WHEN THE MOOC BECAME A GROOC, WE ALL BECAME CHANGE-MAKERS [UPDATED!]

KEYWORDS: MOOC, GROOC, McGill University, educational revolution, social learning, social impact

SUMMARY: Increasingly, North American universities are offering Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs as part of their institutional mission to enhance public visibility, participate in education innovation and improve on-campus teaching and learning. McGill University's fall 2015 launch of a group MOOC or GROOC that would leverage the power of social learning to motivate thousands of learners to develop social initiatives was quite novel in and of itself. However, its unique learning facilitation model driven by a group of dedicated (and unpaid) learning facilitators set the GROOC, officially named 'Social Learning for Social Impact', down an uncharted path that showed a dual belief in human agency and connectedness can help transform people's lives.

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Remember the first time you heard about a 'MOOC'? Maybe it was through a sponsored ad on LinkedIn? A friend's Facebook post urging you to enrol - along with her and 160 000 others - in Stanford's Artificial Intelligence (AI) MOOC? Or maybe it was during the "post-launch" phase, let's call it, when academics and journalists began to write about the Massive Open Online Course asking if we were indeed in the midst of an educational revolution? Over the last few years, respected periodicals like The Atlantic Monthly and The Guardian have been taking up that question with increased vigour. If memory serves me correctly, it was an ex-crush's enthusiastic social media posting in 2011 that brought the 'MOOC' to my attention. He was one of those tens of thousands of eager participants set to learn about AI from Stanford University's renowned scholars. He was billing the course as the season's "must-do" event. I started to wonder if the MOOC could create the kind of human synergy that so many of us deeply crave. Like a protest march, weekend music festival or flash mob, maybe the MOOC could connect us in ways that leave their mark. (Maybe we were on the cusp of a revolution.) Yet it wouldn't be until the fall of 2015 that I would witness first-hand the creative sparks generated by online group learning. When diverse people come together around a common cause they create a definite boom that sometimes even surprises them.

This fall, I'm working as an online course facilitator for McGill University's Social Learning for Social Impact group MOOC or GROOC. While I can't say whether or not the Stanford MOOC revolutionized people's lives, McGill's GROOC is certainly upturning established practice with its emphasis on group or team-based learning. Thus far, MOOCs have focused on independent learning. If you're an active GROOC participant, you're probably in the midst of building trust and a common cause propelled by a social mission. You're also part of history-in-the-making. By providing the intellectual space to converge people's knowledge and abilities to address the needs of the disadvantaged, McGill's GROOC is facilitating high-impact learning - for the group's benefit, and, in time, the mission's, too. With potentially thousands of missions, there are potentially millions of people who stand to benefit right around the world from social learning for social impact! Okay, allow me to be more measured, which is my usual habit: that boom - signalling momentum, synergy, progress,  - may not be heard across all teams and in all discussion fora, but it is building. The October GROOC live session highlights this reality from minute 1:40 to 21:40. It's well worth watching. 

As soon as McGill's call for facilitators went out, I responded. It helped that the "call" came through a campus Professor who's also a friend - I wanted reassurance that the GROOC Team was "kosher" (click link for meaning). I like working with people who are as genuine as they are smart. And, for someone who had just returned to Montreal after a long absence, and briefly attended McGill twenty years earlier, I was eager to reconnect. More than that, I was looking to meet people who weren't necessarily like-minded but were driven to nurture human creativity. I suppose not being a teacher any longer didn't dampen my desire to help people realize their potential. (Once a teacher, always a teacher, it's been said.) 

Co-facilitators meeting virtually and in person in Toronto, Canada (2015)

With each passing week - and facilitation meeting! - the boom is gaining in intensity. Our common cause, I dare say, has become the very making of the GROOC. While we didn't initiate or design the McGill GROOC, which has been two years in the making, everyday we're considering ways to improve the course - to making the doing and trying easier for participants. This makes the GROOC itself a kind of social initiative, if you think about it. The GROOC Team's mission is to empower others to transcend boundaries and make change, together. At once a MOOC and a social initiative, this GROOC isn't just "kosher" but revolutionary, wouldn't you agree? Hold on to your response because you just might need it for that journalist who comes knocking on your classroom door (don't worry, I know it's connection you crave, not fame!).

Addendum: Research into the GROOC and its online facilitation model underway. The author and fellow researchers/co-facilitators hoping to build upon contribution to Open Education Global 2016 in Krakow, Poland at upcoming Learning with MOOCs III in the U.S.