The Faculty of Education and UBC Library have teamed up to introduce UBC’s first LOOC – or local open online course. The offering, part of UBC’s Master of Educational Technology (MET) program, is meant to help UBC students, staff and faculty hone their digital literacy skills.
The course, called M101, features topics including Mining (research), Meshing (idea creation), and Mobilizing (generating value from information and knowledge).
The LOOC is open to all members of the UBC community who have a campus-wide login. M101 is self-paced, and users can build their skills in any area, in any order that they wish.
As the name suggests, a LOOC is a localized form of a MOOC – or massive open online course. MOOCs have been a big topic in online education recently and UBC’s first MOOC – which launched in January 2013 with Stanford University – attracted more than 130,000 registrants.
The LOOC project received a grant from UBC’s Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund in spring 2013. Work began in April, and the LOOC was opened to co-authors of content, including UBC librarians, in July.
The first set of students from the MET program will be able to contribute as of September.