What is a MOOC? A massive open on-line course! I have done one and started a second through “FutureLearn“.
Why? Well, I was busy and had lots to do, but wasn’t really using my brain as I had learned how to do the “jobs” that I do. That meant that I was starting to get bored. I heard about the FutureLearn courses on the radio – probably the “Today” programme on Radio 4 – so looked them up, signed up and started!
I am now on my second course. The first was “How to read…… a mind” – NOT about mind reading as some people who hadn’t read the details of the course thought, but on Cognitive Linguistics. The idea was to see why some fictional people become “real” and some don’t. Having done the course I still don’t know! It was a bit too academic and mostly seemed to be about learning terms, most of which I will never use again. The part on “Theory of Mind” (ToM) was put in such a complicated way as to be almost incomprehensible – good thing I had met it before in the context of autism. It is actually quite a fascinating idea and for linguistics relates to how one imagines oneself as the person one is reading about, which is a slightly different in meaning to the way it is used in psychology and so for autism.
There were a few things I disagreed with on the course. One was “portability” (a character moving from one “world” to another) being because the character was so “real”. I think they tend more to be the caricature of a type, such as Mr. Darcy being the classic “ideal man”, so can be in lots of different places. I also don’t believe that if one is sitting on a comfortable chair one feels more sympathetic to a character than if one is sitting on a hard chair, or that things appear to be moving faster in a book if one is reading in moving vehicles (trains, buses…). I admit to not having had a chance to test these out, though.
As part of the course, one can “post” a comment after each lesson and some of these were quite interesting. There were far too many to read, of course – over 1500 in one place – but it was possible to go to the “most liked” and that was where the best discussion occurred.
The most interesting thing I found from the course was that when some people read they visualise what is happening and/or hear the voices of the characters. As far as I understand it, this is almost automatic, with no effort to do so. A few people have described it to me as being like a film and as I get neither pictures or sound I feel I am missing out, but there is nothing I can do about it! I did some research among people I know who read, and found that people who visualise what they are reading also tend to get visual dreams and tend to be visual learners. I didn’t get many who hear the voices, so can’t say about dreams, but the tendency was to be aural learners and those who, like me get neither sound or vision, tend to get neither in dreams either. They also tend to be either kinaesthetic or mixed learners. I did wonder if it was inherited as most of my immediate family are like me – apart from a nephew and a niece – but I haven’t been able to get enough information to be sure. My sister-in-law didn’t answer so I can’t work it out even in the near family!
The first course was supposed to take about 3 hours a week, but I spent much longer than that. That was partly reading the academic papers which were attached but mostly because I spent far too long reading and writing “posts”. That was because doing so helped me get a better understanding (I think) of what the work was about. I was glad it was only a 2 week course – any longer and I think I would have given up!
My second course is about Forensic Science and the Criminal Justice System. It is much less academic and I understand it much better. I am convinced the first 2 weeks were teaching me how to be a better criminal! There are at least 3 policemen doing the course. I discovered that from reading their profiles and there are another couple with nothing written in the profile but I suspect they are also in the police service. One of them is very serious and always gives a serious reply to what is obviously a jokey post! The fourth week will be on TV, video games, crime novels etc and could cause me some problems as I have no TV and don’t play video games – I wait to see.
I have found this course much less time consuming, partly as it is only supposed to be 2 hours a week (although it still takes me longer) and partly because I am writing and reading fewer posts. There are no extra academic papers, but quite a bit of research on the internet, which takes me too long. This course is 6 weeks, so I am about half way there. I will have learned quite a bit about forensic science and had to consider some interesting questions, such as whether we should have a national DNA database, with everyone on it. Lots of pros and cons, but I have not really made up my mind one way or another.
So is this a good thing to do? On the whole, yes. I have learned a few things, got my brain working again and had some fun. I am probably spending too long on it and might have to have a break for a while so I get other necessary things done. There are some interesting courses coming up though……..