Nearly two years before Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun shook up educational institutions with their massive open online course on artificial intelligence, using videos, blogs, wikis, and online tests, photography educators Jonathan Worth, Matt Johnston, and Jonathan Shaw at Coventry University organized online classes for thousands of students in hundreds of cities, using blogs, podcasts, RSSfeeds, a Flickr group, an iPhone app, a Soundcloud group, and a Vimeo group, and hashtags (#phonar and #picbod).
Phonar, the course on photography and narrative, and Picbod, the course on photography and the body, were open to third year Coventry University undergraduates and free to anybody online.
The Coventry MOOCs use transmedia narrative to teach transmedia narrative: teachers and students, physically co-present students and online participants from six continents, show, tell, remix, mashup, and discuss. I talked with Jonathan Shaw about what they have done to radically expand the scope and reach of photography education – and how they did it.
Banner image credit: Harald Link http://www.flickr.com/photos/picshl/6362912161/
