emphasis on the …
The mini-MOOC writing experience
February 28, 2014
Over the last few months I have been compiling a 2-week MOOC ‘How to read a mind’. It’s an introduction to the field of cognitive poetics – which is using our best current knowledge of mind and language to explore literary reading. I started out on this mainly in order to learn something for myself: …
Sustainable buildings
February 21, 2014
Examples of particularly sustainable buildings shared by participants in Sustainability, Society and You, the current MOOC on Futurelearn. Business and commercial flagships The Green Firemen: The first six minutes of this video (link below) shows what one local fireman achieved for his station. This Fire station in North Dublin is now carbon neutral and being …
Learning sustainably and about sustainability
February 17, 2014
In week 6 of the Sustainability, Society and You course (which runs again later in the year) we looked at sustainable learning and learning for sustainability. There is evidence to suggest that online learning is sustainable in the sense of its environmental footprint (less travel, less printing out of learning materials, and fewer resources in …
Sustainability and wellbeing – some links
January 29, 2014
In this week’s Sustainability Society and You MOOC topic, Organisations and sustainability, participants are invited to share links that they have found relating to several topics. Two of these topics are “sustainability and mental health” and sustainability and exercise”, both of which have prompted people to share some great resources on wellbeing and sustainability. Here …
