The 2013 Digital Literacies Conference #sotonMOOC

Written by @garethpbeeston and first published on the #digichamps blog:

The #SotonMOOC conference held today was host to a number of prestigious people from UK businesses and Universities, hoping to debate the challenges involved with building, moderating and launching a MOOC.

The event was kicked off by our very own @HughDavis who spoke about the projects in which @CITESoton is involved with across the University and how we can develop online education to cater to the digital arena. Following this, presentations from @CMSinclair, from Edinburgh University, and @Sheilmcn, from CETIS, gave their thoughts on how MOOCs should be developed and to what extent these challenges play a part in the MOOCs that they each have been involved with.

Many famous faces of the MOOC world enjoyed their well-earned coffee break as they recessed for pastries and hot drinks, provided by the University of Southampton catering department. Lovely grub!

To recommence the event, the #Digichamps, @GarethPBeeston and @RenaldoBLive, took to the floor providing a #DrawMyLife video on how the Digichamps came to be and how they can help staff around the University to become more digitally literate. Following on from this were two amazing sessions which focused on various projects around the University that are involved with digital literacies and the use of Web tools for an engaging and enthralling experience online.

A session on “Cool Social Media Tools” was conducted after the presentations that showed us how plugins on @Wordpress can provide an increase in functionality and interactivity on various sites involved with research, education and business. @katieonthetweet, another #Digichamp, also presented an inspiring presentation on an app that allows for the coordination of class recordings, richer media, timetables, notes and support for students at University.

The mixture of cool social tools carefully led onto a session conducted by Prof. @mweller from the Open University. This presentation was streamed online via a Google Hangout, showing practically the extent of the use of Web tools within education. This fantastic presentation inspired many around the room giving a great insight into the running of #H8170Open and Open Educational Resources through MOOCs.

After the lunch break, many delegates took part in a break-out session where various people would debate on the certain challenges, strengths and affordances involved with the creation, development, maintenance and distribution of content and MOOCs themselves. These included using video for further engaging tools, staying safe online and awesome apps in the classroom.

A final presentation to close the event was performed by Mark Lester, who is currently the Head of Strategy & Development at the Open University and a member of the Executive Team @FutureLearn (an initiative to drive open learning on the Web).

Many of the delegates were engaged, inspired and satisfied with an all-round successful event organised by our very own @LisaHarris and @FionaJHarvey. Many thanks to the digichamps, video teams and all delegates were announced to close the event. We wish everybody every success in creating their online learning tools and courses in the future.