Open Culture
http://www.openculture.com/
Open Culture is a site where you can choose out of four hundred twenty-five free online courses from top universities. They are mostly formatted as video lectures on YouTube Vimeo, or iTunes. The site also includes audio books, movies, language lessons, eBooks and cultural icons. The site is funded and supported by advertisements and suggested links.
Open Culture seems to be carefully pre-planned with easy-to-navigate web pages. It is set up successfully for a distance-learning environment by having all material accessible on the Internet. Most of the classes are simply video lectures, so they do not follow all the recommendations for online instruction from the course text. Page two hundred forty three lists everything that should be included in a syllabus: course logistics, course policies, instructional activities, assessment information, and additional information. The course text explains recommendations for courses that require credit or a grade.
The course I chose to navigate is Introduction to Visual Thinking. It does not have course activities, but simply lectures with different images, presenters, and videos within the eleven video lectures. The main presenter is speaking to a face to-face class, and is recorded for the distance learners. Since it is a free course, it seems like it is set up to help students gain more information possibly for another course, or just for fun. The course online is not set up with a syllabus, course activities, or assessment.
On page one hundred seventy three, the course text outlines Foley’s general principles of good design. In Open Culture, the target audience seems to be well known. Anyone who wants more information on visual thinking in general or someone who is looking for an idea for art making would benefit from this course. Foley also expresses the need for the content of subject matter to be delivered. This course could have more of a specific summary of its parts. It only has a title to let learners know what might be included in the course. If students are choosing the course for fun or to gain information for something else, they need more information before beginning the course.
References
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., Zvacek, S. (2012) Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education, Fifth Edition. Pearson Education, Inc.
http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses
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