Before you start reading, this is all quite rough, and everything is subject is to change.

So I'm busy with my research proposal and of course nothing went as planned. I didn't do my references as I went along nor did I keep a reference log. How disappointed am I in myself? You can imagine. But I will be fair to myself. I started working the same time I started my thesis. I basically went from doing completely nothing with my life to being super busy.

Anyway, now for my research proposal. My topic is on MOOCs, something new and exciting but oh so difficult to research. To be brief, I'm studying the offering of weekly face-to-face facilitator guided sessions for selected MOOCs at my university. The reason for this offering is the lack of academic and professional skills in graduate students, which is a pressing concern of employers and universities. Students are now provided with additional opportunities outside of university curriculum to improve their writing or public speaking skills.

Now the problem comes in with giving this a term, some have referred to the use of MOOCs and face-to-face as "wrapped MOOCs" or "blended MOOCs". There has been minimal literature and barely any consensus on terms such as "wrapped MOOCs". Stephen Downes mentions in his blog how can can a MOOC be blended, because OBVIOUSLY that means it's not a MOOC anymore. If any form of face-to-face instruction is added surely it's just blended learning? Ah, it's tough being in a research area where people are still arguing and using different terms trying to make *their* term catch on so that they become some famous academic with hundreds of citations. Amy Collier and Michael Caulfield mention they want to refer to blended flipped MOOCs as "the distributed flip". They define the distributed flip as “using MOOCs to support traditional face-to-face experiences using a blended, flipped format. This approach, which we refer to as the "distributed flip," provides professors with curated "live" content and online activities for their flipped classes”. You and I both know this isn't THE term that academics are going to have a consensus on. It's not going to be the next OER. It sounds so statistical and it's not catchy enough. Even Caulfield himself says "it doesn't quite have that 'word of the year' zestiness". I quite like the term wrapped MOOCs, but is it the correct term? Probably not, but it's the closest thing I've got and  at this point, I'm probably  going to be using it for my thesis.

Before I define wrapped MOOCs , if you somehow landed on my blog and are still reading, please give input! This is a working definition and if someone can justify something better, I would happily throw this definition out of the window. Like my current supervisor says, "I'm trying to study a moving target". She's got that right for sure.

So here goes....

"A wrapped MOOC follows a blended learning format, in which students attend facilitator/instructor face-to-face classrooms and utilize the MOOC in part or whole in a formal or informal environment." 

So to break this down:

1) It can be wrapping of the MOOC around the face-to-face classrooms or vice versa.

2) Face-to-face with instruction/facilitation is an essential component of this term

3) Flipped learning is a possibility and likely in this scenario, however this won't be included in the definition

4) "in part or whole" refers to extent to which the MOOC is used, in some cases a lecturer will use material from the MOOC, or ask students to watch lectures to prepare for their face-to-face lectures.

5) Defining formal/informal is really tricky and I haven't figured this out just yet. In my university case study, the facilitators are being paid for by the university, but signing up and completing the MOOC and attending the facilitator-guided sessions are all voluntary. The paid component and the use of PHD students as facilitators sounds formal, but everything else sounds informal.

I tried to create a table to figure this out a bit more, and this is what I have so far. 

This is all I can spew out at the moment, but I'll definitely write more once I make some progress. 

Tasneem