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The first open course was launched in January 2011 by Jim Groom at Mary
Washington University (Levine, 2013). Ihe course flexibly interprets the
concept of DST within the broad framework of interpretation defined by
Handler Miller (2004/2020), and all of the included narrations are created with
digital tools. During the first two years of the course, 620 blogs and 23,000
external posts related to ds106 activities were published, and 800 people posted
at least one piece of content related to the MOOC ona social media platform.
The courses do not feature a central framework for publication, but each
student shares their content on their own web interfaces. The ds106 website
has the names of the platforms that are suitable for participating in the courses
(e.g., WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr), and the students’ discussion forum is
a public Twitter channel marked with #ds106 so that participants can receive
feedback, even from strangers. The digital narrative-making course launched
at Mary Washington University is open for external participants, so it is not
so much a university course as it is a joint activity of an extended connectivist
learning community. Moreover, the connection is not time-bound: external
participants can enter the learning community and leave it whenever they
want without obligation.
Levine (2013) summarizes how ds 106 differs from other MOOCs: (1) There
are no lessons, with teachers instead publishing a mix of reading, video, or
creative assignments on a weekly basis; (2) It is not possible to miss out on
the learning process by skipping a lesson, and it is even conceivable that a
student can simply be involved in learning a certain subtask; (3) The enrolled
student and the participant in open education do not have the same learning
experience, as the latter develops their own learning paths; (4) The word
‘massive’ in the case of ds106 means efficiency rather than the number of
participants, with external participants contributing to the work of internal
students; (5) The course does not offer a certification, only the experience
of competence; (6) Access to the course material is not required to register;
and (7) Individual narrative-making processes.
An important prerequisite for taking part in the ds106 course is to be
involved, at least minimally, in the culture of participation manifested through
social media and blogging. In the first two weeks at the online boot camp,
students will have the opportunity to warm up by learning how to blog and
create their accounts; in this phase, students also create the online image, or
avatar that will represent them throughout the course. On Twitter, the student
selects who will be their helper and by sending him or her a welcome message
and following the account. Students also learn how to use cloud-based content
sharing (image sharing: Flickr, audio sharing: Soundcloud, video sharing:
Youtube via a Google Account) as they have to complete many tasks in pairs
or groups. Students must create tags on their blogs indicating the following
categories: images, design, audio, video, web, and remix. In addition, learners
are tasked with uploading a weekly video to The Daily Create, as well as a
weekly self-reflection on the tasks and experiences in the form of a blog post.