Connecting with USC Scholars Online

MOOCS have our attention, presenting us with as many challenges as new opportunities. Inspired by the concept of open access to academic content and with the goal of developing faculty online teaching skills, "Connecting with USC Scholars" is taking a different approach to offering publicly available, interactive learning experiences that highlight USC's experts and signature programs. This experiment involves prototyping innovative instructional designs, maintaining a common requirement for learning objectives, engaging learners with strategies that include "gamification" principles and badging, leveraging social collaboration, and integrating both proprietary and "back pocket" technologies and platforms.

Participant Engagement Strategies: At USC, we are still in the planning and design phase of this project. We'd like to get your feedback and reaction to the strategies and production model we are designing. We will ask you, the session attendees, to brainstorm with us and build on our engagement strategies, interactive instructional design approaches, and measures for evaluating the program's success. We will ask you to make recommendations for different microassessments and comparisons of our badges model. We would also like to follow-up with you by sharing our project evaluation and next steps when the pilot ends in June 2014.

OUTCOMES: Follow the workflow and collaborative strategies for producing different types of micro-online learning experiences * Identify engagement strategies and gamification principles * Learn about the faculty development strategies used to partner with instructors and prepare them to teach micro-lessons online in a variety of formats * Understand the technologies and strategies used to incentivize and track learners * Compare USC's goals and emerging approach to using badges with other current models