Advent calendar #21: What is a MOOC anyway?
December 21, 2013
A MOOC is a Massive Open Online Course. It is a free online course open to anyone with internet access. A MOOC is designed for large numbers of participants and is often taken for personal and professional development as well as simple interest. Participants in a MOOC can take part as much or as little as they …
Advent Calendar #20: The evolution of Sustainability, Society and You
December 20, 2013
Sarah Speight writes: When we start on January 6th, we will be into the third version of the course that is now Sustainability, Society and You and will have had the benefit of developing and refining it over a 9-month period. We have gathered feedback already from the University of Nottingham students and staff who …
Advent calendar #19: Guide to Flickr
December 19, 2013
Some of the activities during our MOOC Sustainability, Society and You involve sharing images relating to various aspects of sustainability. To facilitate this, I’ve prepared a guide to setting up a Flickr account, uploading images and posting them on the Futurelearn platform. As a Christmas present we are making this available under a Creative Commons …
Advent calendar #18: A facilitator’s view
December 18, 2013
Georgina Wood writes: Sadly my time at Nottingham is coming to an end as I submit my PhD thesis and move on to pastures new! My PhD focused on the ‘water literacy’ of young people in the East Midlands of the UK. By this I mean the conceptual knowledge and understanding teenagers have about how …
Advent calendar #17: Sustainability issue – food waste
December 17, 2013
Would you have thought that VIPs would ever eat imperfect fruit and vegetables? Yet this was exactly what happened in February, when the United Nations treated 500 delegates at its Environment Programme event in Nairobi to a five-course meal of blemished African fruit and vegetables – exactly the kind of food that Western supermarkets would have …
Advent calendar #16: Tips on being a student in a MOOC
December 16, 2013
Today, Heather Moorhouse, one of the MOOC facilitators, offers her tips on getting the most out of your student experience on a MOOC (or NOOC): The most advantageous thing about being a MOOC student is the fact that this learning experience is actually whatever you the participant want it to be. You have the flexibility …
Advent calendar #15: Sustainable gift-wrapping
December 15, 2013
There are many ways to wrap Christmas gifts in a sustainable way. Key principles of sustainability are reduce, re-use, recycle, and these can readily be applied to gift wrap. A good start is to ensure all gift paper is recycled. Other ideas include: Wrap gifts in fabric and ribbon – the fabric can be re-used …
Images for how to read a…mind MOOC
This post contains some of the images that we plan to use as part of our next MOOC on FutureLearn: How to read… a mind. You can register for the course at https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/how-to-read-a-mind We’ll post more images here as and when we find them.
Advent calendar #14: Sustainable Christmas holidays?
December 14, 2013
A top tip from the Sustainability people here at the University is to save energy by powering down over the holidays. Before you leave for the Christmas holiday remember to turn off and unplug (if possible) all electrical equipment such as computers, monitors and other peripherals. The University of Nottingham MOOC Sustainability, Society and You …
Advent calendar #13: Longing for a MOOC Fairy!
December 13, 2013
Sarah Speight writes: Over the last few days, Helen Whitehead, Steven Stapleton and myself have been madly building Nottingham’s first MOOC for the FutureLearn platform: ‘Sustainability, Society and You’. We’ve run a Moodle version of the course twice now so you might think it should be easy just to transfer it from Moodle to FutureLearn. …
