The Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course (CCK08) was the first to incorporate open learning with distributed content, making it the first true MOOC. It attracted 2200 participants worldwide.

Distributed Content

What this means is that course content is not located in one place, but may be located anywhere on the web. The course therefore consists of sets of connections linking the content together into a single network. Here is the structure of the CCK08 course network. Click on the image for a larger version:



Participants in the course were encouraged to develop their own online presence in order to add to this distributed resource network. The course authors then used a content aggregation tool in order to bring all the content in one place.

A major element of the MOOC was therefore the Daily Newsletter, which gathered the aggregated content, events and discussion, and distributed it to course participants each day.



Where Course Participants Can Create Their Own Content

- Blogger - http://www.blogger.com
- WordPress - http://www.wordpress.com


Tips on Creating Your Own Course Content

- Read and React - don't just try to create content out of thin air, read what other people have written and said and comment on that
- Link - refer to external sources, references, ideas


Tools People Can Use to Aggregate Course Content

- Google Reader - http://reader.google.com
- Yahoo Pipes - http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/


Tips on Content Aggregation

- Sites are aggregated using RSS feeds - read about RSS here: http://www.whatisrss.com/
- Lists of RSS feeds are stored in OPML files - read about OPML here: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fileextensions/f/opmlfile.htm