According to Wikipedia, MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course, was coined by Dave Cormier (@davecormier) in 2008 during a course called “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge” in a course led by George Siemens (@gsiemens) and Stephen Downes (@oldaily). All three are educators from Canada who specialize in online learning, learning and technology, and connectivism. As the name implies the course is open to thousands of people online. Although thousands of people sign up only a very small percentage finish the course.

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Many of our childhood memories revolve around late nights playing Mario Brothers. Everybody remembers their mother yelling to stop playing so much, or else their fingers would fall off. Many of us outgrew video games, only to be sucked back in by Angry Birds and Farmville. Now there’s a new generation who experience life with an iPad glued to their hand from the womb. And then there are people like my fiance who belong to guilds in World of Warcraft.

For the purposes of this write up, I want to focus on Serious Games as electronic software as opposed to table top or board games such as Monopoly (or Dungeons and Dragons for the geeks out there!).

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“The ability to secure meaning in the course of our experience is a basic human need… But meaning is not simply found; it is constructed.” – Elliot Eisner

A few days ago I participated in a Twitter chat led by a physician-educator from the United Kingdom. This Twitter chat (#ukmeded) is usually held on Thursdays at 9:00 pm UK time. This was a rich discussion on Twitter, and it also allowed me to participate in a discussion with people from other parts of the world. The most recent topic was on assessment (follow the link and learn more about the subtopics discussed).

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